Merry Wanderer of the Night [Search results for bookstores] 

I am so excited to have a guest post today with Sarah Ockler! She has a really fun post today, in the spirit of love for all genres, which I totally adored and even though Contemporary is my favorite, I do read and love many other genres and I love this post talking about the common threads between all genres.

Contemporary Realism vs. Paranormal & Fantasy: Smackdown or Lovefest?

----------------------
As an author of contemporary realistic teen fiction, I'm often asked about the imbalance in the bookstores between contemporary titles and paranormals — yes, those sparkly black covers of awesome. Some have asked me why I write contemporary instead of chasing the fantasy "trend." Others want me to convince them to read one over the other, or defend my own favorites, or talk about why contemporary is so much better.

Some of this is in jest, of course. All in good fun. But sometimes it does feel like there's a bit of rivalry going on, doesn't it?

I'm not sure why. To me, fantasy isn't a "trend" anymore than realism *isn't*, and the only thing that's "so much better" is that teens and adults are reading tons of YA — way more than we used to. A big part of that is availability and choice. Even as recently as ten years ago, bookstores might've only had one YA shelf, or the teen fiction might've been mixed in with the younger children's stuff. Now, it's so popular that it usually has it's own section, and that section includes rows of ever-expanding shelves — plenty of room for magic *and* reality.

My favorite local indie, the Tattered Cover, just expanded its YA section, and they host young adult and middle grade authors almost every month — contemporary, fantasy, scifi, dystopian, romance, mystery — we're all represented, and we're all awesome.: -) Walking down those long shelves stuffed with sparkly black covers, pink ones, white ones, scenic ones, close up kissing ones, monster ones… it just makes me insanely happy to have so many choices for my ever-growing TBR list.

So what about the original question? Smackdown or lovefest?

I say lovefest. I love contemporary realism. I love fantasy, paranormal, and scifi. I love it all. Because in young adult fiction, contemporary realism and paranormal / fantasy are just two sides of the same coin. The difference is in the execution. Maybe your boyfriend broke up with you because the scent of your blood makes him want to tear you apart with his pointy little fangs. Or maybe he just likes another girl. Maybe your parents are getting divorced because Mom discovered that dad is a dark elf plotting to take over the world. Or maybe he just leaves the toilet seat up. These are silly examples, but the point is, the underlying emotional strife is the same. Both types of story explore complex emotions and issues like changing friendships, death, sexuality, sex, heartbreak, addiction, family problems, physical challenges, violence, and economic hardship, to name a few. Both feature multi-layered characters forced by difficult — sometimes life-threatening — external situations to dig deep to uncover their own hidden strengths. Both have the twists and turns and surprises that often come when teens experience new situations for the first time. And let's not overlook the best part — all the kissing. Sexy vampires, beautiful witches, six-pack-ab-rockin' shapeshifters, and plain old regular humans… there's plenty of romance to swoon over in most young adult fiction. Team Kissing, are you with me? Yes!

So whether you're typically into contemporary realism or paranormal, whether you like your boys human or bloodsucking, whether you go gaga for girls with wings or wands or just plain old pom poms, whether you're reading about transgender issues or trans-species ones, whether you like escaping to the beaches of California or the halls of Hogwarts, I encourage you to read a bit more of… well… everything. This is a lovefest, after all. Let's show some love!

Need a few recommendations? Check out the newly posted Best Teen Books of 2011 over at Kirkus. Editor Vicky Smith says, "With shelves fairly groaning under the weight of paranormal love triangles, it may be easy to think that books for teens are all the same these days. Not so, we are delighted to report. In sifting through the piles of great books published for teens this year, I was happy to discover soulful romance of the utterly normal kind, deliciously frothy historical novels, piercingly intelligent nonfiction, thrillingly inventive fantasy and science fiction and some great kickass horror, as well as some books that may leave you weeping with laughter."

