Friday, January 22, 2010

Yay, YALSA!

Thank you, YALSA! Lips Touch has been named to YALSA's Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults of 2009. Yippeeee!! (YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association, the YA branch of the American Library Association) As ever, I [heart] librarians:-)

The complete list is here:

Brennan, Sarah Rees. Demon's Lexicon. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing/Margaret K. McElderry. 2009.
Griffin, Paul. The Orange Houses. Penguin/Dial Books. 2009.
Herlong, M.H. The Great Wide Sea. Penguin/Viking. 2008.
Jinks, Catherine. The Reformed Vampire Support Group. Harcourt/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.
Napoli, Donna Jo. Alligator Bayou. Random House / Knopf. 2009.
Small, David. Stitches: A Memoir. W.W. Norton & Co. 2009.
Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me. Random House / Wendy Lamb Books. 2009.
Stork, Francisco X. Marcelo in the Real World. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books. 2009.
Taylor, Laini. Lips Touch: Three Times. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. 2009.
Walker, Sally M. Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland. Lerner/Carolrhoda Books. 2009.

I've read three of those, besides my own, and haven't heard of some of them, but I am going to request them at the library and hope for some fabulosity. I've been on a bit of a book bummer lately -- you know, when you read a slew of "meh" books in a row and temporarily forget the feeling of pure reading enchantment? I need to read something awesome. Any suggestions?

Oh, and not to neglect my other new book-child, I'm very pleased that School Library Journal gave a *starred review* to the audiobook of Silksinger. Yay! I also received my German edition in the mail recently, so cool to see :-) They used Jim's cover art, so I won't post a pic here (lazy), but it's called SeidenSanger (with an oomlot over the a. I like oomlots. I wish we had them. In fact, I like the word "oomlot". A lot. I kind of want to get a pet just to name it Oomlot. I've always thought "Shwa" would be a good name for a pet too. And on its tag, you could have just an upside down 'e'? Dorky, I know. Anyway, I think it would be fun to start dressing up English with some cute accent marks. I would do it now, here, to make my point, except that I am too lazy to look up the keyboard codes. Lazy, plus I should get back to work.)

Happy weekend! I'll leave you with this very short (9 seconds) and random video of Kiefer Sutherland behaving in an un-Jack Bauer-like way:
Cheers!

13 comments:

Tricia J. O'Brien said...

Wow, huge congratulations! I loved the eerie, spooky, haunting awesomeness of those stories.

"oomlot" what a cool idea for a pet name, but what species should it be?

dawn said...

laini! congrats. the accolades continue to roll in and they are SO deserved.

i considered buying the german translation to brush up on my Deutsche.

the umlaut is a clever bit of punctuation, yes? is "oomlot" a celebratory laini concoction? i'm truly interested; i can hear Herr Buehler, a taciturn (but brilliant) scholar (and my teacher ) of german linguistics grumble. i'm curious to know where the term came from. :)

i hope you, jimbo, and little clementine are smiley.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!

I've read When you Reach Me and Stitches (that one took about 30 minutes, since it's a graphic novel with very few words) and I'm reading Marcelo now.

Laini Taylor said...

Dawn, I prefer my made-up spelling :-) There aren't enough words that begin with "Oo" -- it's just FUN.

And Lisa, I've read those two too -- both excellent. Also, Demon's Lexicon is terrific. Marcelo is at the top of my list.

Melissa said...

Congratulations!

And if you haven't yet read _The Name of the Wind_ by Patrick Rothfuss, do: it's awesomeness squared. And his blog is how I found _Blackbringer_, so he knows awesomeness :)

Laini Taylor said...

Hi Melissa -- thank you :-) I LOVE The Name of the Wind; I'd reread it now, but I want to wait till Wise Man's Fear comes out. Cheers!

Marianne said...

Woohoo! Very well-deserved.

Catherine Denton said...

Librarians are brilliant. Congratulations!!
Winged Writer

Cuppa Jolie said...

Yay is right! Huge congrats to you for the well-deserved recognition.

persnickety_jen said...

Wow, you're in some good company there. I just picked up Written in Bone and I loved Demon's Lexicon!

A fellow editor and I, after spending a long afternoon working on phonics lessons, decided that we should start a punk band called Rogue Schwas... You know you've been working too long when you start writing parodies of Blondie's "Call Me" about grammar. :)

As for other grammar-related pet names, I'd like to own a dog called Ampersand. (But Umlaut runs a close second!)

Sarah Rees Brennan said...

High five!

jaecy bells said...

Logging onto the library site...requesting...yes.

By the way, I recently read Lips Touch and it was AWESOME. Seriously, it was so amazing. I was planning to wait and maybe write a dazzling review, but I just wanted to tell you how awesome it was. My favorite story was the one with Anamique (largely because that's such an AWESOME name.) GREAT JOB!!!

Steph said...

Congratulations! I seem to attract your ladies to me, which I love! I was just gifted another, and she brings me joy.