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Top Ten New to Me Authors of 2012

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This is my thirteenth Top Ten Tuesday post, though technically it’s Wednesday and I’m late again! Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I’m quite pleased about this theme as it’s great to think back to all the books I’ve read (so far!) this year. My list is in chronological order; it’s not a ranked Top Ten.

 Photo by chefranden

Top Ten New To Me Authors I Read in 2012

 1. C. J. Daugherty – A debut author for 2012 with boarding-school mystery Night School. The sequel, Night School: Legacy is coming out in January and I am so excited!

2. Veronica Rossi – Another debut author (Under the Never Sky) with a sequel due in January – Through The Ever Night – that I am looking forward to enormously.

3. Eva Ibbotson – I wasn’t expecting to love Journey to the River Sea as much as I did, as it’s aimed at 9-12 year olds, but I was delighted by this new discovery and am looking forward to devouring all her other books.

4. Suzanne Collins – I finally read The Hunger Games! A book I first learnt about in 2009! I should have read it much sooner, but I’m glad I got around to it this year.

5. Sophie Flack – Yet another debut author – I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next, having liked Bunheads a lot.

6. Elaine Dundy – I really enjoyed the semi-autobiographical The Dud Avocado and am planning to read her other books soon.

7. Hannah Harrington – Again, Saving June was a debut that showed a lot of promise and I’m looking forward to reading Speechless, her second novel.

8. Rachel Vincent – An author with several series to her name, I started with My Soul to Take from the Soul Screamers series and have no plans to stop!

9. Malinda Lo – I’m really pleased that I read Ash this year and discovered another fairy tale reteller to obsess over!

10. Karen Russell – I’m currently reading St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which is a book of short stories, and really enjoying it. All the protagonists/narrators are adolescents whose worlds are in some way a little magical. For example, there’s one story about a boy whose dad is a minotaur, and another about a boy who uses a pair of underwater goggles to look for the spirit of his dead sister.

Have you read any of these authors? What did you think?

Monday Amusements 6

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Photo by cometstarmoon

I haven’t done one of these in a while so you’ll find some of these links were posted two months ago! Enjoy!

Beth Bloom, author of Drain You, talked to Jamie of The Broke and the Bookish about 90’s culture and life as a teen in that decade. I was not a teenager until the year 2000, so I found it really interesting. On the same blog, Tahleen takes a literary trip to Hawaii is a great book list.

C.J. Daugherty has posted an extract from Night School: Legacy which has made me even more excited about its upcoming release. There is also enormous novelty value in the fact that I’ve actually read Night School – this is one of the few times since I started this blog that I’ve read the first book in a series before the promotion starts for the second!

Luisa Plaja shared her favourite 20th Century UKYA books. It can be easy to get swept up in the tide of new releases and forget about authors’ backlists, but I love reading about YA/teen fiction that isn’t so recent, and I’ve reviewed a fair bit of it myself.

I really liked Clover’s twist on the Top Ten Kick-Ass Heroines theme for Top Ten Tuesday.

For Halloween, For Book’s Sake gave us Beulah’s My Three Favourite Scary Sisters, and a Top 5 Short Story Collections for Halloween.

I missed seeing this in time to post it when you could still make a reservation, but isn’t this collection of clothing made from book-patterned fabric absolutely amazing? (Via Rie of The Awkward Turtle Breeding Ground, who also shared thatmadgirl’s plan for a fanfiction storytelling card game.


If you’re trying not to buy any more books for yourself in the run up to Christmas, SisterSpooky is here for you. But if you just can’t stop, Makeshift Bookmark presents Top Ten Rationales for Obsessive Book Buying.

On a more serious note, Cicely tackles the subject of slut-shaming in YA. Happily, I don’t come across it too often, especially in UKYA, but occasionally I will read a book in which the shy, self-deprecating, romantically-inexperienced protagonist has a mean-girl enemy that she, and apparently the author, considers to be too promiscuous. It’s not only wrong, but also lazy, to rely on outdated stereotypes of good girls vs bad girls for characterisation.

No favourite reviews this time, as I felt like I was promoting the same few blogs over and over again. They are of course wonderful, but variety is the spice of life. I have added a few new blogs to my RSS reader recently, so hopefully I’ll be turning the spotlight onto them next time.