Five More Contemporary YA Books to Read Before YALC

YALC is in ELEVEN DAYS TIME! But don't worry, there's still time to get some reading done...maybe just a little if you've got to work! If you want some moral support, the YALC Readathon Challenge is still open, and if my first recommendations post wasn't enough, I am here for you:

1. Counting Stars, by Keris Stainton

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Counting Stars is at the older end of YA, it could be called NA (New Adult), and it is my favourite of Keris' books that I've read so far. It follows Anna who moves to Liverpool after she finishes school to move into a shared house and work at a theatre, keeping her YouTube channel going all the while. Anna and her housemates deal with adulthood in very different ways, and it was really interesting and entertaining to see them work their way through grown-up problems for the first time. I wrote a draft of a NA novel last year and Counting Stars, although quite different from what I'm working on, confirmed my belief that it's important that we have more books featuring characters of this age. Keris will be leading a workshop on Writing YA on the Saturday at YALC.

2. Hacker, by Malorie Blackman


This is a really quick read so ideal if you haven't got much reading time in the next couple of weeks! Vicky's father, a programmer at a bank, is wrongfully accused of stealing a million pounds. To clear his name, she logs into the bank's system and tries to work out what has been going on. It was first published in 1992, so it is a bit dated - for a more detailed explanation, watch the video above - but it's still a quick read, ideal for younger teens.

3. Remix, by Non Pratt

Non will be joining Sophia Bennett on the 'Teenage Soundtrack: Music in YA' panel, and rightly so, as Remix is all about the power of music to bring friends together. I made it sound totally cheesy then, didn't I? It's not, I promise! Remix is about best friends, Kaz and Ruby, who are going to a music festival together. Their favourite band in the world is playing, and a bunch of their friends are going. In theory, this should be the perfect break from normality, but both of them have secrets they're trying not to let slip out... I did a full review of Remix here.

4. Lobsters, by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison

Another book featuring a music festival is Lobsters, but it's quite different in tone - Remix is more serious, full of friendship and romantic dramas, whereas Lobsters is very much a heartwarming romantic comedy. The tag line is 'A socially awkward love story' and that is exactly what you get, as Sam and Hannah try and fail and try again to get together. It's very funny. In fact, I don't think I've stopped laughing at it and I read it months ago - lines from the book pop into my head sometimes and I start cracking up all over again. I would share my favourite line, the one I laugh at the most, but I don't want to spoil it for you. Just read it for yourself! The authors are leading a workshop on co-writing.

5. Nobody's Girl, by Sarra Manning

If festivals aren't your thing, why not take a trip to Paris with Bea, who has been obsessed with France ever since her mum first told her that her absent father was a Parisien. When she gets the chance to explore Paris for real, she can't resist - even though she was meant to be in Spain with her school's Mean Girl clique. She finds romance and adventure and gets into a lot of trouble with her mum. My full review is here.

Have you read any of these? If you haven't, get on it! While we're having this heatwave, why not roll with it and take copies of Remix and or Lobsters to the park? Go on! Join the Readathon!

Many thanks to Hot Key Books for sending me a copy of Counting Stars and to Walker Books for sending me Remix.

Five Contemporary YA Books to Read before YALC

As host of the 2016 YALC Readathon Challenge I've been thinking a lot about what books I would recommend by authors attending YALC. Hopefully I'll do several posts in this series, but I thought I'd start with five contemporary YA books, as that is my favourite genre!

1. Girl Out of Water, by Nat Luurtsema

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This is the first book I read for the YALC Readathon Challenge (go on, join me!) and it was a great way to *PUN ALERT* dive in - Girl Out of Water follows Lou Brown's attempts to find new friends and a new place in the world following her failure to get into Olympic swimming school.
It's funny (Nat is on the Funny YA panel), heartwarming, and deals with an issue I think is underexplored in fiction - coping with failure. Not everyone is going to succeed against all the odds. Sometimes the odds are never in your favour - and you keep going, like Lou learns to do.

