What Ronni's been reading

I thought I'd farewell the weekend by posting some links to the stuff that I've been reading over the weekend.

I'm writing an article for the paper about Patrick Ness's young-adult books, and in my investigations, I came across a blog he'd written for The Guardian about 'appropriate' subject matter for YA literature. Since this is one of my pet causes, I was thrilled to see that he shared my opinion (although given that his YA books are darker than those written by Victor Kelleher, that's unsurprising). In my mind, if The Daily Mail thinks your books 'need a health warning', you're already doing something right.

Half my flist has been posting links to the article in The Guardian with 'writing tips, but just in case you haven't seen it yet, here's part 1 and here's part 2. Now, if I could just sit in a room with all those people together (or, hell, just Zadie Smith, Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman), I could die happy.

I admire Hal Duncan more and more with every passing day. As he writes:

'My response was along the lines of "No, that's exactly what we need!" Cause it's all fine and dandy for teh Gayz to get to be centre-stage in Big Serious Movies, but Brokeback Mountain, say, is Johnny Come Lately here. My Beautiful Launderette came out fucking decades ago. And The History Boys is great, but it's not aimed at the heart of the most mainstream of mainstream audiences. And it's certainly not aimed at popcorn-munching teens who might well be good people to try and render offay with teh gay by giving em fun stuff that just happens to have big dollops of that in it. Isn't it time to take another step forward rather than repeat the same one over and over agian.'

Trust Tony Abbott to say something completely inappropriate about teenage girls and abstinence. And trust Justine Larbalestier (or rather, Lili Wilkinson guestblogging) to respond so sensibly.

This post by arachnekallisti about 'writing horrible characters' is really thought-provoking. The comments are particularly interesting, also.

I've been thoroughly enjoying ravenya03's rewrite of the BBC's Robin Hood. You may recall that I quite liked the series until it took a horrible turn for the worse, and then flung itself joyfully over the shark, shouting, 'Look! I am jumping over a shark! Isn't it marvellous?' ravenya03 achieves the difficult task of keeping the essence of the show and characters the same, while doing much more justice to the concept than the actual show writers ever managed.

Also, look! J. K. Rowling's being sued again. Teresa Nielsen Hayden makes some sensible points.

Now, bed!

What Ronni's been reading

I thought I'd farewell the weekend by posting some links to the stuff that I've been reading over the weekend.

I'm writing an article for the paper about Patrick Ness's young-adult books, and in my investigations, I came across a blog he'd written for The Guardian about 'appropriate' subject matter for YA literature. Since this is one of my pet causes, I was thrilled to see that he shared my opinion (although given that his YA books are darker than those written by Victor Kelleher, that's unsurprising). In my mind, if The Daily Mail thinks your books 'need a health warning', you're already doing something right.

Half my flist has been posting links to the article in The Guardian with 'writing tips, but just in case you haven't seen it yet, here's part 1 and here's part 2. Now, if I could just sit in a room with all those people together (or, hell, just Zadie Smith, Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman), I could die happy.

I admire Hal Duncan more and more with every passing day. As he writes:

'My response was along the lines of "No, that's exactly what we need!" Cause it's all fine and dandy for teh Gayz to get to be centre-stage in Big Serious Movies, but Brokeback Mountain, say, is Johnny Come Lately here. My Beautiful Launderette came out fucking decades ago. And The History Boys is great, but it's not aimed at the heart of the most mainstream of mainstream audiences. And it's certainly not aimed at popcorn-munching teens who might well be good people to try and render offay with teh gay by giving em fun stuff that just happens to have big dollops of that in it. Isn't it time to take another step forward rather than repeat the same one over and over agian.'

Trust Tony Abbott to say something completely inappropriate about teenage girls and abstinence. And trust Justine Larbalestier (or rather, Lili Wilkinson guestblogging) to respond so sensibly.

This post by arachnekallisti about 'writing horrible characters' is really thought-provoking. The comments are particularly interesting, also.

I've been thoroughly enjoying ravenya03's rewrite of the BBC's Robin Hood. You may recall that I quite liked the series until it took a horrible turn for the worse, and then flung itself joyfully over the shark, shouting, 'Look! I am jumping over a shark! Isn't it marvellous?' ravenya03 achieves the difficult task of keeping the essence of the show and characters the same, while doing much more justice to the concept than the actual show writers ever managed.

Also, look! J. K. Rowling's being sued again. Teresa Nielsen Hayden makes some sensible points.

Now, bed!