Some of my faves from the list are Misfit, Winter Town, Virtuosity, Anna Dressed in Blood, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and many more are on my TBR list. There's something for everyone over there. Happy reading!
~ Sarah Ockler

Author of Twenty Boy Summer, Fixing Delilah, and the upcoming Bittersweet (which features the special magic of cupcakes and hockey boys… mmmmm...)

Thank you again Sarah, so very much! I love it!:)

And for all my awesome readers, Sarah has been generous enough to donate a signed paperback of Fixing Delilah to one luck winner! This is a phenomenal book, absolutely amazing, and I'm already excited for whoever wins this one!

Enter Below. Like all Just Contemporary Giveaways, it will end Dec 10th. This is also only open to US/CN.

Last weekend I was so busy with the Iowa City Book Festival I didn't get the chance to post a Sunday Salon. This weekend has been equally busy but I've managed to find a little more time. I've been in Madison, Wisconsin with my boyfriend this weekend. It's a cool city and I'm thinking about going to library school here in a couple of years so I wanted to check out the area to see if I might like living here. I think it's safe to say that I would really enjoy living in Madison. My boyfriend and I are all about biking, walking, canoeing, and "green" living I suppose you would say. It seems like Madison does really cater towards that. Plus it's only five hours away from my hometown and three hours away from where I go to school now.

The main street downtown is State Street. Yesterday we went to some places my old roommate (who is from Wisconsin) suggested like Dobra Tea and Maharani Indian Restaurant. The Indian food was superb and I have to agree with her now. The Indian food in Iowa City just does not measure up. Of course no vacation would be complete with a stop at a bookstore. There were four bookstores I saw on State Street but we only went to two and I think the first one was the best.

Bookworks and Avol's Bookstore are actually two bookstores I guess, connected by an open door. I really only checked out the Avol's said because by the time I was done in there I had already found plenty. I got Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris because I just finished Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby and he really enjoyed it, although judging by the writing the person who originally owned this book did he didn't have as high of an opinion. I also got Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and a children's book called Mathilda and the Orange Balloon by Randall de Seve and illustrated by Jen Corace. It's very cute.

To finish off the day we went to watch the sunset over the lake. It was so pretty and relaxing. I don't remember the last time I sat to watch a sunset.

So the Got Books Event is over now, but contest is still open until midnight tonight. If you haven't checked out my giveaway yet please do so. I'm giving away two books, one to each winner. The first book is Notes From No Man's Land by Eula Biss and the second is The Moon, Come to Earth by Philip Graham. If you're interested in winning either book please enter!

To be a lover of nonfiction is a dangerous and confusing thing. I have become aware of a major difference in the way readers who primarily love nonfiction shop over the way readers who primarily love fiction shop. When you go to the bookstore and you look for a fiction book, there is generally one place you're searching. Maybe two if you like YA or three if you like romance or western. If you love nonfiction there are an unlimited number of places you might find your books. This can be dangerous and frustrating.

For example, after a recent trip to Half-Price Books I purchased seven books and they were each in a completely different section.

• The first place I always look is in Essays and Memoirs, which is generally only one or two shelves of a bookcase (in a normal store there might be one whole bookcase). In this section I found Coop, which is a memoir, I suppose, of Michael Perry's life as a farmer and parent.
• I moved to the Sports section where I found The Lost Art of Walking, a history and discussion of walking.
• Nearby was travel, where in the further category of Iowa travel I found Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America

  

  , a profile of a town in Iowa.

• I went to graphic novels and found the graphic memoir Blankets

  

  .

• I caught up with Jason in the Science section where I found The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat

  

  on the one shelf of sustainable agriculture books.

• From sustainable agriculture I moved towards nature writing where I picked up The Control of Nature

  

  , a book of essays by John McPhee.

• I ended by trip in the close-by section of Green Living, which had a really neat copy of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

Seven books. Seven sections.

Can you see why loving nonfiction is a dangerous and frustrating process? Dangerous because, as you've just seen, it's very easy to hop around the whole store and find something you're interested in in every section. It's too easy, especially in a store like Half-Price Books, which organizes its categories down into smaller categories.

