Attention YA Authors!

Justine Larbalestier posted an excerpt of my last post on her blog. Not only did it increase traffic on our blog when my whole post was about how we don't actually have lots of traffic (and I like it like that), but she used it to discuss how honest one can/should be with opinions about books knowing that authors might read them.

So this post is to any author who might read something less than flattering that I've written about their work. Feel free to console yourself with these two facts about me: (a) I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, and (b) I read romance novels too. If you look back at the books I've read and liked, you'll easily see this reflected in my preferences.

Also, you should know that what books I personally enjoy reading (or not) usually has little to do with what books I promote and recommend to teens. For one thing, I'm an adult. But more than that, I think that books should be recommended based upon what that person is likely to enjoy. For example, I recommend Darren Shan books all the time, like maybe every week. I frequently have young teens who want suspense and/or horror or who say they like scary books. I never read these books because that's just not my genre. On the other hand, I LOVED Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (told you I like romance). But I've never recommended it to anyone except Holly. It contains more "mature" themes and just is not something that has come up as something relevant to the reading tastes of the patrons I interact with.

Of course, I know that this post is like a tree falling in a deserted wood. Any YA authors who find something posted about themselves are not going to go back and read this post; they'll only read the post that mentions them. But here it is for Holly and Cody anyway.