My reviews on nature and biography titles for kids are all written and off to the Eclectica copy editor so those books are now off the table. Next up is the review for Booklist and the Ellen Datlow/Terri Windling adult fairy tales piece which will be done today. And then maybe two books for my fantasy column. I've been trying to decide if the Poe Anthology should be reviewed in my mystery column or my fantasy column. It is marketed as dark fantasy (and not YA but I think it works for older teens just fine) but Poe has always seemed more mysterious to me than fantastic (horribly mysterious I guess) and some of the stories are certainly only barely fantasy. Either way I'm enjoying it a lot and really enjoying seeing how so many different people react to Poe so differently - how they were inspired to write such vastly different works. I will be reviewing some of the stories indepth here as my column only gives me a couple of paragraphs for the whole book.

And speaking of my column, the new issue of Bookslut is up. My theme this month was books on international relations or politics. It was a very hard column to write - the books are full of a lot of information and I wanted to be sure to convey how they target their subjects in a significant and thoughtful manner while still remaining quite readable. They are really good books - really really good books - and I was happy to find a group that I think does a good job of bringing the world to high school students. There are also two novels (one a new entry in a mystery series for adults and one written for MG readers). I think this is one of the strongest column I have put together yet which has gotten me thinking about just what these columns - this job - means to me as a reviewer.

I like doing it. I like doing it a lot.

Bookslut gets a lot of visitors each month and while I have no idea how many of them read my column in particular I assume it is quite a few. I've been trying not to skate over there - not to just write up the standard YA titles or plots. This is my second primarily NF column this year and I plan a third one (tentatively this summer). I've been trying to integrate graphic novels in wherever I can and the occasional title published for adults that works well for teens. I probably go lightest on YA romance as that is a genre I don't seem to review well. (It's not that I don't like or respect romance novels it's that I get frustrated when teenagers act like teenagers in love - which is the point with those books so you can see my problem.) I just keep trying to find what is a bit different or a bit exceptional or a bit of a surprise and give it some attention. I know that writing about books on Iran and Iraq (among other locations) is maybe a stretch for a YA column but I really wanted to do this; I really felt like i needed to do it. And the books are great.

Sometimes I wonder what my priorities are or should be when it comes to writing and reviewing. The column does take a lot of my time but still - how often do you get a chance to trumpet your horn for books you love to such a large audience? How often do you get to be heard by so many about something you love?

Not too many adults - let alone teens - want to read books about war and I understand that. I don't love reading them all that much either. But I did want to write about them and I'm glad that I had such a good place to do so.

Now onto Poe and some fantasy and some coming-of-age and then maybe biography and then August which I think will be titles for the dog days of summer. I'm more than halfway through the year and it's only March - can you imagine?