But the time has come… to act my age. And that’s 23. And this blog was feeling a little old.

So I’m moving over to Tumblr, with a new approach and hopefully a much more fun blog. I hope you’ll join me there:

http://bookgirladventures.tumblr.com/

I hope I’ll see you all there soon! xoxo Alice

1. If you could have really long arms one day a week, but only one day, which day would you pick and why?
2. What Jellybelly/Ben and Jerry’s flavors would you invent?
3. What would you hang from your window to alert other drivers that you were desperately in need of a hug?
4. Create a system, such as the seismic scale, for measuring and charting the scratchiness of beards.
5. You find a map on the street, drawn in sidewalk chalk. It claims to lead to the best french fries in the city. It is clearly not an ad. Do you follow it?
6. What object, in the room where you currently are,  would make the best secret time machine?
7. Make a list of seven ways a napkin can bring joy.
8. What is the hardest song in the world to hum?
9. Describe your best friend in 200 words without using adjectives.
10. Choreograph a dance to signal the beginning of daylight savings time.

Got any?

Not all of them, of course. I’ve got the core set of actual humans floating around. But there’s something really rather lonely about the fact that some of my favorite people only exist between pages. It wouldn’t be so bad if they could talk back, even. But they don’t know I’m there, and they never will.

When my grandmother died ten years ago, the strangest part of it was all the things I wanted to tell her. Even when I was college, when I got a good grade or was elected to the magazine, I wanted to head right over to that yellow house with the great big garden, plop down on the bench outside, and tell my grandmother every minute of it. And when I finished The Hunger Games (in three big gulps- I barely slept) I found Peeta so akin to myself, I have a funny idea and thought, “Oh, I should tell him.”

Even worse is the way they tend to creep into conscious without even trying. The summer after my senior year of high school, when no Harry Potter books had come out in a bit, I started asking my friends where Stanley Shunpike was up to these days. No one knew him. But the name was so familiar. Didn’t we have biology together? Or was his locker near the choir room? Finally my father overheard me on the phone one day, and said, “Lovie, Stanley Shunpike did not go to your high school.” Startled, I asked, “How can you possibly know that?”.. and felt a little crazy when he reminded me that Stanley Shunpike drove a bus in Harry Potter. But I could have sworn…

I know that I can’t give Peeta a call. That Stanley did not help me dissect an owl pellet. That dreamy guys aren’t just waiting for me to turn the page and unleash them into the real world like in the music video for Take On Me…

But all the same, I get caught up in those world sometimes. And that can be a little lonely.

The only great comfort a reader has is finding others who feel the same way. Even if I can never hang out with Scout Finch (Scout, if you are reading this, I have not ruled out the possibility that you will come to my 24th birthday party- please RSVP soon), I can talk to other people who want to. We can say things like, “Ooo, did you hear what Ramona did?” and totally not sound like crazy people. It’s what one of my professors called “gossiping about imaginary people,” and I do it far too often.

I just wish we could get tea sometime. My treat.

Okay for Now, by Gary D. Schmidt, is, quite possibly, the best book I’ve read all year. Read that again- not the best book written for young adults (which it is), or the best work of fiction- the best book. If there’s a contender, I can’t recall it. Okay for Now stole my heart and ran around in circles, waving it in front of the whole school and taunting me to come get it, and I didn’t even give chase. It was that phenomenal.

Doug Swietick seems like a jerk. For the first few chapters or so, he complains often and gives us little reason to cheer for him. He doesn’t like his new town or anyone in it. But slowly- very slowly- we realize what made Doug that way, and I must admit, I’d be far more of a jerk in his situation. But he learns the balance of Maryville and the opportunities available to him once he starts seeing the world through the eyes of John James Audubon.

Yes, like the Audubon Society. This might seem a little odd- it did to me, at first. Paul visits the local library every Saturday to view (and eventually draw- small spoiler I suppose) pictures from a book of Audubon’s work, and that struck me as a bit unnatural. But through the various expressions of birds – birds tumbling from the sky, strutting proudly, or soaring together for just a second in a strong wind- Paul finds hope and kinship in what seems to be, initially, a hopeless and friendless town.

