Today I accomplished the unimagineable (or at least it seemed for the past few weeks): I got my office back in order. There are still some misc. papers to go through on the desk, but they are all on the desk! Yea! More importantly the books have all been rearranged on the shelves, which was the cause of the chaos and I have sorted out the books I need to review in order for the next several months. Nothing goes on my shelves until it is read (except a few reference type books) so all the books that need to be reviewed are stacked on my foot locker and the floor beside it. It's a weird system, but it works pretty good as long as things are in order everywhere.

Hence the need to get my butt in gear and fix things today.

As it happens, I just finished reading John Green's lovely An Abundance of Katherines the other day (you all know how you love it) and that was part of what prompted me to go through the review books. I have my columns done for Bookslut through December, but beyond that I'm up in the air as to what I wanted to review. I also had an idea what I wanted in Eclectica YA-wise for the winter issue (running in January), but wasn't 100% sure. So I needed to see what I had waiting in the wings and figure out the order of what to read when. And that made think about my review for Katherines and how it is going to run several months after the book comes out (in the winter issue of Eclectica).

I tried, when I first started my column at Bookslut, to run reviews as near as possible to publication dates. But both my editor there and at Eclectica wanted the columns (or group reviews as they are at Eclectica) to have themes. It became obvious pretty quick that I couldn't count on having a bunch of theme-ready books arrive at exactly the same time, so I began having to plan my themes in advance (months in advance) based on what I have stacked up.

Here's how it looks for Bookslut for the next six months:

Nov: War
Dec: Quirky Families
Jan: Heirs to Judy Blume (as in Forever)
Feb: Books where characters make comic books (would you believe I have 4 YA novels with comic book writing/drawing teens?)
March: Adventure
April: Teen Fantasy

And Eclectica looks like this (I try do two YA "group" reviews in each issue)

Winter:Surviving High School & Historical Fiction
Spring: Sports & Novels set in mysterious old houses (I already have 4 of these!)

So that all takes me through to May - unless I read some of these books and don't like them and end up switching a theme because I don't have enough good titles (like if I lost two of the comic book related books - I'd have to fold the remaining ones into a "teen angst" column or something). I don't have enough books to fill each of these columns really right now - I'll be adding some titles as they arrive over the next few months - but this is the current plan anyway. It does mean though that some books I have right now won't show up in a review until April and I sometimes think that is doing a book (or author) a disservice. There is nothing I can do about it though - I have to go with the themes and besides some months there are fifteen books released I've requested and other months three, so there's no way I could include every book the month it was out anyway. But I do wonder if it matters - does it matter to people who are shopping for books if they are reading a review for something brand new or out for six months (or much much longer)? Paul Collins wrote about this sort of thing in his blog ages ago and I remember him writing about how surprised he was to come across a review in a newspaper for a book that had been for several years. I feel the same way sometimes. I know I have missed a zillion books over the years so I'm happy to discover one on a blog or lit site long after the fact, but how do authors feel about this when their book is passed by in the initial month of release? Do they still care about a review in Bookslut or Eclectica six months later? And does it bring them readers?

For the record, I thought Katherines was very funny and smart (just as everyone else has pretty much said). It reminded me a bit of King Dork, actually (in a good way) as both male narrators seemed to have the same kind of wry way of looking at the world. (Although Colin is a bit less jaded then Tom I think.) I also thought it was the kind of book that teenage girls would love as it gives them a peek into a particular sort of boy's head, something every girl can appreciate. So yes, big positive review from me - in January 2007.

I hope somebody is still wondering about this book then!