2. Love Song, by Sophia Bennett

I have read some amazing books so far this year and plan to read many more - but I'm sure whatever happens this will be in my top five. I was not expecting to fall in love with a story about a girl who goes on tour with a boyband, but reader, I fell HARD.

I am finding @sophiabennett's Love Song so unputdownable I am literally reading it while I #ukyachat. Not even kidding I'm on page 156

— Julianne Benford (@ladyjulianne) April 8, 2016

@SnugglingonSofa @sophiabennett I basically had to abandon my own writing to finish it because it was so addictive! I even ignored Two Dots!

— Julianne Benford (@ladyjulianne) April 11, 2016

I am really looking forward to the Music in YA panel!

3. London Belongs to Us, by Sarra Manning

Both Sarra Manning's 2016 releases. View on Instagram

If you've never read any books by Sarra before this is a great place to start - though if you're spoiler-averse you may want to read Guitar Girl and Adorkable first. An enormously entertaining love letter to London filled with snappy one-liners, it follows Sunny's pursuit of her wayward boyfriend (or is he ex-boyfriend?) over one night and features pastries, parties, perilous road journeys, dramatic confrontations and hairspray. There are also several girls you'll wish you could be friends with - highly appropriate as Sarra is on the #SquadGoals panel.

4. Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan
Look at my beautiful hardback. Just look at it.

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If just gazing at the cover isn't enough to make you pick it up, this is an LGBT classic. It's a pretty straightfoward romance story with the usual tropes but it's set at a school where there isn't really any homophobia - it's a utopian vision of what school should be like, and although it's not realistic, it's lovely to disappear into a world where things are a little more as they should be.

5. My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend, by Eleanor Wood

From my 'Music March'. View on Instagram

This is a funny and surprisingly realistic story about Tuesday Cooper, a music blogger who starts getting comments from her favourite rockstar. One thing leads to another and he becomes the secret boyfriend of the title, getting her into trouble with friends and family alike. It's really interesting seeing how she deals with the mess she's in and moves towards adulthood.
What books by YALC authors do you recommend? Would you choose different books by these authors? Let me know! And don't forget to vote for your favourites!

The YALC Readathon Challenge 2016

There are two inspirations behind this bookish bonanza - traditional reading challenges, which I don't think have been done before for YALC, and the YALC Readathon, which was previously run by Jess Hearts Books (the creator), Michelle from Fluttering Butterflies, Vicky from Books, Biscuits and Tea, and Carly from Writing from the Tub.

I originally planned to start a YALC Reading Challenge months ago, because of the sheer number of authors who are going to be at YALC (the Young Adult Literature Convention) this year. I have a LOT of reading to do. And so have you! There are some amazing people on the list with fantastic titles under their belt.

However, I then got the flu. I could barely use my computer for the best part of three weeks thanks to muscle pain and fatigue that my doctor insisted was completely normal! Sure enough, I did eventually get better, but now I've lost so much time I decided to combine both ideas, and host the first Readathon Challenge!

Enough about me, onto the rules:

The books that you read for the 2016 YALC Readathon Challenge must be by authors who are appearing at YALC this year. You can see the list of authors who have been confirmed so far here. I also run the annual YALC Goodreads list, where you can vote for your favourite reads.

If you're unable to attend YALC this year, you can still take part in the challenge - there will be a lot of livetweeting during the convention! If you're not in the UK, why not sign up and sample some of the finest authors the British Isles have to offer, as well as some internationally successful reads?

This Readathon Challenge is open from today (3 June 2016) until the final day of YALC (31 July 2016).

Decided to take part?

Step One
Choose how long you want to readathon for - a weekend, a week, a fortnight, a month, from now until the 31st July, a single evening - it's up to you!

Step Two
Choose your level:
Convention Intention - read 1-4 books by authors who are appearing at YALC
Convention Attention - read 5-15 books by authors who are appearing at YALC
Convention Affection - read 16-25 books by authors who are appearing at YALC
Convention Perfection - read 26+ books by authors who are appearing at YALC

You can increase your level if you find yourself reading faster than you expected!