The cliche that something “made me laugh and made me cry” is rarely true for me. What brings tears to my eyes rarely brings more than a quick smile to my lips. But Okay for Now epitomized this feeling. Though it was, as my father would say, “a slice of life book” with no big adventure, I couldn’t put it down. There weren’t any plot twists. No cliff-hangers. Simply put, I didn’t want to leave Doug Swietick alone. He’s rough around the edges, but with an amazing heart – there’s definitely some Holden Caulfield in there. At first I read because I wanted to protect him, but later because I genuinely loved him. If you don’t root for Doug, you’ve probably never rooted for anyone. Really. Without being at all saccharine, Gary D. Schmidt has created one of the most lovable characters I’ve ever encountered.

There’s a lot of buzz about this book, and I hear it’s got a great shot for the Newberry Award. Take this opportunity to be ahead of the curve and read it before every parent, child, teacher, book club, and bibliophile is telling you you’re missing out. You won’t regret a single minute you spend with Doug Swietick.

“One of the hardest things about this job,” someone told me as I started my work with Scholastic Book Fairs this week, “Is getting over your book snobbery.”

Book snobbery? Was this directed at me, specifically? Did I come off as a book snob?

Looking around the cases, there were, of course, the books that wouldn’t have caught my eye as an author and avid reader:

The TV Tie-Ins…

The photoshopped cute and cuddly animals…

The gender stereotypes…

But was that so bad? I mean, as English majors (assuming you are reading my blog because you are, in fact, just like me- if so, let me save you some trouble; those little red spots mean you are allergic to almonds) weren’t we trained to seek out great literature and avoid cheap tricks at all costs?

Luckily, before I could go running my mouth off and make a fool of myself, someone casually mentioned to me that, at any company that really cares about kids, some books are just used to lure them in.”Imagine,” someone told me, “That you’re in a room full of books, and you don’t think you like to read. Everything in the room is unfamiliar to you. Everything is a little scary.”

Everything, that is, until you see a familiar face- SpongeBob SquarePants, or Pikachu, or a puppy that looks just like yours. Suddenly, you feel at ease. Reading is not such an unfamiliar experience, and the shelves aren’t full of strangers- your friends are there.

And like any good friend in an unfamiliar environment, they introduce you to new friends. They make you feel even more relaxed and comfortable, just by being there, and you realize you want to explore. Your eyes are opened to all sorts of new things.

Books steeped in history…

Or mystery…

Or hope.

If it takes a WWE wrestler to get kids reading about World War II heroes, I’ll put those books on the shelf any day. I can support those choices.

Even if you don’t work in kids’ publishing, however, you’ve definitely got to admit that you, yes YOU, can be an awfully big book snob. A month ago (heck, a week ago) I probably would have told you I’d never read any of the following:
Sci-Fi, chick Lit, vampires, zombies, animals, romance,  self-help, fantasy, books that came after the movie, books that are meant to gross you out, books with money on the cover… you get the idea.

Man, was that limiting me. Opening myself up to children’s books- really diving in, head first, to a world I didn’t always love even when I was there- has been extremely liberating. I realized how many books I was missing, even if I wasn’t missing them.

On Thursday, I flew first class for the first time in my life. I sat in the very first row, a good four rows of the business elite facing me in their oversized, reclining seats. I read Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell. And I was not ashamed.

after much, much searching, I finally found a job. And it’s something that’ got me incredibly. Starting tomorrow, I will be a Literacy Consultant for Scholastic. That’s right- Scholastic.

For someone who grew up loving book fairs with every thumping valve of my tiny heart, this is about the coolest thing that could happen to me. And the fact that it pays- that it’s a job where I can get an income and wear fancy businessperson clothes – it’s just too good to be true. Except it’s true.

Scholastic is rolling out a brand spankin’ new program called Booktalking. Book Talks are a very simple concept that’s already popular in many classrooms: students choose books, read them, and spend a couple of minutes piquing the interest of classmates. Part of the fun is making the presentation your own- playing your guitar, acting out a scene, rapping- whatever feels natural and gets the class involved. So it’s an incredibly simple concept. Almost simple enough to leave me without a job yet again. But not quite.

