+1!

Does that mean you like my suggestion? Internet slang moves fast sometimes... it is a great book...gritty and affirming at the same time.

Yeah, that's a like, erika, and I second the like. That's a great book.

Oh, yes, Sherman Alexie is excellent. Hmm, I haven't gotten aroudn to it myself, but what about Oscar Wao? Or Cory Doctorow's Little Brother? (I thought the ending was ridiculous and almost completely undercut his argument, but it is popular among a certain geeky set...)

Oscar Wao was very good, but quite intricate...I'd reccomend it to good readers, though. Especially geeks. I liked the voice...very distinctive.

I'm that one guy who didn't like Oscar Wao.

But I've noticed, dude(ha!) that you seem, on average, to take characters' morality very personally. Like with The Wire wondering where all the happy marriages are.(I used to do it, too...maybe Simon broke me of the habit? An online friend used to say that the Blown Deadline ethic is that "Happy endings are for massage parlors." Junior is kind of a dick, but for me, it kind of helped(as a reader, not a date) that he seems to know that about himself. Maybe it helped that I studied more Spanish...

I would think Oscar Wao would be a tricky book to get a whole group of 10th graders to like, though it could generate great discussions.

Is the new Jay Asher/Carolyn Meckler book any good?

I liked it a lot, though part of what sucked me in was that the characters' milieu was basically exactly my high school experience (1996 in a middle/upper-middle-class Northeastern suburb, the thrill of discovering email and the Internet). It resonated with me as an adult, but I'm not sure how much of that was the book itself and how much was my identification with the characters. But it was definitely a quick, absorbing read.

Everyone is suggesting great books! Now I want to reread that John Marsden series. I loved those books.

People being amusing about the GoT Trading Cards.

I'm assuming the reason a lot of that was incomprehensible to me was because I'm still somewhere in book 1. But luckily, Twitter being what it was, I'm not actually spoilt.

I've seen a lot of people bitching that The Hunger Games is a ripoff of Battle Royale, but very few of those people have read/seen both works. Mostly they've only read or seen Battle Royale. Reading The Hunger Games seems to forestall the accusation. Anyone here closely familiar with Battle Royale? Can you say why THG isn't actually a ripoff?

I got into a heated pissing match with someone who insisted it was obvious she had stolen the ideas, either consciously or subconsciously, that it was clear, even if she'd forgotten it had happened. I kept insisting that people who'd actually read The Hunger Games didn't tend to think that, and finally convinced them to not be so damned adamant without reading it themselves, and they backed down that far. But it took a lot of arguing, and I had to suffer a fair amount of ad hominem abuse to get there. But at least they're going to read the books before continuing to argue their point, which is something.