The Librarian Writer

Title: Butter Author: Erin Jade Lange Publisher: Bloomsbury Publication Date: September 4, 2012 ISBN-13: 978-1599907802 304 pp. ARC from publisher via Netgalley "Butter" is the nickname of a teenage boy who pushes the scale past 400 lbs. He goes to high school in a wealthy suburb of Phoenix where he's invisible. Even though he's there, bigger than life, so to speak, everyone deals with him by pretending he doesn't exist. Until one day, he becomes the center of (unwelcome) attention. And Butter's response is to put up a website called ButtersLastMeal.com where he promises to eat himself to death live on the Internet. Instead of the disgust, or even indifference, he was expecting, Butter finds himself becoming part of the "in" crowd as they take bets on whether or not he goes through with it. This is an amazing debut by Erin Jade Lange, who creates beautifully flawed characters, starting with Butter. Butter has a hilarious voice...

Thanks to everyone who stopped by my blog during the ALA Swag Giveaway ! An especially big thanks to everyone who helped spread the word! The winners have been chosen via Random.org and they are: LizGotauco JenBax star_chaser76 Congratulations, winners! You will be receiving an email shortly from me requesting your address.

In case you haven't heard about it, there's an awesome online conference called WriteOnCon . First of all, it's FREE! While most conferences cost several hundred dollars just for registration, let alone airfare and hotel, WriteOnCon costs nothing. All you have to do is register and you're in. Easy peasy. And then there are the Ninja Agents. You leave your query or first pages online for feedback from other conferencees, but you never know when one of the Ninja Agents might leave feedback ... or even a request! If that's not enough awesome for you, then there are the real-time chats with agents, editors, and authors. If you can't be there in real-time, all the chats are archived. It all starts tomorrow, August 13, as the forums open for submissions. This is a great time to test the waters on your picture book, MG, or YA manuscript. August 14 and August 15 are jam-packed with all the great chats, starting from 6 a.m. EST and going on until 9 p.m. EST. ...

"This is why I don't fall down holes." Oh, summer, why are your lazy days so ... not? Summer has been busy, busy, busy and finding time to read has been hard, hard, hard. I'm still working on Cory Doctorow's Little Brother . Still working on Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird . Still working on The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There were a couple of books that I started and then abandoned. One was too boring and the other was too gritty (after 200 pages in and more and more awful things happen to the protagonist, I couldn't take it anymore). But I did read Butter by Erin Jade Lange (review forthcoming) and Bushman Lives! by Daniel Pinkwater (review also forthcoming). I also had time to squeeze in the delightful graphic novel Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol. Anya is a high school student who wants to fit in and is perpetually embarrassed by her immigrant family. She has only one (crappy) friend and a crush on a popular boy. Then she fa...