(via “Leitura, e afins” )
fall-out-book-nerd
Some pastel-colored books to match my new coffee mug. 📚☕
More you might like
“A book that turns the idea of perfection on its head is Holly Bourne’s Am I Normal Yet?, whose heroine learns the value of female friendship as she struggles with severe OCD…”
Chris Russell Interviews Will Hill for the Zoella Book Club
“As soon as you finish (writing) a book and think “that’s brilliant”, then I think you’ve probably gone wrong.” - Will Hill
Check out the book trailer for Tamsyn Murray’s Instructions for a Second-Hand Heart… It’s moving and intense, asks really difficult questions, and has moments of real beauty - just like the book!
So excited to watch Zoella’s latest video, announcing this autumn’s awesome Book Club Picks…and featuring Meredith Russo’s IF I WAS YOUR GIRL.
Really looking forward to hearing what you all think of this gorgeous and important book, and to reading all the other wonderful picks.
The full list in all its wintry wondrousness is as follows:
If I Was Your Girl - Meredith Russo
Frozen Charlotte - Alex Bell
I Was Here - Gayle Forman
A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily - David Levithan & Rachel Cohn
Lying About Last Summer - Sue Wallman
Finding Audrey - Sophie Kinsella
The One We Fell in Love With - Paige Toon
Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl Playlist: #6 “The Book of Love” by The Magnetic Fields
I listened to this
band a lot while I was writing If I Was Your Girl, but a lot of
my favourite songs don’t actually fit very well with the book’s themes.
“Andrew In Drag” is kind of hilarious, given the context, but I don’t want cis readers to think it’s appropriate to make jokes approximating being trans with drag, so that one’s out too. So “The Book of Love” isn’t my favourite song by a country mile, but it’s a sweet, tender love song about a narrator who, while not being very impressed with the trappings of love, still yearns for his lover. What love song could be more fitting for Amanda, who still yearns for love despite her well-earned fear and anxiety surrounding it?
Probably a lot of them,
actually, but I like this one so that’s what we’re going with.
YA guest author, Alex Wheatle’s personal soundtrack for his stunning book, Crongton Knights - longlisted for the Guardian Children’s Book Prize.
Old school excellence.
Check out yesterday’s Shelfie Seven interview with him here.
The Zoella Book Club is back, and chock-a-block with some brilliant YA reads! We love the sound of Emery Lord’s The Start of Me and You, recommended by the fabulous Amy Alward.
The YA Shelfies were also over-the-moon to spot Maggie Harcourt’s Unconventional lurking on Amy’s shelves, and to hear her lovely shout-out! As Amy herself says: “Basically, if you love contemporary YA novels…like Maggie Harcourt’s Unconventional… then you’re going to love this book.” We love Unconventional, so I think that’s our weekend sorted with The Start of Me and You!
If you fancy reading the first chapter of Unconventional (a gorgeous YA romance set over a year of conventions) then head here to dive in.
“What makes book fandom special is the unique space it occupies between
secret and shared: we experience the worlds of Harry Potter or The
Mortal Instruments both privately through reading, and publicly when we
share our thoughts, our interpretations and feelings, with other
readers, fans and friends. It is this overlap that makes them so
appealing; so magical. It’s personal and it’s tribal, all at once. It’s
uniquely yours… and yet owned by everyone.”
“Proof” that Meredith Russo is AH-MAZING! (get it?)
Check out these yummy pictures from the mail-out we did for the strictly limited-edition book proof of Meredith Russo’s IF I WAS YOUR GIRL. Doesn’t it look lush?
Sadly, not everybody who hollered for one of these proofs was able to get one as they were in such high demand…which means people will have missed out on the GORGEOUS letter Meredith wrote especially for it.
So because we’re soooo lovely at Usborne, here it is… and trust me, it will make your heart swell.
Hi, I’m Meredith Russo, and I’m a real, actual trans woman. I’m not just that, of course; I’m a lifelong resident of Chattanooga, Tennessee, a gigantic nerd, a social justice warrior, and a mother of two. I’m an Aries, my favorite colour is red, my favourite food is sushi, and my favourite movie is The Thing.
But I am trans, and considering how few trans writers get a chance to publish novels about trans characters, it might be worth dwelling on that. I’ve had a lot of people ask if and to what extent my experience as a trans woman inspired If I Was Your Girl, and that’s a hard question to answer for a few reasons. On the one hand, yes, having dealt with mental illness, gender dysphoria, coming out, hormone replacement therapy, transitioning, and passing anxiety, how could these parts of my experience not come through in a story about a trans girl?