Initially, I’ll be working directly with students in the Philadelphia area, using three or four test schools to do eight-week Booktalking workshops. I’ll learn as much as possible from those schools and turn that information into a usable plan for future students. By September of 2012, we’ll have materials together to promote Booktalking through all of Scholastic’s amazing resources.

Perhaps the coolest thing about this job is the fact that I have all the resources of a Fortune 1000 company, but I’m doing an outreach program that makes me truly proud. It’s a pretty phenomenal combination.

Today is my first day of work- I’ll be soaking up the sun in Orlando while I meet the Scholastic family. But as gorgeous as it is there, I’ll be looking forward to coming home- I’ve got work to do!

http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice/2011#55900-Best-Memoir-&-Autobiography

7 kinds of awesome!

Honestly, as much as I respect your right to post them, I am not a fan.

My absolute favorite play (for the moment, but it will always be in my top 3) is Inherit the Wind, and one quote always stuck with me. Drummond, an attorney, tells Hornbeck, a journalist:

“Hornbeck, I’m getting tired of you. You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.”

Now this is a movie.

I think about this at least once a day for whatever reason- it gets stuck in my mind the way a song might.  I think this applies to so many writers- they have this absolutely wonderful craft, that can be used to do any number of things, and they choose to use it to bring negativity into the world.

Now I know I’m getting a little hippie (as I tend to, with my yoga and cage-free eggs), but I think the world has enough negativity without my contributions. I do sometimes want to be spared the trouble of reading a really horrible book, but since most of my books come from the Philadelphia Free Library’s book store ($1 to $3 per book, and it raises money for the library, so you really can’t beat that!), I’m willing to take the risk. My taste is unique. Everyone’s is. My favorite local plays have been critically panned. The movie I’ve watched most often, Labyrinth, is generally considered laughable. I find taste to be such an individual thing- I can’t possibly make a decision about something as important as a book based on a star-rating. So reviews in general, yes, are not especially important to me.

But negative reviews… well, I think they’re simply a waste. A waste of time and space, for both the poster and the reader. If you didn’t like the book, move on. Why dwell on an unpleasant experience? How many people are really going to heed your warning and avoid that book?

A negative review of a laundromat, say on Yelp, is one thing. But posting a negative review of a book- it seems harsh. Writing a book is an act of sheer bravery. And if this is the book you slaved over for ten years, it sort of bothers me that someone can bring it down in 10 seconds- especially if they didn’t even finish it. If people want to post negative reviews, I almost think they should have to go through as much trouble as the author did to write the book.

But maybe I am biased.

Anyway, here is Evan’s essay! Be sure to check out his blog, too!

If I don’t have something nice to say….

I have stopped writing negative reviews about books online.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the hardest thing about being a writer is not the loneliness, it’s the rejection. Every success a writer achieves is proceeded by dozens and dozens of rejections. Sometimes hundreds.

I received tons of rejections from journals for short stories. After my MFA, I sent around a short story collection and two novels, which helped me accumulate over 170 rejections. But I once believed that if authors published novels or New Yorker stories, they were just supposed to handle criticism. Plus, what were the chances they’d read my scathing Goodreads review?

See, I have history writing things on the internet.

Students have happily asked me about embarrassing posts from the late 1990s that I made on Radiohead websites using my real name (who knew anonymity would be a good idea?). Those posts were full of frothy, college-aged-Evan music-rage, aimed at people who acted like Radiohead lyrics were talking about their life experiences and not Thom Yorke’s. (Seriously, how is “Fake Plastic Trees” about some teenager’s breakup?)

Thom Yorke has enough of his own pain.

Fast-forward to the Amazon.com age: I joined thousands of self-appointed experts, reviewing music, books, and movies to reveal to anyone with an internet connection my very important opinions regarding John Steinbeck’s novels, Godfather III, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor albums. I was saving people time and money and emotional frustration by writing about bad things and somehow increasing audiences by writing about good ones.

It didn’t help that I went to graduate school from 2003-2008 to get a Masters degree in Literature and then an MFA in Creative Writing. Graduate school trained me to believe I was good at judging literature, so that by the time I decided to become a writer I already had set ideas about writing based on the handful of books and writers that academics had deemed good. It’s not that academics are often wrong about what books are good. It’s just that our opinions are often dated. Put another way: the quality and importance of books published now cannot be determined now. I did not understand that books celebrated now might be forgotten in 100 years; and lots of the books that are celebrated 100 years after their publication were initially ignored (I’m looking at you, Herman Melville and Zora Neale Hurtson.) So, while I learned much about literature during my period as a graduate student, I did not learn how to critique contemporary fiction.

