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Q: I finished school two years ago (with a degree in literature) and was suffering from the worst reading burnout I've ever had in my life. I simply forgot how to read for entertainment. I recently broke up with Netflix and feel that I'm ready to jump back in to reading for me again. I [...]

Two of Love May Fail's main characters, Portia Kane and Chuck Bass — now in their early 40s — still love the metal music that was popular in their youth. Love May Fail isn't about music, but examining what shapes us in our early years. Primarily, I wanted to underscore the difference a single high [...]

The Weinstein Company has snatched up the film rights to the forthcoming young adult title, Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick (pictured, via). Back in 2012, the film studio produced a highly popular adaptation of Quick’s adult book, Silver Linings Playbook.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the story in the new book “follows a goody-two-shoes student-athlete who starts to get in touch with her wild side after reading a cult classic novel.” Little, Brown Books For Young Readers will release Every Exquisite Thing in Spring 2016.

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So read, read Y.A., read adult literature, read blog posts, read magazines, read your box of Cheerios in the morning. Read all you can and want to read, acknowledging the easy and unchallenging and the difficult and complicated, and form your own opinions, trying to add a little room for nuance and understanding and openness in all that you do. That’s the best you can do as a reader, a writer, and a human.

The finalists for the 33rd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prize have been revealed, and we’ve collected free samples of all their books below–some of the best books released in 2012. Here’s more about the awards:

“The winners of the L.A. Times book prizes will be announced at an awards ceremony April 19, the evening before the L.A. Times Festival of Books, April 20-21. Held on USC’s campus in Bovard Auditorium, the awards are open to the public; tickets will be made available in late March.”

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Who will win the Oscars for best adapted screenplay and screenplay? Below, we’ve linked to all the nominees in the top writing categories.

On Monday morning, this GalleyCat editor will talk about the screenplay winners along with a team of Oscar experts in a Google+ hangout. Here’s more about the virtual event:

Join GalleyCat’s Jason Boog, TVNewser’s Alex Weprin, FishbowlLA’s Richard Horgan and GoldDerby editor Tom O’Neil for a post-Oscars Google+ hangout. What book adaptations were snubbed? How did TV news cover it? Learn more about the history of the awards show and get the L.A. perspective.  All this and more on Monday, Feb. 25 at 11:30 a.m.  And we want to hear from you. With the hashtag #mbhangouts, send us your questions and comments on Twitter, Facebook or Google+

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Sorry if I tricked you.

This is not a post about breaking picture-book-writing rules. (Although I will DEFINITELY get on that idea lickety-split!)

This post’s about the book BREAK THESE RULES!

Due from Chicago Review Press in September, yours truly plus 34 kidlit authors YOU’VE ACTUALLY HEARD OF (unlike me), take on typical life rules adults love to preach (like “Grow Up and Be Serious!”) and offer our experience of why it’s probably a BETTER idea to BREAK those rules.

The subtitle says it all: “35 YA Authors on Speaking Up, Standing Out, and Being Yourself”—and so do the yellow canvas sneakers clashing with the argyle socks.

Behold the brand-spanking-new cover!

My husband asked why my name wasn’t on the cover. Isn’t he adorable? (Seriously, I just wanna pinch his cheeks like a plump polyester-pant-suit-wearing Auntie.) Um, there’s no way anyone’s gonna pick up this book because it says “Tara Lazar”. But look—it says Matthew Quick and “The Silver Linings Playbook”. HOLY OSCAR-WORTHY GUACAMOLE, PEOPLE!

So be on the lookout for this extraordinary compilation come September because all proceeds benefit The Children’s Defense Fund. And it’s sure to be a POWERFUL read for adolescents and teens (and the occasional pusillanimous adult).

The Silver Linings Playbook author Matthew Quick (pictured, via) has landed a two-book deal with HarperCollins.

Quick’s next novel, entitled The Good Luck of Right Now, is scheduled for release in spring 2014. Deadline reports that DreamWorks has already snatched up the film rights. The film adaptation of The Silver Linings Playbook has earned eight Oscar nominations.

The new book stars a character named Bartholomew Neil. According to Entertainment Weekly, Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. literary agent Douglas Stewart described the story as “a pilgrimage of sorts, [where Neil is] headed to Canada with his new librarian girl-crush, her foul-mouthed but loving brother, and the local priest who has just been kicked out of his parish.” (via Philly.com)

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This one I have to read.

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence star in The Silver Linings Playbook, a film based on a novel by Matthew Quick. We’ve embedded the trailer above–what do you think?

The movie is directed by David O. Russell (The Fighter and Flirting with Disaster), giving the star of The Hunger Games a chance to play a more dramatic role. Here’s more about the novel that inspired the film:

During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estranged wife Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents everything seems changed; no one will talk to him about Nikki; his old friends are saddled with families; the Philadelphia Eagles keep losing, making his father moody; and his new therapist seems to be recommending adultery as a form of therapy. When Pat meets the tragically widowed, physically fit, and clinically depressed Tiffany, she offers to act as a liaison between him and his wife, if only he will give up watching football, agree to perform in this year’s Dance Away Depression competition, and promise not to tell anyone about their ‘contract.’ (Via.)

