Mark Flowers is the Young Adult Librarian at the John F. Kennedy Library in Vallejo, CA. He reviews for a variety of library journals and blogs and recently contributed a chapter to The Complete Summer Reading Program Manual: From Planning to Evaluation (YALSA, 2012). Contact him via Twitter @droogmark
Last week, Angela talked about buzz books–those books that everyone seems to be talking about; this week, I want to talk about the other end of the spectrum–books that no one is talking about. None of the three books reviewed below has been reviewed (yet) by a library journal, nor have I been able to [...]
Angela and I were talking last week about what a great year this is shaping up to be for adult books with teen appeal–we have a backlog of great books that we still want to review, and another list of books that we had to give up on getting to because too much time has [...]
Today we’re pleased to have a guest post from one of our regular reviewers Laura Pearle, who is here to discuss Camilla Läckberg’s fantastic series of mysteries. Take it away Laura: Readers of mysteries know that small towns are deceptive – they’re not the safe places they should be. Just look at St. Mary’s Mead and [...]
A possibly insane man who was acquitted of murdering his wife’s lover because the jury found it to be justifiable homicide, and then went on to play one of the most crucial roles in the early development of motion pictures. A teenage assassin who has been blamed (both then and now) for igniting the precipitating [...]
In our continuing series on the first adult books we read as teens, one of our newest reviewers, Meghan Cirrito, talks Chopin’s The Awakening, a book that I had trouble reading as a college sophomore. Go Meghan! It is difficult to remember when I stopped reading books for kids my age and when I started reading [...]
Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life is one of the most buzzed adult books of the year so far. It has starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly. Outside of the library world, it’s gotten glowing reviews from Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and many others. And it [...]
In our ongoing series about our first encounters reading adult books, reviewer Amy Cheney discusses many of her favorites as a young teen, but offers a special shout out to the power of Harlequin Romances. For more thoughts on Romance novels, check out this fascinating article from The Atlantic, discussing the genre’s ongoing interaction with [...]
April is National Poetry Month, and unlike short stories, poetry is one form of literature that I, at least, have never had trouble getting teens interested in. Every April (except this one–my library is doing some construction) I try to hold at least one poetry event–an open mic, or a poetry slam–and they tend to [...]
In our continuing series on the first adult books we read as teens, reviewer Jamie Watson talks about the limited access she had to adult novels: When did I start reading adult books? I’ve thought about this question before, because I’ve used it as in icebreaker in workshops before. Especially in the “OMG the GOSSIP [...]
And now for another installment of Adult Books 4 Teens: First Encounters, our reviewers’ thoughts on the first adult books they read. Today’s guest post is from Sarah Flowers: I remember four books as my first adult books. They may not have been the very first I read (like Diane, I’m sure I read Readers’ [...]
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