Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 156

The best animal photographs of the year

I don’t know whether you have to register to see these photos, but here’s the National Geographic slideshow of the best animal photos of the year.

The Siberian tiger that won first place is not my favorite. I think it won because tigers are cool and Siberian tigers extra cool, but still, I wouldn’t have put that photo up for first place out of this batch of great photos.

The one with the grebes is possibly my favorite.

The wasp one is amazing.

That Pallas cat photo is going to take the internet by storm, or at least it ought to. That’s the best picture of Pallas cats I’ve ever seen, for sure.

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Long Book Titles

I was glancing in at Lynn’s Book Blog and noticed this post: Top Ten Tuesday : Long book titles

This caught my eye because recently I was asked to read an upcoming book and see if I could write a blurb. Here’s the title of the book: The Adventures of Rocío Díaz Rossi and Hala Haddad Sosa

Wow, was my first response. That’s a really long title.

So far all I can tell you about the book is that it’s about two female detectives, partners, in a world with craaaaazy worldbuilding. Let me find my favorite detail so far … ah, here:

Hala dated it in the three calendars—La Bene’s: 14 April, year 449; the Ya Empire’s: 12.14.15.14.13 / 2 Ben / 11 kumk’u / Lord of the Night G5; and the Ka Empire’s: Year 17 of the Divine Emperor Lloque.

“Show-off,” Rocío said. Most people needed a calendar converter for the Ya Empire’s system.

I SO wish I had invented the Ya Empire’s calendrical system. I can’t even tell you. That is the best dating system I have ever seen anywhere. If we lived in a properly run world, we would absolutely be typing “12.14.15.14.13 / 2 Ben / 11 kumk’u / Lord of the Night G5” at the top of our pages.

But back to titles. I can think of a quite a few books with super-long titles, such as:

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have To Kill You

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation

I’ve read (or at least started) all the above titles. A couple, I didn’t get too far with, including the Octavian Nothing one. (The beginning was too grim for me.) My favorite is From the Mixed Up Files. But that’s all beside the point — the point today is, Gosh, those are long titles. That’s why I use a shortened form when I’m referring to them.

I guess I would refer to The Adventures of Rocío Díaz Rossi and Hala Haddad Sosa as Rocio and Hala. Or possibly as Adventures. Or conceivably as “the one with the great Ya calendar.”

What do you all think of super-long titles? I think they can be cute and appealing, particularly for YA titles, but mostly I have to say I prefer short titles. Not necessarily one word, but shorter. But my favorite titles can be longish or shortish, as long as they’re poetic. Let me see … okay, I mean like this:

An Unbearable Lightness of Being

Midnight Never Come

There Will Come Soft Rains

I Shall Wear Midnight

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

That’s the kind of title I like best. Of course a title like that doesn’t necessarily suit every book. Even when it does, a title like that is hard to come up with. Really, what I need is an app that will read my manuscript and spit out evocative, poetic titles that fit the story.

I think the best title I’ve ever come up with is:

I’m really glad the publisher decided to use my title for this one.

Now, as for titles I dislike . . . this isn’t a dealbreaker, titles are seldom a dealbreaker for me, but personally, the titles I like least are the ones that go:

The _____’s Daughter

The _____’s Wife

Such a weird thing to do, pull the focus off the protagonist and make the main thing that counts her father or her husband or whatever. Though it can be even worse. I mean, take a look at this one, where the title is even more misleading than usual:

Seriously?

I mean, the protagonist isn’t even Theodora! It’s her son, John! Why not title it “The Empress Theodora’s Son”? Oh, but we can’t have that! All these titles have to end in somebody’s daughter, even if the protagonist is NOT THAT DAUGHTER.

I may not have been great at titles, but I could have done way, way better. Anyone could have done better!

The book itself is quite good, by the way, though not one of Bradshaw’s best. I should do a list ranking all of Gillian Bradshaw’s books from top to bottom. In fact, I probably have, though I don’t remember right now. But if I were ranking them all by just the quality of the title, this one would be at the bottom.

Actually, though I liked the above book, I would REALLY love to see Gillian Bradshaw write a novel about Theodora and Justinian. Alas, I guess she would have already done that if she were going to.

