Links of Note

I won't lie: there's a lot of links this week. A little bit of everything. And if anyone's curious, I haven't forgotten about Audiosynced this month; it'll be up and live tomorrow.

• I don't think this is a new story and I feel like I've linked some iteration of it before, but in the event you missed it, a good book can change you. I still don't know if there are any books I can point to and say that it changed me. Impacted me, sure, but changed me? I don't know. I still wonder about the quantity of books vs. the ability to cause change. 

• Let's compare book covers with the movie posters of the book's film adaptation, shall we? Some do it better than others, that's for sure. I wish they'd had all of the covers of the books to compare since that'd be interesting to compare, too. 

• I couldn't get through this because of how much the pop ups and slow loading required of my patience (there's an intro to a link, right?) but here's a quiz about whether or not you're as well read as the average 10th grader. Judging by the first book, I'm far from as well read as possible.

• Have I ever talked about how much I love Franz Kafka and The Metamorphosis and how I devoted probably half of the papers I wrote in college to that story? Or that I made art from it? Or wrote haiku about it? Anyway, I love it because it is so bizarre. As enjoyable as the story itself is this fun pie chart about The Metamorphosis.

• Matthew Jackson, who we've had guest post here a few times, has a great piece on Blastr that features seven classic Marvel comics before they were made perfect by editors. 

• YA author Erin Bowman tackles the age old question (in infographic form): is a dystopia or not? We liked this chart because it sort of fit in nicely with Kimberly's post about whether a book is a dystopia or straight up science fiction.

•  Over at McSweeney's Comic Sans makes its case for being a font worth knowing.   

• This is by no means a new post, but it popped up on Twitter last week and I thought it was neat enough to share again: 23 band names inspired by literature. I didn't know a lot of these. 

• Amy Reed raises a really interesting question over at the Writers Read blog: is there such thing as literary YA fiction? I absolutely agree with her assessment of Adam Rapp's The Children and the Wolves falling into that category if there is such a category (and I think that there is). I believe this year, more so than many years in recent memory, has had a lack of real literary YA titles being published. The field's been a lot more about commercial fiction. Can you think of any other literary YA from this year? Or favorite literary authors? This seems like a rich topic. 

• I know I shouldn't be skeptical about this, but I am because I feel like this same "agreement" was made when I was a teenager. A teen girl petitioned Seventeen magazine to stop digitally editing their images. She won and the magazine agreed. I think it's awesome she did that and fantastic Seventeen agreed. I hope they hold up their end of the bargain now! 

• Kat Rosenfield talks about nine books that feature dead protagonists. I've read all but one of these.      

• Funny Tumblr alert: You Chose Wrong. The endings where you didn't get to continue the adventure. Either you will get this or you won't. But it is amusing. 

• The Wisconsin Library Association Children's Book Award Committee picked their winning title for this year, as well as their honor titles. I'm sharing because I've read the winner (go me) and because I am so happy to see more love for Geoff Herbach's Stupid Fast. Also, because I'm still paranoid that Ashes is going to happen any time soon, thanks to Ilsa Bick. Also, blue covers are the Wisconsin thing.

• Check out the segue into the next link then, which is an interesting post written by Bick about whether or not YA books are more "powerful" than other books. I think she raises a really interesting and valid point. I don't just say that since she was kind enough to link back to one of my posts, but because I do think there is a tendency to over-inflate the power of YA books. They're powerful to those who read them in the same way that adult books are powerful to those who are passionate about adult lit. In other words, no type of book is more "powerful" than another; all books are powerful in the hands of the right reader by their own merit. 

• Another HuffPo post to share, and this time, they're looking at 16 characters and their Myers-Briggs personality type. For a long, long time, I always registered as an INTJ, but over the last couple of years, I've become a much harder INFJ. This is particularly amusing when you note what the book is for INTJ. If you know your MB or you take the test, do you agree or disagree with the characteristics? I do. But I think that your MB can change over time says as much about the fluidity of personality as whatever the description of your type is, too. Not related to books, though, is this great blog post about what it means to be an INFJ, if anyone else is and ever has that feeling they're alone. You're not.

• Books that Goodreads readers believe should be best sellers (even though they aren't -- at least not yet). Some good picks, I think. But don't people want their favorite books to always be best sellers? I know I do. 

• The Chicago Tribune on book trailers. I'll leave that at that. I know the three of us here have a lot of thoughts on book trailers and what does and does not work. There's been a post in the making for months. 

• So, Tracey Neithercott is one of my critique partners, and I harbor such a love for her blog and the way she talks about writing and reading. This week she posted a roundup of some of her most popular/unpopular posts, and they are worth reading if you are at all interested in writing or thinking about writing. She was one of the forces behind those awesome "Go away, I'm reading" book covers you may have seen -- and don't worry. The link to those is in this collection. 

Via last week's Postsecret.

• Ever wondered about licensed tie-ins to tv and movies and what that sort of work involves in the publishing side? I liked this look into that side of the business over at Pub Crawl.

• Did you know that Wednesday was red head appreciation day? I'm a red head! It always makes people comment (and yeah, it's naturally red, even though I like to play with different shades of red via a box once in a while). Anyway, here's a story on famous red head characters in kid lit. You know, I always hated Mallory Pike. But I guess that was because when I was reading BSC books, I was blonde (little known fact: I was born blonde and was blonde until high school where suddenly my hair turned red -- how does that happen?). 

• And to end this biweekly roundup of interesting reads around the internet that don't involve that three-letter-word-I-can't-stand, Sarah Andersen has a fantastic post asking what about the teen readers?  

• Actually, one more thing. The Robbins, Illinois library recently had their AC unit dismantled and stolen. Robbins is an incredibly poor and tough community to live in. This loss is huge and devastating to them and to those who use their library. I grew up only 15 minutes from Robbins, and it's one of those towns where you just know things aren't easy, where places like the library are truly places of refuge, especially for kids. If you can, please consider making a small donation to the fundraiser to replace their AC. I do truly believe this kind of thing can make the difference in someone's life -- there's a reason it was stolen in the first place.  

I'm sorry but this week, I don't have a new Lana Del Rey video to show you. Perhaps you could go revisit the last one?