Blogging

(In Honor of the A-Z Challenge going around I'm going to attempt to Alphabetize my posts this month. Yay to all A-Zers!)

I have been blogging for over a year with 114 posts (!) and 96 lovely followers. So I thought it would be fun to take a step back and see where this has brought me and what it has taught me.

But let's take a quick look back at the beginning and see what started it all... Blooooooop.

Ah, LOST. I am a firm believer that it's never the Big Choices that change your life. It's all the little choices before that big choice that changed your life.

Deciding to watch LOST was one of those. I shouldn't have even ended up loving the show. I saw one "Before on LOST" and was so confused. I decided I should Never Ever watch the show.

The same thing happened to my sis. But then she ended up watching it anyway.

I came in during one of the many Run-Through-The-Forest-To-Creepy-Music-And-Hope-You-Don't-Die scenes. I went to bed. And was haunted. I had to watch this show! Well. Then I followed Rebecca's lead and snooped around Nikki's blog. And started a blog.

And then started a second one. And then started a Twitter. And a second Twitter for my Spakes. And then I started a Tumblr. And I made Awesome Friends. And I learned that the world of Publishing is much more Vast than I had imagined and that Writers are way cool people to hang around and that there are lovely Random people out there who are weird like me.

I also learned that unlike these strange Western Thinkers I do not live linearly.

I don't know why, but this is what I think of when

I think of the word 'Linear'

I live in circles. Which is why for a few months I'm heavy on the internet, and then for a few months I'm not, and then for a few months I almost never turn on my computer.

And maybe that's okay. To be circular.

This is Chain Mail. This is what I think of

when I think of being 'Circular'

I have learned so much here in this blog-o-sphere. I have so much support over here. It is extremely Awesome. And I am super excited to get to know more of you, to re-aquaint myself with some of you, and just have a generally good time during this Second Year of my blog.

And here are a few things I learned:

1) I am not disciplined enough to do anything regular on a blog yet. Ha. Except be Regularly Irregularly Random

2) Closing my eyes and setting my hands atop GLOM does not magically transfer Blog info up into my brain. This may be lame, but it's true.

3) Some Blog people have super cool Book Recommendations. Even if it's not something I usually read, I should read it anyway, just to see if I like it.

4) Wombats will one day save the world

5) People can get published. It is happening all of the place in this bloggy world.

6) Um...

7) #otherstuffthatiforgot

I know some other lamnams blog birthdays are coming up or recently passed. (Like Wolfie402's)

Congratulations Everybodies! :D

Age & Nightshade

Recently I read Nightshade by Andrea Cramer. It was pretty good. The mythos was fascinating and not something I had read before. The characters were real and I could relate with them. And I was excited because the language was nice and clean.

However, this book did bring up something that I've noticed in YA books. If I had read this when I was actually a teen I would've been very, Very, VERY uncomfortable. There were at least three scenes that were heavy on the sensual and I had to question myself: Is this appropriate? I mean, the one bathroom scene was so disconcerting. Is this really happening in schools?? And if it is, why is this okay? When did the physical boundaries between guys and girls get chucked out the window?

Now, I understand that in the books situation the girl was preparing to get married and was being treated as an adult and all that. But still. This is not the only book that pushes the physical boundaries. My friend read the Halo books and said there was a scene in them where she was going "Holy Crow! She should not be doing that!"

I also am reminded of one of the panels I sat in on at Polaris where one of the YA authors said their agent was telling them to make their book Sexier. Omgoodness... WHY!? There is a large demographic out there that does NOT want it to be sexier, who are Tired of Sex permeating Everything, especially our used-to-be safe books. And they're pushing it younger and younger. Independent Readers/Middle Grade books are starting to get a little scary when it comes to the relationship aspects to life.

My question is: When did it become okay for teens to have sex with random people before they're married? When did it become okay for authors to TELL teens that this is okay behavior? Yes, yes. I understand that you want a world to be believable. Diana Peterfreund in her Killer Unicorn books has to deal with that temptation because if the girl's aren't virgins they ain't going to be Unicorn Hunters. But I think she does a pretty darn good job of not making it Way Too Awkward for me to read.

At first I thought one of the reasons for the Sultriness was because it seems like a whole lot of Romance novelists are writing for YA now, but that's not fair. Karen Armstrong wrote for YA and her books were very well written and tastefully done when it came to the romance. It was *gasp* Age Appropriate.

So I'm curious what you think? Are Teen books becoming Too Much Sexy? Are you okay with the sexified state of books? Also: On a slightly unrelated note, do you think it would help if a twenty-something age group of books were developed so you could have slightly sexier books without them being for teens?