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I've written about Jan and Lana so often on this blog that I don't need to introduce them (do I?).  They are the dancing stars, the soon-to-be movie stars, the team that keeps me honest in a Norah Jones waltz, the instruction that burns but lasts.

Here they are, dancing at Philadelphia's Thirtieth Street Station.

Because that's how good they are.

Jennifer Lawrence, the star of The Hunger Games, may take a role in a film adaptation of The Silver Linings Playbook.

Novelist Matthew Quick debuted with The Silver Linings Playbook in 2008. David O. Russell wrote the screenplay and will direct the film.

Here’s more from The Huffington Post: “Lawrence would play Tiffany, the very attractive widowed wife of his best friend Ronnie. She begins to secretly pursue and mentor him as the two work to put their lives back together.”

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Previews, previews!  Lovely little previews!

And we find ourselves back at the Yale Club, across the street from Grand Central Station, and a whopping 10 minutes away, on foot, from my library.  There are advantages to living on a tiny island, I tell ya.

As per usual, Little Brown pulled out all the stops for the average children’s and YA librarian, in order to showcase their upcoming season.  There were white tablecloths and sandwiches consisting of brie and ham and apples.  The strange result of these previews is that I now seem to be under the mistaken understanding that Little Brown’s offices are located at the Yale Club.  They aren’t.  That would make no sense.  But that’s how my mind looks at things. When I am 95 and senile I will insist that this was the case.  Be warned.

A single day after my return from overseas I was able to feast my eyes on the feet of Victoria Stapleton (the Director of School and Library Marketing), bedecked in red sparkly shoes.  I would have taken a picture but my camera got busted in Bologna.  I was also slightly jet lagged, but was so grateful for the free water on the table (Europe, I love you, but you have to learn the wonders of ample FREE water) that it didn’t even matter.  Megan Tingley, fearless leader/publisher, began the festivities with a memory that involved a child’s story called “The Day I Wanted to Punch Daddy In the Face”.  Sounds like a companion piece to The Day Leo Said “I Hate You”, does it not?

But enough of that.  You didn’t come here for the name dropping.  You can for the books that are so ludicrously far away in terms of publication (some of these are January/February/March 2012 releases) that you just can’t resist giving them a peek.  To that end, the following:

Liza Baker

At these previews, each editor moves from table to table of librarians, hawking their wares.  In the case of the fabulous Ms. Baker (I tried to come up with a “Baker Street Irregulars” pun but it just wasn’t coming to me) the list could start with no one else but Nancy Tafuri.  Tafuri’s often a preschool storytime staple for me, all thanks to her Spots, Feathers and Curly Tails.  There’s a consistency to her work that a librarian can appreciate.  She’s also apparently the newest Little Brown “get”.  With a Caldecott Honor to her name (Have You Seen My Duckling?) the newest addition is All Kinds of Kisses.  It’s pretty cute.  Each animals gets kisses from parent to child with the animal sound accompanying.  You know what that means?  We’re in readaloud territory here, people.  There’s also a little bug or critter on each page that is identified on the copyright page for parents who have inquisitive children.

Next up, a treat for all you Grace Lin fans out there.  If you loved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat then you’ll probably be pleased as punch to hear that there’s a third

I tend to think of  a book as a guided tour in which a character interprets everything for me. Between the pages,  I’m in new, uncharted territory and I’m relying on the POV person to convey the setting, the plot, the action, and the characterization of the story.

The character’s voice is everything for me.

Sometimes that voice takes me on an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind trip.

The voice in SORTA LIKE A ROCK STAR by Matthew Quick was so powerful, I didn’t want to leave the protagonist’s world.

I snagged an ARC of this one at TLA convention last April. Lucky me for me, an editor pointed it out.  Check out the book’s opening lines, in which protagonist Amber Appleton makes her remarkable first appearance:

Lying down, shivering on the last seat of school bus 161, pinned by his teensy doggie gaze, which is completely 100% cute—I’m such a girl, I know—I say, “You won’t believe the bull I had to endure today.”

My legs are propped up against the window, toes pointing toward the roof so that the poodle skirt I made in Life Skills class settles around my midsection. Yeah, it’s the twenty-first century and I wear poodle skirts. I like dogs, I’m a freak. So what? And before anybody reading along gets too jazzed up thinking about my skirt flipped up around my waist, my lovely getaway sticks exposed, allow me to say there’s no teenage flesh to be seen here.

Amber is one heck of a tour guide, huh? Her voice hooked me right away. This character is so quirky, insightful, complicated and…warm. I was drawn to Amber in a way I can’t adequately express.

In short, reading this book was a singular experience for me. All because of one character’s voice.

I spent half the book laughing  out loud and the other half  with a big, fat lump in my throat. I RARELY cry actual tears while reading a book, but this one made me bawl like a baby. I’m not even kidding.

Amber Appleton’s voice moved me.

I wanna know, what voices move you?

Hungry for more? Try this recipe for Ooey Gooey Butter Cake. It’s almost as warm and sweet as this book.

3 Comments on Writing Voice: SORTA LIKE A ROCK STAR, last added: 9/17/2010