Step Three (optional)
Choose a Bonus Challenge, if you'd like, or more than one if you're feeling brave:

Happy Historian - previously, at YALC... read two or more books by an author who has appeared at YALC in the past and won't be there this year
Brilliant Bookswapper - read two or more books that you want to give away to another blogger or donate to the YALC bookswap
Radiant Reviewer - review two or more books by authors who are appearing at YALC

Step Four
Submit your link below!


If you have a blog, please link to a post that says what level and bonus challenge you have chosen, or update your reading challenges list, if like me, you keep them all in one place. You don't have to be a blogger to take part - if you don't have a blog, you can link to your Twitter or Goodreads instead. You can use the banner above if you wish :)

Personally, I am going to choose the Convention Attention level, and I'm hoping to read the following:

It's going well, I'm already part-way through Girl Out of Water and loving it!

After YALC I will do a post and link to my favourite reviews by people taking part in the challenge. You can also tweet about the challenge and share your progress by using the hashtag #yalcread

I hope you decide to take part in the YALC Readathon Challenge and have an amazing time!

Edited to add, here's a quick video in which I talk about the challenge:

Please note that the YALC Readathon Challenge is unofficial - I have no professional connection with Showmasters or Booktrust.

YALC Day One and Bookish Brits Vlog 18

It's the 22nd August, over a month after the event, and I think I am finally recovering from the whirlwind of bookish wonder that was the first Young Adult Literature Convention! Yes, it's taken that long. It was just so inspiring and interesting and exhausting...but wait - I'll start at the beginning.

I packed up my bag on the Friday night with our pretty new Bookish Brits business cards:

And I went to bed at what I thought would be an early enough time, setting my alarm for what I thought would be an early enough time. In the morning I put on my hipster dress and a blue hair thing. I took photos on the train so people from Twitter would recognise me.

Also on the train I read a lot of tweets about the length of the queue. I had a copy of Red Glove by Holly Black with me, so I wasn't too concerned about it. But I was not prepared for this (video by Tim Wood):


It felt like I had to walk forever just to find the end of the queue. I thought I'd reached it several times before I finally got to the end. At one point one of the LFCC staff asked me and two girls nearby if it was the queue for Early Bird ticketholders. "I hope so!" was my incredulous response. On the plus side, I managed to read quite a lot of Red Glove as I walked. I also got to see some amazing cosplay that I might not have been able to get such a good view of while inside the convention, as it was so busy.

Finally I got inside and headed for the Book Zone as quickly as I could. But I was stuck in a massive crowd for a few minutes. It was somewhere between moshpit and the Crystal Palace Fireworks for crowdedness. Not great. Eventually I managed to push my way through and marched through stalls and autograph areas until I could get to a) the loos and b) the Book Zone!

The Book Zone was a much calmer, more relaxed area. People were hanging around picking up flyers and posters and badges, chatting, and admiring the fabulous book wall.

I queued up with the simple dream of collecting a ticket for every panel discussion. I LOVE panel discussions. I may be the number one fan of the concept of panel discussions. Unfortunately I had arrived too late (it was now about quarter to eleven, I arrived at Earl's Court at about 9:30) to get a ticket for the first panel, It's the end of the world as we know it: the ongoing appeal of dystopia (with Malorie Blackman, Sarah Crossan, Patrick Ness and James Smythe), but all the others were up for grabs. On the plus side, if you didn't have a ticket, you were still allowed to stand at the back and watch, which is what I did. The microphones were a bit dodgy during the first panel, so I didn't hear everything. I did hear most of what Malorie Blackman said, though, and I loved that she had come in costume!

The second panel was Going graphic: from novels to graphic novels with Ian Edginton, Marcus Sedgwick and Emma Vieceli, and chaired by Sarah McIntyre. I sat quite near the front for this one. It was really interesting, all about the process of adapting novels to graphic novels, and how it is different from creating a new story from scratch. I'm currently deciding whether I should write up my notes from the panels and make a post about each one. Let me know if this is something you would be interested in reading.