Thus, five years in academia plus a predisposition to snobbery resulted in a number of harshly negative reviews for books on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. Not the greatest tragedy of my life, but certainly a character flaw.

I eventually went too far. Back in 2008 I posted a review for a book; the review actually got the attention of the book’s author. I said some unnecessarily rough things, spurred by my belief that I knew a good book because I was a double-expert! I had an MA in Literature and I was getting an MFA. Why shouldn’t I post a review questioning the awards given to this novel and its author? Why shouldn’t I question this author’s skills? Chances were high that millions of people were considering whether or not to read that very book! I had to warn them!

The author emailed me and, in a very polite way, suggested I was being unnecessarily harsh. (He was happy to see that I actually liked his second book a bit, joking that at least he was improving — the kind of self-deprecating humor I normally would appreciate). At the time I joked with fellow MFAers about how sad it was for an author to write a reader. I thought it was desperate and weird for him to go out of the way to contact me. Others agreed; no one seemed to think I was wrong for ripping the guy and his book on the internet.

Ripping things on the internet is my right; that’s the very purpose of the internet.

Right?

As you can probably sense, this was a terrible way to live.

Fortunately, a couple of published authors said some key things about reviews and being a writer that helped shake up my persona both online and in the real world.

A weekly coffeeshop conversation with author Matthew Quick, which stretched over many months, helped me shed some (though certainly not all) of my natural and acquired snobbiness. It’s not that Quick would show up and lament the nature of internet reviews. Nor did he chastise me for my own transgressions (yes, I did tell him about my harsh review and the resultant email). But he did push me to consider reviews from the other perspective. The irony is that I used similar thinking when teaching literature. Books force us to consider other perspectives! I said this in class to students but failed to consider it when writing reviews.

In an email, author Rick Moody once told me that he “wouldn’t object to a ‘negative’ review if that review were substantive, and about a resistance to the material based on concrete ideas about how it might be improved” but that negative reviews without substance “are bad for everyone.” I agree with him, even though I have yet to feel the barb of a negative review (my first novel having yet to see the light of publication).

Rick Moody's novel has everything: a talking chimp, jetpacks, and zero-G astronaut love.

Consider: readers can be talked out of a novel by the opinion of one person who may or may not share that reader’s sensibilities. How are you supposed to know if a reviewer shares your perspective without reading the same books? Who wants to read only the books that a reviewer reads? That doesn’t even cover all the reviews found on Goodreads and Amazon — how can a reader trust the opinions of strangers without knowing the sensibilities of those strangers? My students tell me that they will often pay more attention to how many good or bad reviews something gets online in their effort to decide what to buy. If I followed this rule, I wouldn’t read Don DeLillo’s Underworld because it “only” has a 3.5 star rating on Amazon. (Underworld is one of my favorite novels. So is Moody’s The Four Fingers of Death; also a 3.5 star Amazon rating)

Negative reviews hurt authors, of course. We already endure the criticisms of their own ego both before and after dealing with the many rejections on the road to publication — and those rejections don’t to stop for authors who have successfully released multiple books. I’m not saying only positive reviews should get published, but Moody’s quote puts the importance on the depth and substance of the review. Valid negative responses can lead to interesting conversations for readers (mostly for readers who have read the novel in question).

In our email conversation about online reviews, Moody went on to assert that “The bilious, cantankerous reviews are posturing and narcissism. I don’t read them, and I feel sorry for the people who write them.” I’m sure we’ve all seen reviews for books or movies that seem to explode from the very gall bladders of the reviewer. I cringe when I see “worst books of the decade” or “most overrated authors” lists because they reek of basic internet jackassary: get people to click on an article by flailing one’s arms and speaking in tongues. Plus, when people who claim to love books and claim to lament the decline of reading write negative things about their very own industry, what hope do any of us have?