How about you all, what do you like best and least in titles? Long, short, straightforward, evocative, clever? If a title has jumped out at you recently, what was the title?

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Elevating plot over character

Here’s a post at Terrible Minds: On Plot And Character

Here’s the bit I want to pull out:

Last scene in the season finale involves a character leaving their phone behind, and on this phone is a voicemail we want them to hear, and then another character intervenes — they open the phone, listen to the voicemail, and erase it.

Simple enough.

Problem:

The character who left behind the phone is a teenager. Teenagers are maybe forgetful, but they’re also critically married to their phones (as are we proper adults), and this teenager in particular is sharp, savvy, and naturally suspicious of like, literally everyone. And in the first season we saw a character lose their phone and see the result of that. So, leaving a phone behind callously is strange. The character isn’t just stepping outside for a cigarette — they’re “walking into town.” At night. It’s a good distance. And they don’t take their phone. …

The episode is very concerned about its PLOT and not very concerned about its CHARACTERS. … I hate whenever I’m watching or reading something and one of the characters is suddenly acting very unlike themselves, and it feels like the storyteller is shaving off their square corners so they’ll fit into the circle hole socket that the plot requires. 

Chuck Wendig treats this as a forgivable choice on the part of the writers, even though it bothers him personally. I disagree. I think the above choice — forcing a character to leave their phone behind, and using this uncharacteristic action to get the character into trouble — is a dire mistake.

Here is what the writer of that show should have done:

COME UP WITH A PLAUSIBLE REASON

You can always come up with a plausible reason for a character to do something that is fundamentally out of character and/or stupid. You just have to put your mind do it. Why would a character — teenager or adult, any character, I’m glued to my phone these days and I’m far from a teenager — leave her phone behind? Well, she might do that because:

— something really startling happened, maybe something urgent as well as startling, and she needed both hands for some other purpose. She was therefore distracted, in a hurry, and physically unable to pick up her phone. You could even have her throw a look over her shoulder at the phone but no! The situation is too urgent, so she leaves it behind.

— her phone ran out of charge and she plugged it in and then something urgent happened and she had to leave the house, but the phone was still very low on power — even if she remembered it, it wouldn’t do any good.

— She puts it in her pocket, but it falls out and she doesn’t notice.

I mean, this kind of thing is NOT HARD. All the writers had to do was think, Wait, why would she leave her phone behind? and the problem is basically solved. You should be able to come up with a plausible reason that suits the specific situation within one minute of asking yourself that question.

Bottom line: never let the needs of the plot force a character to act in an unbelievable way, especially if that action is also stupid.

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Should a fiction writer use a thesaurus?

Basically, no, imo. A fiction writer should just know all those words and use the right word in the right sentence.

However, James Scott Bell has this take on the question, over at Kill Zone Blog.

Now, of course, we all have personal computers with a Dictionary/Thesaurus app. I use mine most often to find a synonym for something mundane, like walk. Sure, a character can walk into a room. That doesn’t do much for the reader. So I open my computer thesaurus and in five seconds find: stroll, saunter, amble, trudge, plod, dawdle, hike, tramp, tromp, slog, stomp, trek, march, stride, sashay, glide, troop, limp, stumble, and lurch.

And that is all very well, but you had better know the difference between a saunter and a sashay or you are going to mess up your scene.

Also — and I’m sure this isn’t an issue for Bell — but one of the hallmarks of amateur writing is the overuse of words like march and stride and sashay and so on when the character should, in all honesty, just be walking.

However! Having glared at the post and muttered Bah, humbug! under my breath, I will say, the synonym button in Word is actually sometimes useful. Not so much for finding synonyms for “walk,” but for getting to a word that is on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite pull it up.

In that situation, you can type a word you know is not quite right, click on “synonyms,” pick a word that is still not right but closer, repeat a couple of times, and bingo! THERE is the word you were trying to recall that whole time.

So for me, the synonym button is helpful to jog my memory when the vocabulary part of my brain freezes up, rather than particularly useful in avoiding redundancy in word choices.

While we’re on the subject, “look,” is a place where synonyms both are and are not helpful. The problem here is that “look,” like “said,” is largely invisible, but that can easily lead to overusing the word.

