Random Musings of a Bibliophile

I can not say that this displeases me. It's funny because this final round could have gone one of three ways based on the four books that went into Round 3: two Aussie YAs duking it out, one Aussie YA and one MG (repeating both versions of round 3), or two MGs. I kind of like the MG books are ruling they day as that is where my heart of hearts is. (And I did have a hand in facilitating that.) Tune in Monday to fine out the ultimate winner between:

These are the books moving on: Four amazing amazing books. And guess what? I'm the one who has to choose between  Saving Francesca  and  The Perilous Gard . I may have considered leaving the country so Beth would never find me and I wouldn't have to do it. But, alas. I promised. You can see my decision, the one ripping my heart in two, on Thursday here . 

A friend of mine puts together the YA MG Book Battle to discuss and talk about underrated books, both old and new. This is my second year participating and it's a lot of fun. Round One is now over and here are the books moving on to Round Two: Such good books! In the top half of the bracket, I would really love to see Greenglass House and Graffiti Moon  move on. I won't comment on the bottom half as I'm the one judging between the winners. And holy cow am I nervous about that now!

March Madness is here! Of the bookish sort that is. There are two bracket style battles I'm invested in taking place in the coming weeks. The first is the School Library Journal Battle of the Books . I've been following this one for years, and still love it. This is the first year in a few years where I haven't read all of the books, but there are still a lot of contenders I'm really excited about. You can see the brackets here . The book I'm hoping wins it all: This will be a challenge as the Newbery winner is famously unable to win this competition. It is probably not a shock then that this is what I voted for in the Undead Poll, which is now open. Go vote if there's a contender you love! SLJ BoB 2015 commences on March 9.  The other Battle I'm excited about is the YA/MG Book Battle which focuses on under-appreciated books from the backlist (including last year). You can see the contenders here. You can see the complete bracket for this ...