The Most Influential YA of the Decade? + Girls, yay!

(Note: Kara says I should actually start a real blog about books, and have guest bloggers, and share my ~opinions~ about YA literature. The downside being that a) i’d have to open another blog that wasn’t named bookshop, which would just be a shame, and b) i couldn’t share my ~opinions~ with all of you guys. And by “share with” I mean “inflict upon.” but, yes, I HAVE BOOK OPINIONS AND I AM NOW GOING TO WORD THEM STRONGLY.)

okay, so, Justine Larbalestier (author of Liar! read it!), whose blog i kind of obsessively-sporadically follow, has a post up about Amazon’s list of “most influential YA of the decade.” I’m not linking to Amazon’s list because I don’t like you, Amazon.

So, basically, Amazon gave a lot of predictable answers and a lot of answers that weren’t so predictable, and listed a couple of writers who I don’t think deserve anywhere near the influence they have. BUT, most unforgivably, in my opinion, they left out:

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my modus operandi is amalgam.

Today I bought this shirt. This is either totally lame or totally awesome. It’s probably a bit of both, just like me.

There was nothing to do at work today; everyone who needs to be there was gone and the rest of us had little to do. I installed 13 Firefox skins on my computer, haha, and kept going back and forth between them. Do I want Black Japan or Pimpzilla. The choices in my life are so difficult.

This morning when my alarm clock went off to the strains of Super Junior, I wondered what day it was and realized with a mild shock that it was in fact the last day of the year. It’s weird, normally I at least get a little nostalgic at some point during the holidays; and you’d think since this has been my happiest year in a long time I’d've been more so – but no, I’m just kind of in this mode where I’m thinking, ‘well, okay, come on, 2008, let’s get on with it.’

Tonight I am ringing in the new year by myself, curled up on the couch with Chinese food, Starbucks ice cream, a stack of dvds, and my laptop. I’m cozy and comfy, and it dawned on me suddenly, as I was driving through the rainy evening earlier listening to Fujiwara Motoo seduce me into a state of nostalgia with his voice, that I am completely content right now. This has been a quiet year, but it’s been the most monumental year for me of the 2000s in a lot of ways. This was the year I finally learned to stop looking back. This was the year I finally learned to stop living with one eye over my shoulder and one foot poised to go down some other path. This was the year I finally decided that if I wasn’t going to show myself any respect then I’d never be able to ask it from anyone else. This was the year I finally let myself want something. This was the year I finally went out and got what I fucking wanted for myself.

It was also the year I burned a t-shirt and left livejournal forever and came back 3 months later with my tail between my legs, but you know what? Even the act of going “fuck this, I’m out of here” was empowering on a fundamental level for me. I’m not the same person I was when I left. And now I can honestly say that I’ve done one truly stupid no-holds-barred embarrassing thing on video that I will never live down. Which, I mean. There are plenty of more embarrassing things I could have done on video. Let the lesson of this new year be that we should all count ourselves lucky for that.

Here is my year, in fandoms.

January:

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Five OTPs, and how (this post) grew.

This was supposed to be a short post and it just took off and turned into a post about why i slash, what i slash, and how i slash it. It started out with a simple, okay, seriously. Shindou and Touya are so in love why is this fandom not churning out a MILLION FICS A DAY. They arguably are the biggest canon ship that ever sashayed its way into a canon without ever exchanging a kiss.

I’m going to talk about what I mean when I throw out terms like “canon slash.” I have this sort of vehement belief that ALL of my, uh, current major ships, i guess, are basically as slashy as you can get in canon without actually being gay. So this is long and rambly, but it’s basically me going on about how Hikaru no Go’s OTP is more beautifully OTP than anything, and specifically, why given a number of infinitely slashy canons, Hikago still manages to be infinitely more slashy than ALL of them.

I discuss at length Nobuta, House, Prince of Tennis, Hikaru no Go, and Harry/Draco below (with gratuitous references to SV, SGA, SPN and any other S-show I can think of), so there are very mild vague spoilers for the end-dynamics of shows that have ended. I don’t know how you compare five such different fandoms to each other in terms of content, but when you examine them in terms of shipping, it actually breaks down pretty easily.

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Protected:

T

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Korete DESTINY? [Reccing Nobuta Wo Produce.]

I‘ve been telling individuals for the longest time that I was planning to rec this show. And so, finally, after months, a proper rec of the show that I love – oh. So very, very much.

The Least You Need To Know:
Nobuta wo Produce is perhaps the most beautiful thing you will ever see on screen. Ever. In Your Entire. Life.

Supporting evidence:

• The comments to this post.
• Posts where other people have watched Nobuta and have basically felt exactly the same way about it that I did.
  Nobuta Wo Produce:
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  Posted by bookshop on Jan 15, 2007 in i heart japan, nwp | 0 comments