She looked at him or He looked surprised are the sort of phrases that get used over and over. That’s hard to avoid. It’s true that you can try to describe a surprised person — his eyes widened and so on — but quite a bit o the time, it’s simpler and quicker to say He looked surprised and then move on briskly, without giving the reader time to dwell on that sentence.

But let’s pull up a synonym generator and take a look. Okay, here are synonyms for “look” as a verb:

glance, gaze, stare, gape, peer, fix one’s gaze, focus, peep, peek, take a look, watch, examine, study, inspect, scan, scrutinize, survey, check, contemplate, consider, see, observe, view, regard, pay attention to, take note of, mark, check out, glimpse, behold, spot, spy, lay one’s eyes on, catch sight of, eye, take in, ogle

A small number of those words are also basically invisible. “Glance” and “gaze” are both good if you don’t want to draw the reader’s attention. They also aren’t synonyms: a glance is fleeting and a glaze longer, which is why the writer ought to know both words and not mistake one for the other.

Many of these so-called synonyms do mean something other than “look” and/or do call attention to themselves. Saying, “She gaped at him” is completely different from “She looked at him.” Gape is never invisible; it’s the sort of word that always draws attention to itself and always creates a specific sort of visual impression, provided the reader is the kind of reader who visualizes the scene. I don’t think I have ever in my life used “gape.” I do visualize scenes and I don’t like the visual effect of this word.

Saying, “She contemplated him for a long moment,” is different in another way. Saying, “She paused for a long moment of contemplation,” or something like that, and now we are into a strikingly different style.

One more note on this topic:

Bell says:  I was writing a scene with a drug kingpin and his pet monkey. The monkey keeps shrieking. But I didn’t want to use that same word over and over. So I popped open the thesaurus and immediately found: scream, screech, squeal, squawk, roar, howl, shout, yelp. Just what I needed. I used five of them.

And my instant reaction was: five, really? Because I only see three words in that list that seem suitable for, say, a Capuchin monkey. (Just a reasonable guess about the most likely kind of monkey.) Capuchins don’t roar, howl or shout, and I’m not crazy about squawk or yelp either.

By the way, speaking of roaring monkeys, when I was in Venezuela listening to howler monkeys, I once spent some time trying to come up with ways to describe the sound they make. The best I could do was “Like a cross between lions roaring and power saws, cranked up to eleven.” That is not a sound I know how to capture in one word.

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The very oldest construction project in the world

So, how about this:

A Shocking Find in a Neanderthal Cave in France: A rock structure, built deep underground, is one of the earliest hominin constructions ever found.

Some 336 meters into the cave, the caver stumbled across something extraordinary—a vast chamber where several stalagmites had been deliberately broken. Most of the 400 pieces had been arranged into two rings—a large one between 4 and 7 metres across, and a smaller one just 2 metres wide. Others had been propped up against these donuts. Yet others had been stacked into four piles. Traces of fire were everywhere, and there was a mass of burnt bones.  …

Picture at the link.

After drilling into the stalagmites and pulling out cylinders of rock, the team could see an obvious transition between two layers. On one side were old minerals that were part of the original stalagmites; on the other were newer layers that had been laid down after the fragments were broken off by the cave’s former users. By measuring uranium levels on either side of the divide, the team could accurately tell when each stalagmite had been snapped off for construction.

Their date? 176,500 years ago, give or take a few millennia.

Therefore, this was the work of Neanderthals, not modern humans.

Wow.

What remnants of modern life do you suppose will still be around in 175,000 years or so?

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Recent Reading: The Return of the Thief

So … The Return of the Thief —

I hadn’t realized Return had a bright red cover, while all the previous books have now been given darker covers. Not a bad design choice, I suppose, though I did like the original covers for the series. But fine.

I liked the book a lot. Let me see … I guess my personal ordering goes like this:

King of AttoliaQueen of AttoliaConspiracy of KingsReturn of the ThiefThe ThiefThick as Thieves

I expect everyone’s got a somewhat different ordering. I liked Thick as Thieves, but I don’t think it’s as good as the others and I, like most readers, probably, was disappointed not to see more of Gen.

We don’t have that problem here. Eugenides isn’t the viewpoint character, but Pheris places him constantly at the center of the story he’s telling.