Superfans unite! was the third panel and one of the most popular panels of the whole weekend, thanks to the presence of the one and only Rainbow Rowell. I actually didn't take any notes during this panel because it was more of a fun, celebratory Q&A-based event. The audience asked loads of funny, thoughtful questions. The other panelists were Tim O'Rourke and Lucy Saxon, and it was chaired by Andy Robb. Lucy Saxon was dressed as Captain America and she looked AMAZING.

After that panel finished most people went off to queue to get Rainbow Rowell to sign their books but I'd borrowed Fangirl from the library so instead I went to join a very different kind of queue, the almost-as-long queue for the loos. At this point I was also really thirsty and had drunk most of my water, but the queue for the only food and drink outlet was even longer. This was a real problem. I think it was very irresponsible of the LFCC to have only one place where attendees could get water, especially on such a hot day. The queue was still terrible when I left the toilets so I decided to ration out the rest of the water I'd brought with me, and went to sit back down in the panel area.

Thanks to the loo queue I missed at least half of the fourth panel, Regenerating the Doctor: reimagining famous characters, so when I sat down it took me a while to catch on to what the speakers were discussing. What I did manage to hear was really interesting so it was a shame I couldn't get to listen to the whole thing. It was great that the YALC organisers managed to squeeze so many wonderful panels into two days, but after going to Nine Worlds recently, where there was a half hour gap inbetween panels, rather than the 15 minutes allowed by YALC, I have started to think that maybe it would be better to have maybe one less panel and longer breaks, for the comfort of the people attending.

The last panel I went to was Bring me my dragons: writing fantasy today with Frances Hardinge, Amy McCulloch, Jonathan Stroud and Ruth Warburton, chaired by Marc Aplin. I was sitting next to Imogen Russell Williams during this panel (as I was during most of the panels, because I have great taste when it comes to choosing who to sit next to) and she was telling me before it started how amazing Frances Hardinge's books are, and I have to say that thanks to that and Frances' own description of her books I am convinced that I must read them all now! I was too awestruck to even attempt to write down how Frances Hardinge described her work. It was that good a description. She was also really interesting and amusing during the panel. To the library!

I ended YALC day one by going to the Getting started with graphic novels workshop with Emma Vieceli. I wasn't expecting to learn very much in 45 minutes but it was fabulous and it made me want to draw. The only problem was not with the workshop content but with the fact that the workshops took place in a area off to one side in the Book Zone. It was very difficult to hear the workshop leaders talk because they didn't have microphones and we were surrounded by all the general convention noise. If there had even been some of those temporary walls around it that might have helped shield it a little. Alternatively they could give the workshop leaders microphones and then people who weren't taking part could listen in too, which I know a lot of people wanted to do.

After the workshop I joined some other bloggers who were waiting for the last panel to end and for the signings to be over so that we could head for the YALC Fringe event in a nearby pub! I was so excited to drink this.

That's just cranberry juice but I drank it with such delight that it could have been the best prosecco in all the land. I also had several pints of water and a much-appreciated burger. I talked to both bloggers and authors, though not nearly enough of them. I was having a really good time and there were more people I wanted to say hello to but I was suddenly so incredibly tired.

And I knew that the next day, I was going to have to get up earlier and try to get there a lot earlier so that I could be sure of getting a ticket for every panel this time. There was no way I was going to miss out on tickets for the I'm too sexy for this book! panel, or the Sisters doing it for themselves panel, or for Holly Black & Sally Gardner in conversation...

I decided to say goodbye to as many people as I could and sneak out before I could fall asleep at a table and drool on somebody's raffle prize (books, natch). I went home, set my alarm for quarter to six (!!!), and went to bed.

I'll leave you for today with my eighteenth Bookish Brits video. It's a bit long, but it summarises (errr..sort of) everything I could possibly have to say about YALC! Good, bad, and hopeful :)

Bookish Brits Vlog 17: Tips for Getting the Most Out of YALC and Other Conventions/Events

Come one, come all. Learn from my mistakes. Prepare yourself for YALC. Hear me do an impression of the Family Fortunes incorrect-answer noise.

Let me know what your top tips are in the comments below or tweet @BookishBrits and then I'll retweet them!

A few weeks ago I made a list on Goodreads for the YA books by YALC-attending authors. 

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