In case you you thought our previous post "Publishers Feelin' the Blues" was overstating the case, take another look. No, we're not crazy: there really is a BLUE THING going on in the publishing world.

(Click on cover  image to see  Reading Guide.)

It's weird...just sayin'. One of our readers commented that there must have been a sale on blue ink. Best explanation so far! Anyone else got an idea?

Turns out. . . TV script writers need a little more help than we realized. After flipping through the TV Guide recently we’ve come to an astounding conclusion—a large chunk of our favorite TV shows started out on a library shelf. Curious which books you’ve been watching nightly? Keep reading to find out. (Images, courtesy of Amazon).

Books to TV
	True Blood—Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris is the inspiration behind TV's True Blood. The story follows waitress Sookie Stackhouse through Bon Temps—a factional Louisiana town inhabited by both vampires and humans.
	Dexter—The first novel in Jeff Lindsay's series Darkly Dreaming Dexter, provided the inspiration for the popular TV show. The story chronicles the life of Dexter Morgan, a blood- splatter analyst for the Miami police department who moonlights as a serial killer.
	Game of Thrones—The first installment in The Song of Ice and Fire series penned by George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones, inspired the hit HBO series. The story follows the leaders of several noble houses as they battle for the throne of the seven kingdoms.
	Orange Is the New Black—Piper Kerman's memoir spawned the Netflix original series by the same title. The plot revolves around Piper Chapman after she is sentenced to 15 months in Federal prison for her involvement with drug trafficking.
	Boardwalk Empire—Set during the prohibition era of the 1920s, Nelson Johnson's novel, Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, centers around "Nucky" Thompson. The HBO series returns for its final season this fall (2014).
	Sleepy Hollow—Most everyone knows Washington Irving's tale of the headless horseman that terrorizes Sleepy Hollow. The FOX series of the same name gives the legend a modern facelift with a few new surprises.
	Justified—Based on Elmore Leonard's three works—Pronto, Riding the Rap, and Fire in the Hole—the TV series follows Raylan Givens as he enforces his own form of justice in his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky.

If you're watching any one or more of these Book-to-TV iterations—or if you've got a favorite—let us know.

By Kristi Spuhler for LitLovers.
OK, we admit it—we were with Harry Potter from beginning to end (all seven volumes), we cried with Hazel Grace as the cancer progressed, and we followed Katniss through her long ordeal. There's something about a well-written Young Adult (YA) novel that grabs us, no matter what age.

That's why we were so surprised when Ruth Graham (Fear Not Tomorrow, God Is Already There) popped up declaring the YA genre inappropriate for adults. Graham claims certain lines shouldn't be crossed when it comes to the books adults choose to love.

Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you're reading was written for children.     —Ruth Graham

Should we really "feel embarrassed" for picking up a well-written book—even one directed at a younger audience? Think of The Book Thief, When You Reach Me, Persepolis, or The Diary of Anne Frank, for heaven's sake. And what about To Kill a Mockingbird? (The last two aren't strictly classified as YA, but a case can be made...)

Graham has her reasons: she believes YA fiction lacks the literary complexity of theme, plot, or character that reflects the adult experience.

[YA] books consistently indulge in the kind of endings that teenagers want to see, but which adult readers ought to reject as far too simple.... These endings are emblematic of the fact that the emotional and moral ambiguity of adult fiction—of the real world—is nowhere in evidence in YA fiction.

As you can imagine, the article has generated a pronounced divide between literary purists and writers and readers of YA books.

In defense of her craft, YA writer Kathleen Hale (No One Else Can Have You) rebutted Graham in a hilarious parody of her own genre. She confronts Graham "outside a graveyard before nightfall."

"Why did you say that about YA?” I asked, as tears streamed down my face like rain.

“Because it’s true!” she hissed. And I saw in the moonlight that her anger made her beautiful. This was before the war, when the oceans still had water, and the moon was still visible in the sky.

“YA is formulaic, worthless dreck,” she said, transforming into a vampire.

You get the gist. It's very funny. But Hale is serious when she retorts (while turning into a werewolf, of course) that Graham's complaint is hardly new. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in 1855, disparaged the "damned mob of scribbling women" and the books they wrote as "trash." Fifty years ago, Flannery O'Conner and others complained that Harper Lee's now classic novel—written for a youthful audience—shouldn't be handled by adult readers.

This is not to say that ALL reading materials are created equal. But surely finding pleasure in books with happy endings, romance, high emotion, or one-dimensional characters shouldn't be an embarrassment. If so, we might have to toss the likes of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters (Caaaa-theeee!), Charles Dickens and plenty others off our oh-so-adult reading lists.

What do you think?  Should an adult reader shy away from YA books? Is the genre a lesser art form? What about your book club—has it taken on any YA books? Let us know.
* Photo by L on Flicker.

"I don't give a damn"? That's it? The end? A thousand pages (and let's be honest here: that 2nd part really d-r-a-g-s) ... just so Rhett can tell Scarlett to take a hike?

Sometimes we don't like an author's choices, but what's a reader do? Well, some take matters into their own hands and turn themselves into writers. Thus the birth of Fanfiction [fæn'-fik-shun].

Fanfiction is just what it sounds like—amateur stories crafted by a fan of a particular work, featuring the same characters but a different plot...or point of view...or ending. Critics may debate its merit, but fanfiction is gaining in popularity—and it looks like it’s here to stay!

Take a look at FanFiction, a site that hosts 100s-of-1,000s of stories created by readers who want something more from a book...or maybe who simply want to pit their own nascent talents against the pros. Here's a smattering of what's offered:

Original Works	# of Fanfiction Spinoffs
Harry Potter	685,000
Twilight	216,000
Hunger Games	39,500
Pride and Prejudice	3,400
Gone With the Wind	838
The Fault in Our Stars	494
Kite Runner	57
One Hundred Years of Solitude	3
Room	1

Have some fun reading any of these re-works: Click HERE to see the complete list—1,000s of original works which have led to spinoffs. Then just scan down the list and click . . . wherever.

Though some in the published world support fanfiction (Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries series got her start writing fanfiction), other well-known authors—George R.R. Martin and Anne Rice, to name two—resent budding writers who try to gain exposure by piggy-backing on their works.

On the other hand, where's the line in determining what stories are fanfiction and which aren't? Remember Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Jeany Ryhs' Wide Sargasso Sea? They're only two of a very long list of reimaginings of famous works. Even Gone With the Wind has its spinoffs.

For a better appreciation of just how much literary reworking is done, see our LitBlog post from 2010: Old Wine in New Bottles.

Still, while it can be flattering for authors to have their works emulated by an aspiring writer, it can be equally as frustrating to fight of iterations of a story that aren't what the author imagined.

What do you think? Is fanfiction good writing practice for buddingwriters? Or is it muddying the waters for readers?
—Kristi Spuhler for LitLovers