I liked Pheris a lot, and I liked that he wasn’t magically fixed at any point. Physically disabled and mute at the beginning, physically disabled and mute at the end, but since he is the one writing the account long after the fact, of course it’s clear that Pheris not only survives, but will eventually do very well.

Pheris is one of the most physically disabled protagonists I can ever remember encountering in SFF. I think MWT pulled off writing him quite well. He was believable and sympathetic, though far from perfect. Though the attitudes that surround him are tough to deal with at first, those attitudes are entirely believable for the world, too. He also begins as a stranger to Gen and to the story so far, serving as a new eye to see all the primary characters and their relationships and events already familiar to the reader.

I have an important question about Pheris, though. How old is he?

Did MWT ever tell us that? I had a hard time settling on an age. Ten? Twelve? Younger than that? Older than that? His brother is “less than a year” younger, and I had the impression the brother is more like fourteen, but that can’t be right unless Pheris is very small for his age as well as disabled.

Now, Pheris aside … I like how MWT worked in events from the other books, especially Thick as Thieves, and showed the reader how those events impacted everything else. I liked how she the handled the war, too, although … I have another important question:

Does nobody other than the people of the Little Peninsula recognize divine intervention when the gods plainly have their thumb firmly on the scales? Because it seems to me that the Medes should have said at some point, Uh, okay, you know what, we didn’t really want to invade anyway. For example, when Gen wakes up the morning after the “trial” and discovers he feels fine. Do the Medes not have spies who reported that moment? Because it seriously seems to me that would have been a good time for the Medes to start considering options other than pressing ahead.

Certainly the lightning strike. If I’d been the Mede in charge after the lightning strike, I would probably have said, “Huh, look at that. Well, the gods are clearly not on our side here, so let’s retreat!” That would have caused a lot less wear and tear on everyone.

Third question: if you were king of one of the Continental Powers, just how safe would you feel in your bed at night, given the flow of events?

Best plot element: I’m a sucker for redemption arcs. I was therefore very happy with the way things worked out with Sejanus.

Worst plot element: I guess in war a lot of people die. But I got kinda fond of some of Gen’s attendants and was sorry so many of them were lost.

Best line: It’s hard to beat, “I promise, he has all the fighting spirit of an apricot.” Also, it’s fun how Gen wound up using that horse’s complete lack of fighting spirit that one time.

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SPFBO update

So, just noting that TUYO is one of the ten books my book blogger is moving forward. So it’s not a semifinalist yet, but it’s a … presemifinalist? Antesemifinalist?

What would that be, an antepenultimate finalist?

Anyway, I expect almost everything depends now on the personal taste of this particular book blogger. How stressful!

Too bad the version she got didn’t have the new cover —

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Paragraphing

At Writer UnBoxed: 5 Ways Paragraphing Supports Story

What readers want most of story is to be moved, quite literally—transported, from one place to another. Paragraph structure can boost that sense of story movement. These tips should help.

Okay, that’s interesting. What tips do we have here? Let’s take a look …

1. A paragraph should develop only one idea. 

2. A paragraph should help the reader remember important information.

3. Order paragraphs so that each sentence builds upon the last. 

Journalists learn the inverted triangle method of structuring a story, which places the most newsworthy information at the top, where those who only read the first paragraph will gain some sense of the news. Paragraphs are built this way too, so that skimmers who read only the first sentence of each paragraph will have gained some sense of the story’s most important information, if not all of its supporting detail.

Fiction writers should not encourage skimming.

Draw in your reader so she can’t help but feast on each subsequent line. Replace the idea of “delivery of information” with “invitation to story.” Your first sentence will set the topic, while each subsequent sentence will pull your reader deeper into relevant thoughts or actions. 

I pulled out the quote above because I like the idea of a paragraph that invites the reader further into the story. On the other hand, I must admit, I sometimes find myself skimming.

Right now I’m rereading the Foreigner series and I’m doing quite a bit of skimming. That may not be a fair comment because I’ve read it multiple times. It’s true that when I appreciate something about the sentences — artistry, lyricism, impact — I don’t skim. Alice Degan’s From All False Doctrine has artistic sentences. Everything by Patricia McKillip has lyrical sentences. Everything well-written scatters particular sentences into the story for impact, particularly sentences which (relevant to the topic at hand) stand alone as their own paragraph.

