Bookburger

not your teacher's summer reading list

Hey, Memorial Day is history and summer is really truly officially here! Your friendly burger flippers are wriggling into their tube tops, streaking their hair with lemon juice, and offering these suggestions for summer reading. Not to knock To Kill a Mockingbird and Daisy Miller...but we're talking here about books that Mr. Atwood, our favorite English teacher back at Walt Whitman High, would NOT have given us credit for:

Blue Bloods by Melissa De La Cruz: rich kids in new york find out they're vampire spawn!

Pool Boys by Erin Haft: rich kids at the country club...as bitchy as they wanna be, and skimping on the spf!

Major Crush by Jennifer Echols: a drum majorette in love! This one comes out August 1. We're gonna be twirling our baton and marching right down to our local independent bookshop when that day arrives. (Seriously. We own a baton.)

Bass Ackwards and Belly Up by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain: four high school grads forget college and chase their dreams instead--writing, skiing, hooking up with A-list actors, dabbling in Eurotrash romances. Oh man---while the rest of us are taking comp classes and gaining the freshman 15, these girls are living la dolce vita. So not fair.

OK, that's a start...now name your top picks for the hot season, lovely burgerites-- Readers with a long steamy summer ahead need to know!

What the...?

The other day I walked into a Barnes and Noble to sign some stock of my book, Sixth-Grade Glommers, Norks, and Me, which looks like this:

"Oh!" said the manager. "We have a bunch of them. Right this way!" Now, it didn't surprise me that they had a number of copies of my book, as I had called ahead to tell them that I was giving a presentation at the the school up the block and that there would no doubt be a stampede of eager children rushing to the store after school to purchase a copy. However, I WAS surprised when the manager led me right to a display of Tony Abbott's new book, Firegirl, which looks like this: 

Little, Brown, hands OFF my red paper-doll cover, yo! That's just rude. Get your own concept!

Covergirl--let's hear it. Am I right, or am I right?

From the stranger than fiction dept.

Ok...we're all about the books here at the burger...but we can't let last night's AI go by without commenting on the eerie physical similarity between Prince and Paula Abdul. They could almost be the same person...except for the fact that Prince is ultra-talented and Paula is ultra-not. We think a lot of children watching last night's show were quite confused...We could go on about what a royally out-there show it was last night.But we won't. We're too worn out. In fact, we're tacking a few days on to the long weekend just to recover. We'll be back next week! In the meantime, check out the very funny recap of AI on the fabulous Sarah Dessen's blog.

What a blast!

Our very first B-list Blast went zinging out today to all members of the b-list! It was a beautiful thing...

AND NOW there's only one way to win our next fabulous prize--the 4-disc audio version of e. lockhart's Fly on the Wall--just sign up for the B-list... over there on the right side of the page. Oh and it's free, too.

Also, big congrats to our first ever giveaway winners: Julia, who won the audio version of Meg Cabot's newest, Party Princess, and Lisa, who scored a hardcover edition of ttfn by Lauren  Myracle, which we heard has just hit the bestseller list. Tee hee, giving away stuff is SO fun!

between the buns with... e lockhart

We are in awe of  e lockhart, author of the could-be-called-a-modern-classic The Boyfriend List and the brand-spanking-new Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything. Not only is she a freakin' good writer--her books are lovely and also make you laugh out loud in a way that attracts curious glances from strangers--but she's a good egg. Have you seen her blog? She's linked with tons of other YA writers, spreading the love around...she's savvy, sweet, and supercool. So that's why we chose her as the victim--we mean subject--of our VERY FIRST BURGER POP QUIZ. We feel like this special email chat should have a special name...so we'll call it  between the buns with e lockhart. Here's how it went down:

Who is your favorite writer that most people have never heard of?

  Here are two I think my readers in particular might love: Anita Loos. Wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  She was a tiny powerhouse of a woman, fantastically witty -- and that book in particular is a masterpiece of comic voice.

Dodie Smith.  Wrote I Capture the Castle, which is one of my favorite books. It is beautiful and eccentric and comical and just so very satisfying. She also wrote 101 Dalmations, by the way.

