If you're coming here from Scottsdale Business + Life magazine, welcome aboard! I'm grateful to editor Elizabeth Hughes for her flattering profile of me. (See page 22.) Please feel free to learn more about us, whether you're visiting us for business or pleasure. As for our regular readers … squeee! I've been profiled in a magazine. Enjoy!
Monday Monday
Not my favorite day of the week. I've already made one boo-boo. I was deleting comment spam (how much do I hate those people? Honestly, if you want to peddle your knock-off Uggs, buy a freaking ad!) and I accidentally deleted a legitimate comment. If it's yours, please repost it. Sorry! Also, our fabulous teen nonfiction organizer, Gina Ruiz, is …
Review
Feynman by Jim Ottaviani
I've never met David Elzey at Guys Lit Wire, but he must be one hunk of a blogger. Every year, and I mean every year, I break up fights among my (all-female) organizers over him. I saw him first! You had him last year! MEOW. Then there was the year two organizers duked it out while a third went behind …
Review
The Shattering by Karen Healey
It's back to book reviews! Today we're beginning a series by Round 2 judges, and all of them will be for titles on our short lists. Please note: these reviews were posted before the finalists came out and are taken from the bloggers' archives. We don't allow Round 2 judges to post new reviews of finalists in their genre during …
A few more
Author reactions are still trickling in as they get word they made the Cybils finals. Here's the original post on that. Add to that Stephanie Perkins typing a giant Eeeeep! after learning Anna and the French Kiss was shortlisted in Young Adult Fiction: Oh, man! This is the biggest honor that Anna has received, and I couldn't be more over-the-moon. …
The ones that got away*
*Hat tip to Catherine Nichols for the title of this post, which I blatantly stole. Our panelists had the Herculean task of winnowing down a long list of nominees to this year's batch of finalists. We asked them to fight for their favorites and some of the discussions became the online equivalent of sparring matches. Very, very polite sparring matches, …
RIFfing with Cybils
I'm a big fan of Reading is Fundamental, and not just because I've met leader Carol Rasco and she's as amazing as you'd expect. She's one part missionary, one part Southern Belle and about 50 parts Energizer Bunny. RIF puts books in the hands of kids who really need them, kids like me when I was wee. I have some …
Stuff that makes me cry
I am a sentimental fool. I just am. I refuse to cry at funerals because I think I should be all stoic, even when my heart is breaking. But when I hear the words "thank you," I start to sob all over myself. It's embarrassing. Who does this to be thanked? Not me. I do it to fill up the …
Big hugs …
… to all our hard-working panelists, who slaved these last few months to plow through more than 1,200 books. You folks are amazing! Cybils couldn't exist without all of you. I know your own blogs suffered, so here's a little something I'd like to do for all of you. If you were a Round 1 judge this year, I bet …
The 2011 Cybils Finalists
This was the year the Kindle caught Fire, the Nook fought for its niche, Borders went belly up and ebooks overtook their dead tree cousins for good. But for us here at Cybils, it was another year of reading, blogging and more reading. Whether on paper or in pixels, we found plenty of stories worth sharing with the world. By …