No rest for the wicked
We would love to be blogging from a beach somewhere but holidays are over, the Test cricket is almost done and dusted and there are programs, projects and plans to be getting on with.
Three quick things that have come to us over the break.
Firstly, it seems that contrary to popular opinion, YA is alive and well. Or at least alive and undead, if 2008 book sales figures for Australia are anything to go by. Stephanie Meyer’s Twlight series held down places 2, 3 and 4. (She was headed only by a cookbook, 4 Ingredients.) Total sales in Australia for Stephanie Meyer books was above 850,000 copies. More on what we read here.
Patrick Ness, author of the unputdownable Knife of Never Letting Go feels the kosh of the Daily Mail in Britain. What would you do if a newspaper described your work as a national health hazard? Time to get even.
Finally, Boys, Blokes Books has posted an interview Lili did late last year with Jonathan Stroud about his new novel Heroes of the Valley. Jonathan was in Australia a couple of years back. He is among the charmingest of charming writers one would ever meet. Heroes of the Valley is out now.
PS, Mike has been reading Paper Towns by John Green, out here in March. In his occasionally humble opinion, the new one is even better than Looking for Alaska. A true delight and has him thinking about books built on other books. Paper Towns is an elegant nod to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass besides being a mystery, a prom novel, and a gentle satire of the teenage suburban male.
Welcome back to the new year. It’s going to be a great one.
