Big Warm Welcome.

Introductions posts are always weird. It’s a little similar the beginning of a book. How should you start it? A cliché is to introduce yourself with your name. Hi! My name is… but that’s a bit boring. Of course, there’s no other way around it, is there? I have to tell you my name at some point, otherwise, what is the purpose of the post? So, please excuse my major cliché moment.

Hello! My name is Brianna. I’m a senior at Sarah Lawrence. I’ll be working with the lovely Nicole and Amy on the blog. I couldn’t be more excited. I absolutely love book reviews and think they are a great way for readers to test out a book before they actually start it. Book reviewing is a total art and I think a favorable review can really bolster the book to stardom, especially if the review is by the right person. Look at The Hunger Games trilogy. The books exploded after Stephenie Meyer gave her endorsement and then also when Stephen King recommended it. So, book reviewing, recommending and blogging are something I am very excited to be a part of. Especially since one day, I hope to receive many great reviews.

A quick little history of moi: In addition to being an avid reader and aspiring YA novelist, I am a Senior Associate Editor at a literary magazine called First Inkling. I’m one of the submissions managers, which means that I read a lot. However, a lot of what I read are mostly short stories and poems written by undergrad and grad college students. I love it and the magazine has definitely helped widen my reader palate. I went from reading primarily YA fiction-and mostly paranormal-to reading literary fiction, memoir, non-fiction. I realized that as an editor I needed to become well read and as a young woman right out of high school only reading things that resembled the Hunger Games or Harry Potter really wasn’t going to help me. I’m so glad that I became less picky, although I am still just a bit. I suppose the only way to really get over that is to keep reading.

I’ll try to bring a variety of books to the blog. Currently I am in the middle of The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, an excellent literary fiction novel about two young soldiers serving in Iraq at the beginning of the war. After that I’ll try to move onto some YA books because I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I haven’t read Divergent yet! Gasp!

I’m a big fan of dystopian stories, but who isn’t currently? I’ve always enjoyed the paranormal romance a la Meg Cabot as well. However, writers like Gayle Forman and Lauren Oliver have done an excellent job in creating this sub genre of real life/magical realism novels such as If I Stay and Before I Fall that I find really fascinating. I also love discovering new writers, no matter the genre. A lot of my job at First Inkling is discovering the great writers before they’ve been published and still in school. So I’m very interested in reading first novels or books by writers who haven’t hit that buzz yet. That being said, I’m pretty much down for reading anything as long as the story interests me. I’m willing to get over my picky.

As far as introductions go, I think that’s about it. I really want to thank Nicole for allowing me to co-blog with her. To commemorate the start of the blog, I went to BEA for the first time. I met some pretty amazing people. I can't wait to tell you about it. I gathered books to review for Paperback Princess but I also worked with the Young Adult Review Network. I live tweeted them updates from the expo and shared my amazement and excitement. I'll tell you more about it in my next post! Until then, happy reading!