Moving on …

4. Move your most important point into the power position.

By which the post means, the last sentence of the paragraph. I’ll stop with this 4th point, as the fifth is not really a matter of craft and thus departs from the topic to some extent.

The post provides various examples of paragraphs to illustrate the above four points. One of the novels chosen as an illustration is Mary Doria Russell’s Children of God! Wow, I haven’t read that in a long time. That duology contains possibly the single worst series of events I have ever encountered in fiction. Not sure I will ever have the nerve to re-read it.

Sweating and nauseated, Father Emilio Sandoz sat on the edge of his bed with his head in what was left of his hands.

Many things had turned out to be more difficult than he’d expected. Losing his mind, for example. Or dying. How can I still be alive? he wondered, not so much with philosophical curiosity as with profound irritation at the physical stamina and sheer bad luck that had conspired to keep him breathing, when all he’d wanted was death. “Something’s got to go,” he whispered, alone in the night. “My sanity or my soul…”

I definitely agree, these are powerful sentences and paragraphs. I note that the first sentence here does in fact stand in a paragraph all by itself. I do that a lot. I realized not too long ago that the majority of all my books start with a single sentence that stands alone as a paragraph. For example, here’s the beginning of TUYO:

Beside the coals of the dying fire, within the trampled borders of our abandoned camp, surrounded by the great forest of the winter country, I waited for a terrible death.

I had been waiting since midday. Before long, dusk would fold itself across the land. The Lau must surely come soon. I faced south, so that my death would not ride up behind me on his tall horse and see my back and think that I was afraid to face him. Also, I did not want to look north because I did not want to see that trodden snow and remember my brother leaving me behind. That might have been a different kind of cowardice. But I could only face one direction. So I faced south.

The fire burned low. My brother had built it up with his own hands before he led our defeated warriors away. Now it was only embers, and the cold pressed against my back. I wished I could build the fire up again. Mostly that was what I thought about. That was as close to thinking about nothing as I could come. It was better than thinking about the Lau. I hoped they came before the fire burned out, or I might freeze to death before they found me. Even an Ugaro will die of the cold eventually, without fire or shelter.

I tried not to hope that I would die before they found me.

Two paragraphs that set up the situation, bracketed by one-sentence paragraphs that slam the reader with tension. Not that I planned that out, exactly. I would like to meet someone who writes every sentence and paragraph with conscious intent. It can’t be easy.

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Who are you calling old?

Here’s a post at Kill Zone Blog: Just Who Are You Calling Old?

Some readers snicker at Ellery Queen’s description of the “elderly” Inspector Queen who was “not yet 60.” The dynamic mystery writing duo were young whippersnappers of 29 when they created Inspector Queen.

To be fair, I thought 60 was ancient when I was in my 20s. Now, not so much.

I bet many of us can identify! Why, I remember … many years ago … figuring out how old my twin and I would be in the year 2000. Wow, that seemed old! (We were mere children when I figured this out).

I don’t believe I ever thought, “Hmm, which means that in 2020 I will be twenty years older than that.”

Nor, today, do I think much about how old I will be in 2040. I really prefer not to think about that. I will just say that 50 does not seem old to me anymore and sure enough, if a character was described as “elderly” at sixty, I would wonder what was physically wrong with that character to create that impression.

So just how old do you want to make a senior character in your novel? …

[F]inally, if your chance of dying within the next year is 4 percent or higher, you might be considered ‘very old’ or ‘elderly.’ . . . This threshold for men increased from about 65 in the 1920s to 76 today. So men are “old” at 76. …
women today transition out of middle age around 65, a number that has increased from the late 40s in the 1920s. ‘Old’ for women today is about 73, which increased from the late 50s in the 1920s. And ‘very old’ today is about 80, an increase from about 67 in the 1920s.

I’ll buy that, for now, always in the hope and expectation that by the time I’m 80, that won’t actually seem old. Much less “very old.”

I will just mention, while we’re on the subject of age and aging, that Pippa is doing better this week. She was young for 14.825 years. Then she was suddenly old. Oh, she went gray a long time ago and by now all the colored areas have roaned out to much paler color than you’d see in a young Cavalier.

