By Diana Tixier Herald

I’m in Atlanta at DragonCon, a huge convention that focuses on science fiction and fantasy in all its different formats. In addition to the 30,000 plus attendees, stars of page and screen are abundantly present. Costuming is a major attraction, with people dressed in a variety of costumes from intricate renaissance gowns, to sexy almost not there whisps of sheer fabric, to big, heavy, furry full coverage costumes. For some of the programs featuring movie and TV stars, participants stand in line for hours to be admitted to the rooms.

Fortunately, even though the book events are well attended, everyone who wants to attend usually can get into the room. However, a panel on “steampunk” books had people lined up for yards and yards to get in. I suspect that many of the people in the line attired in neo-Victorian attire probably were there because they saw the “steampunk” and missed the “book” part.

There are several different book related tracks. I’m here to appear on panels in the Young Adult track, along with people like Tamora Pierce, award winning fantasy author, Bonnie Kunzel, co-author of Fluent in Fantasy: The Next Generation, Susan Fichtelberg, author of Encountering Enchantment, and Heidi Anne Heiner of SurLaLune Fairy Tales. Other tracks that feature book related content include the SF Literature track, the Dark Fantasy track, and a few tracks that focus on specific authors and series such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time track and Anne McCaffrey’s Weyrfest track. Fun!

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By Diana Tixier Herald

Being an obsessive reader, I concentrated on attending the panels at Denvention 3 (The World Science Fiction Convention) that talked about books, even though there were lots of SF related panels and activities dealing with movies, games, costumes, and futurism.

There were certain books that were mentioned time and time again in different panels I attended, which makes me think that we as reader’s advisors should know about them. One of the interesting things is that several of the panelists who have no real connection to young adult literature were recommending books published for teens which are obviously being read by adults.

The most mentioned titles in the panels I attended include:

Little Brother a teen novel by Cory Doctorow that I personally think may well be the most important novel of the year. I expect it to appear on required reading lists in the not too distant future.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, published as teen in the U.S. and adult in her native Australia.

“Pump Six“ in Pump Six and Other Stories a collection of short stories by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson that is reputedly space opera, but being Stephenson, the real action doesn’t start until about page 600.

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin one of the greats in the world of speculative fiction.

Are you planning to attend a book-related conference? Would you like to blog about it for us? Just send an email to rablog@lu.com.

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By Diana Tixier Herald

The first panel I attended at the 2008 World Science Fiction Convention, featured Charles N. Brown, the editor of Locus, David Hartwell, editor of the New York Review of Science Fiction, Jonathan Strahan, Hugo nominated anthologist, and Gary K. Wolfe, noted reviewer, sharing their recommendations on what to read.

Short fiction seems to be having a great year. One of the panelists mentioned that there were probably about 10,000 short stories published this year. David Hartwell (winner of the Hugo award for editor) talked about how this decade has been good for collections and he and other panelists talked about the great stories that have been appearing in magazines, particularly The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. There have been 68 original speculative fiction anthologies published this year which says a lot for the health of the genre. Three of the anthologies I put stars next to while the panel was talking are Magic in the Mirrorstone edited by Steve Berman which I had already read and enjoyed, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow, and Galactic Empires edited by Gardner Dozois. The most talked about collection is Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi which Gary K. Wolfe described as “Pure, bracing gloom.�

I was frantically taking notes and missed some things but the books I’m going to be looking for include:

The January Dancer by Michael Flynn
House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia
An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe
Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (In my personal opinion the most important book of the year and destined to be a classic)
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Flora’s Dare by Ysabeau S. Wilce

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By Diana Tixier Herald

The World Science Fiction Convention is currently under way in Denver, Colorado. With hundreds of panels on the schedule it has been hard to decide what to attend. I’ll be writing up some of the wonderful sessions soon, but just had to talk about the excitement of the parties first!

