Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Wrong again it seems.

My last post, months ago now, was all about how I didn't like ARC of Fade to Blue. I didn't think kids would like it either. I was wrong. I gave it to some of my teens and they passed it around and everyone loved it.
Shocked face.

Cut to the reviews of another ARC I was reading in VOYA. Both the teen reviewer and the librarian/educator reviewer gave the book No More Us For You much higher marks then I would have ever dreamed.

Both of these books had felt unfinished or somehow lacking to me. Maybe I didn't read them closely enough. Maybe I need to rethink entirely how I review. On the other hand, maybe opinions are as opinions do. Nora Rawlinson of EarlyWord gave a talk recently that I attended on the connection between publishers and librarians. It turns out that librarians are more inclined to buy mid-level or poorly performing (sales-wise) books than other buyers. And I'm willing to bet that these are the books that we end up culling again and again from our shelves. And these aren't books that are critically panned necessarily. Some of my lowest circulation rates are on books that are festooned with medal after medal.

My point with this post is to really say that there is no accounting for taste, and what appeals to me might not appeal to you. And that I'm back, and ready to review for you. I've got an ARC of David Cullen's "Columbine" courtesy of Nancy Rawlinson and it is affecting me in ways I never thought that tragedy would. It happened my junior year in high school and I thought--up until now--that I was too cool to care. I was wrong.

Sometimes-- it is good to admit you can be wrong.

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