Even so, I would say that now, although she has specific physical problems, she is not actually “very old.” She is not frail, has not lost muscle tone, and in fact would still be young if her hearing and (especially) vision were better.

Last Saturday she went to the park and met a delightful, extroverted five-year-old child (plus parents). She’s been more mentally alert and physically vigorous ever since. I suspect I was wrong to keep her close to home and in calm environments. I think she really loved going out and meeting someone new. More frequent trips to the park are in her near future, and we’ll see how she does.

Here she is, contentedly snoozing after last week’s adventure.

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YA/Adult pairs of books

From BookRiot, this older post by Anmanda Nelson, about YA and adult fantasy titles that go well together, in the sense that if you liked this, you should perhaps try that.

As it happens, though, I haven’t read any of the titles Amanda picked. Well, okay, yes I have: I’ve read Sabriel, but I had to look twice to notice because that’s the only one; it was a long time ago and I must admit I don’t remember anything about it. Yes, I know, lots of people love Sabriel. Someday I will probably re-read it. Let’s see, okay, her choices were:

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma and The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

The Agency series by Y.S. Lee and The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman

Sabriel by Garth Nix and The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

Complicit by Stephanie Kuehn and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi and The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

Most of them, I don’t think I’d want to read, based on Amanda’s descriptions.

I found this set in particular an interesting contrast:

Lee’s Agency series follows Mary, a young thief in Victorian England rescued from the gallows and trained to be a female private investigator and spy. Her job places her in a number of situations a lady wouldn’t normally find herself in- a similar theme in The Fair Fight, a brilliant novel about female bare-knuckle boxing during the same time frame. Ruth and Mary are both poor, outcasts, and take to untraditional livelihoods to stay afloat. The adult-ness of the Freeman book means it’s dirtier and grittier (and has much fouler language), so it’s easy to pick which one you want to read based on how much dirt you want under your nails.

The first sounds like a story I would like. The second, not so much. I can see why Amanda paired them off, but I’m not sure the pairing works terribly well for me.

But it’s an interesting idea! Even though I don’t really believe in the actual YA category as such, here are five YA titles I particularly love:

Beauty by Robin McKinley

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whelan Turner

The Tiffany series by Terry Pratchett

And what the heck, also:

The Floating Islands

Now, what adult titles would you pair with those? Here are my suggestions:

Beauty . . . . Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge. Why I picked it: it’s another Beauty and the Beast retelling, but a good deal longer, slower, and more complicated than McKinley’s story. It’s a less direct retelling and more a dark fairy tale informed by Beauty and the Beast.

The Scorpio Races . . . Rider at the Gate by CJ Cherryh. Why I picked it: In both cases, this is a far cry from the typical wish-fulfillment magical horse of fantasy. Rider is by no means my favorite CJC title, but wow, the predatory horse thing is even more intense than in Stiefvater’s book. I may never read the sequel again . . . unless she writes a third book . . . but I will certainly read the first one again; it stands alone fairly well.

The Dark is Rising . . . The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. Why I picked it: I was thinking about books with a time travel element, but with a more immersive feel than Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear had for me. And Powers is a spectacularly gifted writer, even if he’s not one of my personal favorites.

The Queen’s Thief … The Magic’s Poison series by Gillian Bradshaw.  The main character of Bradshaw’s trilogy is not a thief, but he is a bona fide Great Man, a genius stateman who is concerned above all with hammering out a good political outcome for his people despite terrible odds against that happening. Actually, yes, there’s even the same kind of plot twist, in a broad sense. Bradshaw’s series takes longer to get going, but is deeply rewarding for readers who stick with it.

The Tiffany series . . . the Sam Vimes series. Is it cheating to pick another series by the same author? And I grant you, this series, at least once you get past the first one, probably appeals to practically everyone.

The Floating Islands . . . The Raksura novels (and stories) by Martha Wells. Flying! People! I am pretty sure I would have LOVED the Raksura novels whether I’d first read them at fourteen or forty, but they jumped out at me for this comparison even though I think many younger readers would love them.

Okay! What is your favorite YA title? And what adult title would you suggest might appeal to readers who like that YA novel?

This post is based on one from a few years ago — I’ve fiddled with it a bit and I’m reposting with (if it worked right) the comments that originally went with this post.

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