What these two authors in particular taught me is crucial: writers are nourished by tiny morsels of praise and nearly choke on the torrent of negativity online.

It’s the struggle of being a writer in the 21^st century. Self-promotion requires an internet presence; readers require an outlet. The internet, as everyone knows, puts authors in direct contact with readers. Of course, readers have a direct line to the authors — a megaphone five feet from their face. When one person reaches out to thousands it’s considered a huge advance in direct marketing; when thousands can shout in the face of one person — even if they shout praise or say nothing at all — it’s akin to that scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex DeLarge is reprogrammed.

Alex DeLarge doesn't heed internet criticism.

Most readers would probably suggest an easy solution: all writers should avoid reading negative reviews, especially the ones written with the goal of ruining the author’s week.

I’m not sure it’s that easy.

Is it possible to avoid reading blogs and tweets and Facebook statuses and reviews on Amazon or Goodreads? Hell no. Writers, as part of our profession, need to self-promote, and the internet is the main way that happens. Promoting yourself while also ignoring what others are writing about you on the same sites? It’s not reasonably possible. Plus, some reviews will find their way to your inbox or into conversations even if you manage to ignore them.

Friend says: “I saw you got a few bad reviews on Amazon. How’s that feel?”

Writer says: “Well, my ignorance of those reviews felt great; so, thanks for letting me know of their existence.”

I didn’t relinquish my stance about reviews and my opinions overnight. But I eventually got to a point where I wrote to the author who had written me and apologized. I explained not only why I had written the review but also why I eventually took it down. I told him that I didn’t expect him to accept my apology. And I told him I hoped he was still writing.

None of that should be read as a noble thing on my part. I should’ve never written the bad review in the first place. There was no need.

So, to get to the point, I have stopped writing negative reviews. If I don’t like a book or movie, I don’t post comments about it. As a writer, I need to spend time writing new stories and books. And if someone wants to trash them online, I’ll be sure to debate with myself whether it’s worth sending an email to the critic, ignoring it, or just getting better.

_____________

Evan James Roskos is a writer from New Jersey, a state known for delicious produce and rotten politics. He’s been published by Granta, Narrative, and StoryQuarterly.

But sometimes, something wonderful happens to remind me just how lucky I am to live this crazy travelin’ lifestyle. This weekend was one of those times.

I spent this weekend Binghamton, New York. Gmail tells me it took 60 emails to work it out, but that meant the details were perfect. Sure, I left Philadelphia nearly 6 hours later than I thought I would (oh, airports!), but when I got there, I had the most genuine welcome a person can get: a bag full of snacks. And they were gluten free!

As I dug past the pretzels and cookies that, through some culinary miracle, wouldn’t make me sick, I found the true treasure of the bag. There, printed boldly in red and white, was a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “I promise.” And on the back of the shirt, a truncated version of The Reading Promise from the back of my book. Wow. Wow. You can’t imagine the feeling I had the next day when I signed those t-shirts. It was absolutely surreal. My presentation and  signing went very well, but meeting the 140+ people who came to see me was even better. I asked them to each tell me an interesting fact about themselves, and I learned all sorts of cool things: and found a pen pal in a little girl who plays the xylophone and likes to draw pictures of people who are asleep!

And the teacher who brought me in, Carrie Vesci, was really the icing on the cake (though her class guinea pig, Mr. Twinkles, was not far off):

She got the whole school involved with every step of my trip, forming a “Promise Committee” and adding “Streak”ing to the curriculum. When I arrived, it was like I was joining old friends. Some of that may come from the fact that they’d already read my entire life-story up to age 22 (it does have a way of converting strangers into at least acquaintances, of course) but I think it has more to do with Mrs. Vesci’s former-cheerleader personality. She bubbled over with enthusiasm for my book, her students, and me. Her students couldn’t help but catch it, and the community was soon to follow.  I came late to the party- but it was in part my party, so they let it slide.

This is by no means the exception- every event I do has me beaming for the next few days. That’s why I’m lucky to be in this profession… the speaking, writing, reading, educating, guinea pig feeding profession. Absolutely, there are the weeks – like last week, as you could see from my blog – when I get tired and need a break. I’m a busy girl! But I’m busy doing things that make me happy.

That’s worth taking off my shoes.