Last night I attended two wonderful parties, which are heady experiences for a fan girl. At the Pyr party (Pyr is a relatively new publisher of science fiction and fantasy, being in their third year) I was able to visit with John Moore, one of my favorite authors. His hysterically humorous fantasy novels include A Fate Worse Than Dragons, The Unhandsome Prince, and Bad Prince Charlie. I also met Brenda Cooper who wrote The Silver Ship and the Sea, a wonderful tale of a planet colonized by people who wanted to keep the human race unadulterated but ended up with six genetically modified teens. The sequel to it, Reading the Wind is just out.

Brenda was hanging out with Hugo nominee Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who won a Sideways Award for her short story “Recovering Apollo 8.″ I’ve been enjoying listening to her Retrieval Artist series as audio downloads. Then it was on to the Tor party, where I got a chance to chat with Tom Doherty, publisher of Tor and Forge, Kathleen Doherty, publisher of Tor Teen and Tor Starcape, Larry Niven, one of the science fiction greats and author of the classic Ringworld, L. E. Modesitt, accomplished author of both sf and fantasy, and a couple of new authors that look incredibly promising.

More later. Back to the party!

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By Diana Tixier Herald

Reader’s Advisory is a hot topic with librarians serving teens, as evidencee by the dozen who turned up at the YALSA Reader’s Advisory Interest Group meeting on Sunday in Anaheim. It was organized by Cara Kinsey and hopefully will eventually become a full-fledged YALSA committee. It was wonderful to be in a room with so many like minded people as everyone discussed what they would like to see a YALSA RA committee do. And of course, since it was a meeting of reader’s advisors, we all talked about great books.

YALSA already produces some great lists that are of major help to reader’s advisors working with teens and also administers important awards, so this committee would focus on educating librarians and library staff on how to use those lists as well as the wealth of other RA resources to put teens together with books.

One of the great things about talking about reader’s advisory with other reader’s advisors is that the dialog helps one solidify one’s own thoughts on various topics and issues. It gives us a way of looking at ideas and issues from different perspectives.

Ideas that were talked about included continuing the discussion online using a Drupal, the importance and how-to of coming up with read-alikes, the importance of extending advisory services to include television, film, comics, audio, and other media.

We also talked about different aspects of books that may irritate some readers and be a draw for others which really made me start mulling over the differences between advising readers on aspects of a book that they like or dislike and censorship. Some of the things that came up in talking about examples of those aspects included the books with two or more alternating stories jumping from character to character, to novels in verse, touchy subjects, and hot language. It is just as important to know what the reader doesn’t like as well as what they do like. When looking at those aspects it is important to remove value judgments. A person likes or doesn’t like a certain aspect; it is not a reflection on the value of the book.

Bibliotherapy also came up, and with issue driven novels so important in teen literature, reader’s advisors do need to consider if the reader who likes particular issues is really looking for bibliotherapy or just wants a good trashy (used here in the best entertainment-related way) read like Go Ask Alice. That question leads into the ethics of bibliotherapy and what is the reader’s advisor’s role in it, if any.

Unfortunately I’m awful with names and with so many fabulous thoughts and ideas flying around I can’t attribute what was said to anyone in particular, but it was so invigorating to hear these people who are so passionate about providing reader’s advisory to teens talk about it. Someone said “reader’s advisory is about the individual,� so she always uses reader’s rather than readers’ advisory which is a terrific point. Someone talked about how RA is the intersection between service to teens, knowledge of books, and enthusiasm about reading. It is a person-to-person relationship. By having an interaction with readers and listening to them about books we are validating their right to have opinions about what they are reading.

I know there are tons of book lists but I just couldn’t resist adding a list of the books people attending the meeting mentioned. We all told which book was a personal favorite read in the last month or so. Thank goodness I had read a fair number of them because my list of to-be-reads is just getting longer and longer and the folks at the meeting all had good books to talk about.

Inda by Sherwood Smith
Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon and Dean Hale
The Dead & The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Before I Die (on audio) by Jenny Downham
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey
A Curse as Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce
My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger

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