What kid or teen books rocked your world growing up?

    Pippi Longstocking. I loved how fearless she was, and how independent. And ridiculous.  Later,  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. When I read that book, I felt this incredible joy jolt.

Describe your ideal place to write.

My office. Which is a closet, basically. Piles of books and coffee cups and a few furry animals. Total silence, if I can get it.

OK, e. Imagine your life is a TV series. Name the theme song, one event that would be on the "best of" episode, and one that would be on the blooper reel.
   

Theme Song:  "Anything Goes," by Cole Porter. In case you don't know it, the lyrics go:  In olden days, a glimpse of stocking/Was looked on as something shocking, But now God knows/Anything goes!  Good authors too who once knew better words/Now only use four-letter words/Writing prose/Anything goes.

Best of Episode:  E. goes on book tour with fellow teen titans (that is, writers) Simon Cheshire, Jen Bryant and Tanya Lee Stone. Tanya and E. get hyped up on chocolate cake at a swank luncheon and convince conservative booksellers  that it is okay to write about sex for teenagers. The naysayers vanquished, all teen titans squish in a car for a long ride and E. irritates everyone by complaining about the sensation of tingling in her tushie, which they agree to term "monkey butt."

Bloopers: E. is caught, once again, at 2:30 in the afternoon, not having taken a shower and still wearing her pajamas. It is not a pretty sight.

Burger-flippers want to know: have you ever had a job that required you to wear a geeky uniform? Details, please!

No officially mandated uniform, no.  But I did work in a Birkenstock shoe store and had to wear the Birks!  Also I taught aerobics for a number of years in my 20s, and though no one forced me to wear those outfits, I certainly cringe when I recall them.

We'd like to name a burger in your honor.  What kind of fixins should it have?

I am a vegetarian, Bookburger!   Like Roo in The Boyfriend List.  I object to industrialized farming and I can't support it. So I'm all about the well-spiced VEGGIE burger, topped with blue cheese, lettuce, dijon mustard and extra pickles.

So there you have it, burgerlings. A heart-to-heart with e lockhart via email. We'll be poppin quizzes on lots of your faves in upcoming weeks...so stay tuned. And by the way, e, while we love a beefy read, we mack on the veggie burgers too. We'll be proud to serve up the "e-burger" as our very first house speciality.

That poor horse!

We at bookburger were horse-loving tykes as little girls...Misty of Chincoteague and The Black Stallion were IMPORTANT books to us. So we were pretty upset this weekend when we heard about Barbaro, the racehorse who broke his ankle during the Preakness. How tragic! And we were happy this morning when we saw on google news that he's doing better and will probably live to be a STUD.
Yay! In honor of Barbaro, then, and Alison Pace's Pug Hill, we bring you this funny animal picture. Get well soon, Barbaro--so you can start hooking up with the fillies!

Writing songs...

has got to be the coolest skill ever. We're wordy here at the burger, so we kinda get how you might write lyrics, but we've never really understood how anyone can come up with a tune. That's why we think Nerissa Nields is more than a bit awesome. Her novel, Plastic Angel, is this addictive story about two girls who escape their troubles by starting a band...and the greatest thing is it comes with a free CD of rockin songs that relate to the story and that Nerissa also wrote, and plays, and sings! This  book kind of got overlooked last year. Order it, read it, play the music. Then come back here and thank us.

ps...re the post below...

we forgot to say that we are reading Ally's new book and it's hilarious and action-packed and just a read and a half...it's about a girl who's being trained to be an elite spy...and of course we could totally relate because we burger-flippers are also elite spies!

how does she do it?

We're talking about Ally Carter...we've been reading her diary. And we want to know: how is she able to get multiple books written while keeping tabs on like fifty-two different TV shows? Ally, do you do your homework in front of the TV? Anyhow, we totally agree with what she says about these shows:

THE CLOSER—wow. This is a great show by any standards if you ask me. Keira Sedgwick deserves an Emmy. No doubt about it.

 RESCUE ME—I want to hate this show. I want to hate the guys on it. I want to be offended and repulsed, but I can’t because it’s just too true, too right, to dead-on and interesting to do anything but set the Tivo and enjoy.

