You Should Visit Steph Su Reads

The girls are always asking me, "What's next?" They want to know what the hot new books are going to be. It's hard to imagine that Twilight only caught on here late in 2008 - three years after it had been published and debuted on the New York Times Best Seller List. That still shocks me.

Anyway, how do you figure out which books are going to be hot? I usually point students in the direction of the teens' top ten list and you can find it HERE. If a book has been nominated for the list or it has won a place on the list, then it is a good bet that you will enjoy reading it. However, there is a lot of lag time between when a book is published and then nominated and then wins a place on the list.

To really figure out what is hot and new, you need to read the blogs of reviewers who are on the cutting edge. You want reviews from bloggers who are reading books before they even get published (ARC's or Advance Reading Copies).

I'd like to recommend you add Steph Su Reads to your weekly Internet surfing. Steph is a 20-year-old literature major, writer, and teen book reviewer from the United States. She is an award winning blogger who writes some of the best book reviews for teen fiction out there. Her writing is clever and fun to read. I also think she has good taste in books. I also enjoy her "coverlust" entries where she talks about interesting and beautiful book covers.

Last year Steph sent us some great new books for the Reading Room including the beautiful new hardcovers The Knife of Never Letting Go, If I Stay, and Fairest. She has also taken time to comment on my blog under "The Study Series" entry (which she highly recommended reading by the way). Even more reasons to be a fan I'd say!

As well, Steph is celebrating her one year "blogoversary" and in doing so she is offering up a bunch of prizes - including books that haven't even been published yet like the new Meg Cabot book which doesn't come out until April! Cool, right? To enter the contest you just need to go HERE.