Summer Reading: Rick Yancey Interview

It’s summer, which means I get to catch up on all the books I wind up having to sideline during the school year. First up in the pile is The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey.

Book one in the series, The 5th Wave, is one of the great YA titles of all time. An alien invasion brutally wipes out the majority of humanity. It’s a harsh novel and it’s beyond bleak, but that’s what makes it shine.

Publishers Weekly sat down with Rick Yancey to talk about the sequel when it was on the horizon. There are some spoilers in there, so read at your own risk.

I love this gem at the beginning of the interview:

“The first book also had multiple viewpoints. Some readers loved it, some readers were not so keen on it but, ultimately, I felt it was the best choice of how to tell the story because having multiple points of view dovetailed into the whole unnerving nature of the story itself. The characters don’t know who to trust – ‘Are you really who you say you are?’ – and changing the narrators adds to the unease.”

My 5 Favorite Lines from Looking for Alaska by John Green

This is tough to do, but after combing through my copy of Looking for Alaska, here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.
2. In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla, and on that thin-mooned night I could see little more than her silhouette…
3. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating.
4. For a moment, it was so quiet that you could hear the sound of not-breathing, the vacuum created by 190 students shocked out of air.
5. “At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze…”

Go here and here for more amazing quotes from YA novels!

VIDEO: Interview With Marissa Meyer

This is an excellent sit-down talk with Marissa Meyer, author of the Lunar Chronicles.

They talk about fairy tales, fan fiction, and Sailor Moon.

Brandon Sanderson’s CALAMITY is almost ready to go!

While I was catching up on what’s new with my favorite YA authors this weekend, I found that Brandon Sanderson has the final novel in his RECKONERS series almost in its final form.

The first book in the trilogy, STEELHEART, is hands-down one of the best YA titles in recent memory. Corrupt super-heroes, an underground resistance, and a breakneck pace. The follow-up, FIREFIGHT, was another excellent one.

Sanderson is an unbelievable writer, both in terms of quantity AND quality. His stated goal is to publish at least 2 novels a year.

I love how this blog lets you know just how much time he devotes to writing. He’s stacking story upon story, edit upon edit, and the pace is unbelievable.

Read the whole thing here.

The Staying Power of John Green’s Novels

A quick glance at this week’s New York Times list of best-selling YA titles will make one thing very, very clear: John Green’s books have been on there for a long, long time.

At number one is Paper Towns, which has remained on the list for an absolutely amazing 116 weeks! (And, being honest here, it’s one of his that I haven’t read, but I do have a handful of students currently carrying it around).

But even more awesome is the fact that both The Fault in Our Stars AND Looking for Alaska have charted for 130 consecutive weeks. I know a lot of people felt that after the movie had come out, the sales would decline, but here we are over a year later and it is STILL on the list.