And once summer really kicks in, we promise to give Veronica Mars another look...if you think it's that good, Ally, we'll give it another shot. And we'll have a hole in our viewing schedule after the LAMEST SEASON EVER OF AMERICAN IDOL is over.

      

It's Lisa Papa's pub date!

Set off some fireworks! Wave your hands in the air like you just don't care! But really you DO care...that today "The Wizard, the Witch and Two Girls from Jersey" hits the shelves. We are SO proud  of own Ms. Papademetriou. Here at Bookburger HQ, it's been a nonstop party all day long...(in our heads, anyhow). So check out the book here....and be glad that there are more to come...girlfriend's on a roll and has a bunch of other novels in the  pipeline coming out from a few different publishers. Lisa P's one to watch. And we're not just saying that because she's a fellow burger flipper. It's the actual truth.

XXX-Men?

Comics people, beware! According to PWOnline, tomorrow is Gordon Lee's new arraignment date. Who's he? He's a dude unfortunate enough to own a comic store in Rome, Georgia. In the fall of 2004, he accidentally sold a "comic book containing a nude depiction of Picasso to two minors." (Whaa? A nude depiction of PICASSO? Just what kind of comic book store is this?)

To add bizarre to the weird, Mr. Lee is now being defended by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Wow. In the slightly-altered words of the immortal band Quiet Riot, you've got to FIGHT! For your RIGHT! To buuuuy comics featuring scantily-clad superheroines and/ or visionary artists!

want to kiss a writer?

there's a whole slew of them hanging out in DC starting tomorrow at this HUGE convention called BookExpo America. You know, funny hats, getting tipsy in hotel bars...writers LOVE that stuff! So burgerites, dress up like a cater waiter, sneak in, and get close to Meg Cabot, Megan McCafferty, and Allison Janse, America's number-one germ freak (well, don't get close to her).

We'd do it, but we'll be too busy recovering from the "top three" episode of AI. Yes, we are partial to Taylor, but we are NOT, repeat NOT, part of the so-called "Soul Patrol."

Hey! I just found out...

that May is National Hamburger Month! How lovely of America to honor us this way! Thank you all!

"AWWWW" alert

Alison Pace, author of the new Pug Hill, is encouraging you to post UNBELIEVABLY adorable photos of your pugs (or other, not-nearly-as-flat-faced dogs) on her amazon.com page. You will melt when you see the photos already up there. It made us look at bookburger mascot Ruby, a long, pointy-nosed kind of pup, and wish for just a moment that she were a little puglier.

It's Covergirl...

yes, it's me again...back for another fabulously shallow post in which i judge new books by their covers.

This week, I will certainly NOT be shelling out my hard-earned dollars on this book:
It's Everyman, by Philip Roth. Yeah, Phil, I know you're a pretty big name, and I heard that this book is all about how it sucks to get really old and see your friends die (yes, Covergirl reads the New York Times too--well, skims it at least--) but jeez, does that mean you have to make your cover look a like funeral? Heck, even the etiquette books say it's ok to pay your last respects in navy or even a pretty yet subdued burgundy...maybe accessorized with a chic hat...

So cheer up, Phil! You're still a player! You're still selling books and winning awards! Enjoy life for once, and would it kill you to put some daisies or a nice slice of pie or a cute little dog on your next book's jacket?

Covergirl WILL be buying this book:
Total adorability! Kudos to you, Brad Barkley and Heather Hepler, authors of Scrambled Eggs at Midnight...and the nameless person who made your book's look!

It's white, it's bright, and it's very all right with Covergirl. It looks so tasty...I might even read this one!

Ciao for now! See ya next week...
skin-deeply yrs,
Covergirl

do you haiku?

say what, babe? you do?
how awesome. We do too.
write one now! win big!

Yes, it's raining (again) here at bookburger hq, and we're feeling moody and poetic. So we decided to start our first haiku contest. We happen to LOVE haiku. Especially if it's silly and ridiculous and makes us laugh.

