If you're ever invited, fellow YA authors, go. It's the first YA con I've been to that was overwhelming populated by teens. Wonderful!

I enjoyed Ready For This, which was created by the people behind Dance Academy and Redfern Now, and really it's what you'd get if you crossed Redfern Now with Dance Academy

A difference in self loathing? Please. The only difference between a gun and a rope is the time it takes to tie the knot.

Iloved Ashley Hope Perez's heartbreaking Out of Darkness set in late the 1930s in a small town Texas. It should win all the YA awards.

I was wowed by Margo Jefferson's memoir, Negroland, which is about growing up black and privileged in Chicago in the fifties and sixties. It was a window into an alien world. Obviously, I'm not black, but what was really alien to me was her family's focus on respectability. I was never taught when to wear white gloves, what length skirt is appropriate.

Zombies are the proletariat. Long live the workers!

I re-read The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. It's a book every one should read, particularly Americans, as the USA is her primary focus. Her book demonstrates that white is not universal, that white is not neutral, that it has a history, which she eloquently delineates. It's not often you finish a book understanding how the world operates better than before you read it.