coreymarie:

Scholastic has earned a lot of respect from me in recent years (especially for publishing great YA comics targeted at girls) so this is a pretty disappointing step in the other direction. :(  Even the “anything” vs. “(almost) anything” makes me take pause, but the topic list is pretty irritating.

And for that matter, why not just make two books: “how to survive anything: crazy outdoor adventures” and “how to survive anything: school & friendships.” ‘Cuz last I knew, sometimes boys need advice about bullies, too. Get rid of the gender binary and suddenly you could have a whole series of these books.

fuckyeahfeminists:

laura-raptor:

My store got two books in today. Both survival guides. Both feature strong images on the front. Promising survival techniques for ‘boys only’ and ‘girls only’. Let’s look at the boys, shall we?

How to Survive Anything: Boys Only!

Featuring articles such as “How to Survive a Shark Attack”, “How to Survive if You’re in a Plane Crash”, “How to Survive a Flash Flood”, and many articles along that line. Some are silly, like surviving a t-rex attack, some are more helpful for a real life emergency, like a freak blizzard white out. Everything is action packed, life or death situations. High energy! Boys do dangerous things! Rawr! Go GO GO!

It’s mostly funny, but hey, some things, like surviving a snake bite might come in handy.

Now lets look at the girls, shall we?

How to Survive Anything: Girls Only!

Look at that girl on the cover! She is on the go! She is doing action packed stuff! She is rough and tumble! Let’s look at what she needs to learn to survive.

“How to Survive a BFF Fight”, “How to Take the Perfect School Photo”, “How to Handle Sudden Stardom”, “How to Turn a No into a Yes” (I guess I should be thankful that’s in the girls’ book, it’s just slightly less rapey if it were in the boys’ book). Of course there is such insight as “How to Survive a Crush” and “How to Survive a Fashion Disaster”.

Yes, just about everything in the girls’ book is about looking pretty, getting dates, looking pretty, looking pretty, and looking pretty.

The ONE and only ONE redeeming factor for the girls’ book was “How to Beat Bullies”. The advice there is pretty standard, but at least it is addressed.

The Lesson Here?

Boys are meant to have adventures, girls are meant to shut up and look pretty. The two shall never, ever meet.

Scholastic should hang their heads in some pretty weighty shame right now.

rage.

Scholastic FAIL.

Einstein upstairs, graphic novels downstairs. Good neighbors.

At Henderson Books in Bellingham, WA. Sarah Shay, 2012. Creative Commons license (noncommercial-sharealike-attribution).

The Herringbone Society, posing for our version of the classic READ posters of our youth. With some of our favorite books: mine is Jane Lindskold’s Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls, Aaron’s is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and Esti chose The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

Photo by JessyLou D’Aprile.
April 2012, in the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington.

My friend Mike-Jack Stoumbos wrote a novel called The Baron Would Be Proud, and is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to publish the book. He’s made his goal and then some, but you still have a few days to pre-order the book and support independent authors! It’s just $6 to buy the ebook version.

The Baron Would Be Proud is a whimsical, mock-historical-fiction folk tale about the nearly unreachable and inescapable town of Adleship Isle, the one man who guards the art of safely passing through it, and a traveler—calling himself a Baron—who stumbles into the town.

This quote is awesome and all, but admit it: Eleanor Crumblehulme is actually a Harry Potter character, right?

I just totally rearranged and reorganized one of my bookcases! It’s the smaller of the two, and is dedicated to all my sci-fi and fantasy fiction (not including children’s books, and a few things like Tolkien which I categorize under Classics).

Turns out I have 80 books on that shelf.
15 are by Jane Lindskold (if you include all three editions of Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls).
11 are by Charles De Lint.
6 are by Will Shetterly.
5 and a half are by Emma Bull.
4 are by Neil Gaiman.
3 are by Jane Yolen.
1 and 2 halves are by Steven Brust (collaborative novels, you ruin my counting!)

6 are Bordertown books (if you count two copies of Life On The Border), 5 are Liavek, 3 are Harry Potter, and 2 are Xanth. 7 are anthologies.

Only 6 are sci-fi, while 65 are fantasy. Of those 65, 24 are “high” or traditional fantasy, while 41 were “urban” or modern fantasy. 5 defied categorization, and I am sheepish to admit that 3 I have never read, and so couldn’t accurately categorize them.

Now I just need to rearrange my other bookcase, which actually would involve getting a whole new bookcase, because the larger one is actually much too small and is falling apart. Someday, I will get a bookcase that is made of wood, actually intended for books, and not from Ikea.

I would like to work in this bookstore, please. Thank you.

ATTN Hank Green.

I’ll take two.

I collect copies of this book, so if I meet someone who has never read it, I can just say, “Here. Take your time.”

My roommate used to do this with copies of 1984. Anyone else?