So send us a silly haiku about your life.  (In case you don't know, a haiku is a poem in three lines--first and third line have 5 syllables, middle line has 7.)

Prizes:  We're giving away three $20 gift certificates to Amazon.com.

NOT BAD, eh?

Email your entries to mail at bookburger.com (we write it out like that to avoid evil spammers--just replace the "at" with one of those little @ thingies).

The contest ends May 31, 2006. We'll announce the winners in the B-List newsletter!

No More BYOB!

Guess what, burgerites? Come Christmas, Starbucks is going to start selling books in its stores! That's right--it's no more Bring Your Own Book for the Coffee Nation. Why waste time choosing from thousands of titles at Barnes and Noble and then schlepping to their in-store Starbucks cafe when you can choose from the ten titles Starbucks slaps on a rack *right next to* the register? But here's the Bookburger Question--do they already come with coffee rings on the pages? Or do you have to add your own?

Teens choose bookburger over "Two and a Half Men"

hey...we just read that one in four teens can't name the four major broadcast networks...you know...Fox, NBC, ABC, and that other one? 84 percent say they spend their spare time surfing the Web instead... you mean you'd rather be hanging with us than watching this dude's two-part season finale tonight?

Giving as good as she gets

We didn't know this when our own Covergirl singled out Justina Chen Headley's lovely book jacket for praise in an earlier post...but Justina doesn't just bestow us with books...the girl gives out money, too! Ok, that's kind of amazing. Hey, Brownie , where's your scholarship fund?

"This sucks!" says author of teen vampire novel...

Mari Mancusi, one of bookburger's myspace friends, is not happy about her book's distribution, and she's bi†ing back in her blog. And we totally understand why. When we hear readers saying "I went to buy your book and it wasn't in the store!" it makes us want to put a stake through the heårt of the nearest publishing company executive. So get angry Mari...we hear you. And the good news...the book is available online...like here.

do you like to gaze at the author photo

and have an imaginary conversation with the author when you've finished a really great book? Ok, maybe it's just us who does that...but anyhow,  Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Prom and the amazing Speak is letting us, her readers, choose her next book-jacket photo. Cool, right? Go check out her photos and vote. We like number 4---she looks regal and mysterious...

Chick-with-baby-lit...

was always inevitable...even wild fictional girls are eventually compelled to settle down and reproduce. Emily Giffin, author of Something Borrowed and Something Blue, is now birthing Babyproof...and it's mentioned in the NY Post...it caught gossip fossil Cindy Adam's attention because Cynthia Nixon (the chick-with-baby from Sex and the City) is reading the audio version...

We know the pain...

of being a brunette cheerleader. Well, I know the pain (I can't speak for lisapapa, my co-blogger, who's somewhat less dark-haired than me). I WAS a non-blonde cheerleader back in the day. It was HARD! I suffered and struggled...and I sprained my ankle a lot.  Imagine my delight when I discovered Kieran Scott's book Confessions of a Non-Blonde Cheerleader. It was my life on those pages! Had Kieran burgled my parents and  found my old diary in their basement?

Next week her newest hits the shelves... Brunettes Strike Back. No offense to you fair-haired ladies out there...but now it can finally be said...BROWN is the new blonde!! Cannot WAIT to buy this one. (PS that's not me in the photo...that's Natalie Wood, who I consider to be the ULTIMATE brunette. If you haven't seen her and the incredibly dreamy young Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass, Netflick it NOW! It's like a prehistoric YA movie.)

Only 172,000???

Here's a nugget from Publisher's Weekly Online:

"After four straight years that included some huge increases, title output fell 9.5% in 2005 to 172,000 new titles and editions, according to preliminary estimates from R.R. Bowker."

Only 172,000 new titles this year? OMG, what will I *read*?

And what about all of those starving writers who can't get their books published? I guess they'd better write a Megan McCafferty rip-off...or maybe a book on Sudoku!

snogging and thongs...

(as you probably know) are good words to have on your cover. We were in Barnes & Noble a couple of days ago and heard a twenty-ish gal oozing in an very over-the-top way to her friend about  Louise Rennison's books. And we couldn't agree more. This british bombshell of YA (yes, she wrote Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging) happens to be a frontrunner for the title of queen of titles, too. Her latest is just out...