It's frustrating, however, because if you are looking for a specific book there can be at least three places it will be located. Is it in essays and memoirs? Is it in environmentalism? Is it in cookbooks? I've found Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in every place. Even from the books I purchased you can probably see some overlap. The Compassionate Carnivore, The Control of Nature, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and Coop could have easily been found in the same section, but for some reason Half-Price Books distinguishes them. The distinguishing factor might be something as arbitrary as what type of writer wrote the book. Was it a journalist? A farmer? A scientist?

Part of this is just that the majority of the books in a bookstore are nonfiction, and bookstores do distinguish all the nonfiction by subject because that is how most people look for it. But when you're a general lover of all types of nonfiction it gets frustrating when there isn't just a single section titled Essays that contains all the books of essays. Since nonfiction is a constantly evolving genre (I'm not saying fiction is not, I'm saying literary fiction has a more established, concrete history) it's difficult for a lot of readers to make the distinction between literary nonfiction and what I would consider "How to" nonfiction. How to travel in Mexico. How to become a Buddhist. How to farm sustainably. Versus. My travels in Mexico. My experience as a Buddhist. My experience as a sustainable farmer.

Do you read nonfiction? Do you find yourself running around the store looking for a book? If you are a fiction reader, how many sections do you generally look in?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Over the summer I purchased a Nook and promised I would write a review about it, but it's taken me until now to really figure out what I like and don't like about it. I'll just start this off by telling you all that I don't regret buying my Nook at all. I think most people know about the main features of the Nook. Mine isn't the touch screen, it's the original digital ink version. I really like the digital ink except for when you turn the page the screen turns black while the letters rearrange themselves. It's a minor thing, but I do find it annoying after long periods of time. Instead of talking about the features of the Nook, which you can find out for yourself on Barnes and Noble's website, I'm going to talk about how I use my Nook and why I'm glad I have an ereader.

I bought my Nook to read books I wouldn't necessarily want print copies of-- and since I'm pretty cheap when it comes to ebooks that is mostly what I've used it for. I refuse to pay price of a physical book for an ebook. I would rather have the actual book in my hands than have a digital version of it. Maybe I'll change my mind over time, but for now that is how I feel about it. Since I mostly buy copies of books I wouldn't necessarily want a physical version of my Nook has a lot of YA books, romance novels, and galleys. One of the ways I use my Nook is to read while I'm working out. I set it on the elliptical machine and all I have to do is push a button when I want to turn the page. It doesn't interfere with my exercise at all, and it's just one extra way I can zone out. Right now I'm reading Ninth Key (The Mediator, Book 2)

, which is a bit of a mystery, and I find myself wanting to work-out longer to read what happens next. By reading a book while exercising I can finish an extra book every couple weeks.

Reading in the car has always made me carsick, but for some reason reading on my Nook does not. I think it's because it's easier for me to control the movement of the book in my hands, whereas when I read a physical copy my arms jump around so much it's hard for me to focus on the words in the book. Reading in the car is the first thing that got me really excited about having a Nook because I've always wanted to be able to do it.

My favorite Nook story is from last semester. I decided I wanted to write a paper about The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee

and I needed the book in a few days. None of my local bookstores had it so my only option was to order the book online, which would take at least a few days to get at my house and put my paper writing off. I decided to buy the ebook version of it and had it in just a few minutes. I was able to finish the book in two days and got my paper finished on the day it would have arrived had I ordered it. If you need a book quickly, an ereader is a really convenient, fast way to get it.

I thought I would use my Nook a lot more than I have, but the truth is that I'm still extremely attached to physical books. I'll take a physical book over an ebook any day, but like I said earlier, there are books where having the ebook makes more sense for me. I do think I am able to read more books because of the ereader because I can read in places I wouldn't have read in before (like the gym) and I'm able to read books I wouldn't have otherwise read in public (like romance novels in my parents' house). An ereader is not an either or decision, you can have physical books and ebooks, and you can pick and choose how you want to read certain books. I personally like the Nook a lot, but it's really my only ereader experience so I can't compare it to other ereaders very well.