On the other hand, my path to womanhood has been vastly different from Amanda’s. I didn’t know from a young age, I wasn’t willing to admit it to myself until I was twenty-one, and put off transitioning until I was twenty-six. I’m not tall and thin and, though I’ve reached a point where I feel comfortable inside my body, I don’t always have the easiest time passing. And, finally, I never had someone like Virginia to take my hand and induct me into womanhood.
Which brings me to my main point, and something I definitely share with Amanda: I desperately needed mentors and role models when I was young, and I had none. Had little Meredith not seen joke after joke on television writing off boys who want to be girls as freaks, had she seen girls like her living out in the world as adults, happy and successful, had she had access to books about people like her by people like her, my life might have been radically different. I didn’t write If I Was Your Girl to be realistic, because it’s not, and I didn’t write it to educate cis readers, though I’m ecstatic if my work has opened your eyes; I wrote it because it’s the story I needed when I was fourteen, confused, and hungry for someone to tell me things were going to be okay.
I wrote If I Was Your Girl because I want young people to know that, though it might be hard and complicated, a trans life can be filled to bursting with success, friendship, and love.
SHELFIE SEVEN: Mel Darbon, it’s time to express yourshelf!
Mel Darbon is the author of the stunningly beautiful debut YA novel Rosie Loves Jack, a love story from a unique perspective that will make you look at the world in a different way. We put her on the spot with our Shelfie Seven questions!
1. Which book first hooked you into reading?
I was hooked into reading at a very young age and loved the
story of Chicken Little, a folk tale about a chicken that believes the world is
coming to an end. But I think the book
that sticks with me more than any other is The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis. When I first read it I was transported to a magical
world that I wanted to be part of. It showed me what stories could do and how
they could take you out of your own life into a completely different
one.
2. Where is your favourite place to read?
I have an antique leather armchair with a velvet seat by the
side of our old stone fireplace. Behind it is a vintage theatre light to see
by. In the winter I have a log fire burning and curl up in my chair to
read.
3. You’re about to embark on a mission to Mars but can only
take one book; what do you pack?
I think it would have to be The Inheritors by
William Golding, my all time favourite book. I was always fascinated by the
Neanderthals and this book is such a beautifully realized tale of their last
days. I still cry at the ending and every time I read it I find something new
to wonder at.
4. If Rosie Loves Jack was going to be made into a film,
who’s your dream director? Who gets to be Rosie and Jack?
My director would have to be Ken Loach because he is, in my
opinion, the best there is for producing powerful, thought-provoking films
about ordinary people and their dilemmas.
I would love an actress called Sarah Gordy to play
Rosie, as she is a great actress who would fit the part perfectly - and even
has the same colour hair as my character! Sarah was recently honoured with an
MBE for her services to the arts and people with disabilities.
I would like Jack to be played by an undiscovered actor with learning disabilities, so would set out to find one by opening up auditions all over the country.
5. You’re booking a holiday to a literary location, real or
fantastical. Where do you go?
I’d like to go back about three hundred thousand years ago
to William Golding’s world of The Inheritors and see a place untouched
by by the modern world and observe Neanderthal man and all the creatures that
existed during that period. Well, as long as I didn’t end up as dinner!
6.You’re going away on a writer’s retreat and the cottage
sleeps four - who’s coming with you?
Oh goodness - how to choose? I think I’d take Ken Kesey who wrote One
Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest to hear about his research on the human mind in all its complexities, so that I could
refer to it for one of my books. I’d like to take Brian Conaghan, author of When
Mr Dog Bites and The Bombs That Brought us Together, because he could give
me help writing dark and difficult topics with humour and humanity, but
would also keep us all entertained with his wonderful repartee. I’d like
to invite Emily Bronte to discuss Wuthering Heights, so
that hopefully I would be able to write a love story one day with such passion
and intensity. And finally I’d have to invite William Golding, author of The Inheritors. Mind you, I might have
to change my mind about him because I probably wouldn’t get any of my own
writing done as I’d be too busy listening to him!
7. You can travel back in time and give sixteen-year-old-you
a book you’ve read recently; what do you choose?
It would have to be a Holly Bourne - Am I Normal Yet? We
didn’t have books like this when I was a teenager and I think it would have
been fantastic to have stories that are a real comfort during the difficult
time of adolescence that deal with tough issues such as mental health,
friendship and feminism - and are as funny as they are heart-rending.