...and is it just us, or are you also intensely curious and yet deeply repelled by the very idea of these startling shorts? We will read, and report back (or if you've read it already, tell the rest of us before we get to it...use the "comments" feature, ok? cuz we really wanna know what that fur's all about!)

from the stranger than fiction dept.

i just read in People that Charlie Sheen has started a new children's clothing line for tots called Sheen Kidz. It consists of girls' clothing only--and it's designed by showbiz's most avid customer of prostitutes.   

Um... sorry 'bout the bitter divorce and all, Chuck. But i think i'd be sticking with Garanimals for my little darling.

[yes we know this has nothing to do with books--but that's what the "stranger than fiction" dept is for--those little tidbits we are compelled to share even though they fall outside the burger's main bill of fare]

It's like Saturday at the supermarket

Who doesn't love scarfing down those little cups of soup and the tiny cheddar cubes when they're handing out the free samples at the Stop n Shop?....well, Niki Burnham, YA author extraordinaire (you liked Royally Jacked, right?) is doing like your local grocer and posting a free taste of her upcoming book Do-Over on her site, www.nikiburnham.com.

It's only up there for a limited time. So cruise over...and happy nibbling!

Meet Covergirl!

No, we're not talking about a glossy-mag model...nor a brand of not-so-hot drugstore cosmetics. We're talking about Bookburger's very own Covergirl, who unashamedly believes that every book SHOULD be judged by its cover.  Each week, she'll be sharing her oh-so-shallow picks.

This week, Covergirl will be buying this book:

Total cuteness...Covergirl is a sucker for thought bubbles.

And she loves the groovy graphic trees.

It's Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies) by Justina Chen Hedley. Nice jacket, JC--no lyin'!

Covergirl will NOT be buying this one:

This book is called Cirque Du Freak #11: Lord of the Shadows : Book 11 in the Saga of Darren Shan.

Eeeww...It should be called Cirque du Yuck #11: Lord of the Heinous Color Schemes and Cheesy Blurry Images.

Sorry, Darren dear. Better luck with #12!

See ya next week!
Skin-deeply yours,

Covergirl

Do you always know what's next before any of your friends do?

Then you're B-list material.

Do you WANT to know what's next before any of your friends do?

You're B-list material too.

Our B-list bulletins clue you in to sizzling new books. And we mean something other than the same ten books that shuffle around at the top of the bestseller lists.

We won't bombard you with spammy junk, either. Our bulletins are sent out just often enough to clue you into the latest—and just infrequently enough to leave you hungry for more.

Ready to become a happy bookburger b-lister today? Sign up over there on the right side the page....

Juicy Books for Free?

A haiku:

Free books for you, babe.
Sound too good to be true?
It ain’t. Enter now.

The fab prizes for our very first giveaway:

AUDIO BOOK!
Party Princess: The Princess Diaries, Volume VII by Meg Cabot
Here it is, unabridged on five discs—six hours and five minutes of Meg’s heroine Mia, read by actress Clea Lewis. 
Value: $30.
Cost to you: Zip. Just join the B-list and score big!

HARDCOVER BOOK!
ttfn by Lauren Myracle
It’s the brand-new sequel to ttyl—and omg it’s such a good read.
Value: $15.95
Cost to you: not one red cent, hon. Sign up to win. It'll make your day.

When you join the B-List, you're automatically in the game. Each time we send out our sweet little newsletter, we announce new winners...

PS: we won’t share your email with anyone, ever.

a message from your friendly neighborhood burger-flippers

so why are we here? and what is this thing called bookburger?

we're tired of hearing about amazing books going unread, ending up lonely and unloved on the sale table at B&N, or shipped back to publishers to be burned at the stake or turned into dog food.

it's SO wrong! That's why we--your burger flippers--decided to act. We're on a mission to connect hungry readers with tasty reads. We serve up authors and books that may not be on the bestseller list, but oughta be on your brain-food menu.

so welcome, smarty pants. You've officially taken your first bite of the burger.