Do you have an ereader? Which one do you have? What do you like about it?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Lots of questions on this week's post -- feel free to answer any or all!

Do you have a book wish list for the holidays? (Or is that one of those 'duh' questions?) If so, what's on it?

Are you very specific when someone asks what you want for a gift? Or do you throw caution to the wind and say, "Oh any book you choose..." Or do you prefer a bookstore gift card?

Do you buy books for people on your gift list? Do you choose books for them that you like and try to influence their reading (or hope they'll loan it to you when they're done)? Or do you get specific titles from your giftee?

Where do you buy your book gifts? Do you shop at local independent bookstores, or the "big box" stores? or do you shop online?

Once you've posted to your blog, come back and sign Mr. Linky (with a link to the post, not your blog home page). Be sure to visit other Geeksters to see what's on their lists!

Maybe something else good came out of Sleeping Naked is Green, or maybe this is something I've been thinking about for awhile and the book just got me thinking about actually doing something about it. I read. A lot. And I buy a lot of books, which means my paper use is astronomical. I mean really, I look around my house and I see it everywhere. So how do I reconcile the fact that I use all of this paper but still consider myself a green activist?

One way to think about it is that everyone has their vice. Some people have gas guzzlers, some people buy a lot of coffee at Starbucks and use the paper cups instead of bringing their own, and some people buy a lot of imported foods. I just happen to be a reader, and if it wasn't this it would be something else. But that doesn't mean there aren't things I can do to make my vice, say, my hobby, a little nicer on the environment. I have some ideas on how I can do this, and maybe you have some ideas too (I'd love to hear them!).

Here are few things I'm asking myself to do.
1. Simply buy less books. Only buy books you know you will read, no matter how discounted they are, what deal is going on, or how popular a book is. Do your research before you buy, and keep a list of books you hear about. If you continually return to that book as something you want to read then go for it.
2. Buy books used whenever possible, and if the book is unavailable in a local used bookstore but you still want to buy it, order it from a company that has green shipping like Better World Books. Used books are just fantastic. They're usually cheaper, they're better for the environment because it's recycling, and used bookstores are just fun to browse. I've also found that almost anything that is a year old or more can be found on Better World Books, which is a great organization. They have eco-friendly shipping and they help fund global literacy!
3. Use that library card. For books I want to read once, or I'm not sure I want to buy, I need to start using the library. There are so many books I have that I shouldn't have bought. I just read them once, I'm never going to look at them again, I just wanted to read the story and now I'm done. Why did I not use the library?
4. Sell, give away, or donate books that I am no longer using. I might try to give away some of my books on here, and then whatever is left I'll try to sell and donate the remainders. I'm just sick of some of these books taking up space in my house, and even if I don't get anything out of them (monetarily) I would still love to have that extra space and now I'm not wasting the book.
5. Walk or bike to the bookstore and library. If I'm able to obtain the book in Iowa City than it's best to get there without a car. If I do go to the bookstore in the car, then I need to put it with my other car errands/work.

What are some of your ideas for greening your reading?

On a whim I went to one of my favorite used bookstores with a few friends today and found two books that I think will make my Victorian-Lit obsessed self very happy.

The first is Selected Letters by Jane Austen. I used to hate Jane Austen, even the Pride and Prejudice movie with Kiera Knightley (oh the horror!), but after reading Sense and Sensibility for class I'm starting to come around to her. Even though the basis of this blog is reading NOT for class and for enjoyment, it is really amazing how differently you see a book when you read it in a group.

The second is Disorderly Conduct by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, subtitle: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. I just about peed my pants when I saw this book because you can't believe how incredibly difficult it is to find books about the Victorian period in America. I also see that the book goes for over thirty dollars on Amazon and I got it for under five, so that alone makes it worthwhile.

You can look forward to reviews of these books in the coming weeks!