Guest Blogger - YAthenaeum!

Thanks so much to Heather for having us on her blog! We’ll apologize now, we’re writing this our last week of school with finals so it’s not the best, but we hope you enjoy this little inside to our blog!

Well, the first thing I’ll say is our story of how the blog started. Here’s the fairy tale version in all its obscurity:

http://yathenaeum.blogspot.com/2008/09/yathenaeums-arrived.html

What if I don’t want the storyteller version?

Well, then here’s the other: So, not this November, but the one before it, Julie was getting extra credit to go to some event and Erika had seen that Libba Bray was coming to Books & Books in February... So, Erika went up to the event coordinator, Emily, and asked for the exact date and time of the event. Emily gave Erika her e-mail and said to e-mail her if she had any ideas. Well, Erika did and dragged Lorena and Julie with her to make them a reality. We wore costumes, made Gemma’s necklace, made bracelets for Book of a Thousand Days (It was one of the events with both Libba Bray and Shannon Hale, which by itself is amazing).

Brigitte is an old friend of Lorena’s so she came to the event as well and began helping us. It was incredible! Books & Books liked it too because we were then asked to help at more events and pretty soon we became their Teen Girl Posse.

Over the summer we organized an amazing Breaking Dawn release party and after that was done, Erika felt bored. So, she thought “We should have a blog.” You see, Erika tends to have these crazy ideas that in the end just mean more work for Lorena. And with that the blog went into formation. It took us forever to think of a name, though YAthenaeum was actually one of our first ideas, but we weren’t sure pronunciation-wise. In the end, we gave in to the word’s demands and the blog became YAthenaeum and we became The YAthenaeum Team. Lorena (see told you, more work for Lorena) painted the banner on the blog, and designed the page, and we were off. We’ve been blogging ever since the end of September progressively gaining popularity and recognition.

We also now have a twitter (YAthenaeum- http://twitter.com/YAthenaeum) thanks to Erika’s random ideas. Lorena, Brigitte, and Julie are scared of what she’s going to think of next.

What can you find on our blog?

Contests, YA and children’s Books & Books events, recaps of said events, reviews, random things, any YA thing you can think of basically…

Where do we get our ARCs?

Recently, well, not too recently anymore, we began getting e-mails from publishers and people asking us if we’d like to review them and of course we said yes. This list includes HarperTeen and Lerner. We also have been getting them from Books & Books, who gets them because they are a bookstore, the entire time. Then, like normal obsessed readers, we’ve won some through authors’ contests as well.

Want to know a little about us individually?

Well, below find the ARCs we each have, plus a link to our very first review! It brings back memories… Even if those memories were only about 8 months ago… Also, you can find a short intro for each of us, if you click the picture of us on the right hand side bar of YAthenaeum.

Erika

ARCs:

First Review- My first review was Paper Towns by John Green! It was also the first review on our blog and was a combination post. So, here you will find a Q&A with John, my review, as well as tour information that is no longer relevant. I loved (still love) that book!

http://yathenaeum.blogspot.com/2008/09/post-made-of-awesome.html

Lorena

ARCs:

First review- Oh wow, my first review had been of The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. Now I know what you’re saying, that definitely is not a YA book, but that had been the last book I had read before it was my turn to post. And it had been (still is) too amazing not to tell everyone about it.

http://yathenaeum.blogspot.com/2008/10/gargoyle-review.html

Julie

ARCs: (I just want to point out that being Erika’s sister means she takes most of the ARCs, though she does let me read them.)

First review- I have an obsession with owls, so getting the ARC of Scat by the author of Hoot was a dream come true in itself. But Scat lived up to it’s expectations! Though it may be leaning more towards children’s, it was still amazing. Being the youngest, I’m always given the younger books, but in this case I didn’t mind.

http://yathenaeum.blogspot.com/2008/10/scat-review.html

Brigitte

ARCs:

First review- I was never too big a fan of YA literature, so to find something that I would read for my first post was a challenge all on it's own. Eventually Lorena got me to read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and really it was just an amazing book. I think harder than getting me to read it, was writing a review to sum up how I felt about it.

http://yathenaeum.blogspot.com/2008/10/book-thief-review.html

Hopefully it was slightly entertaining! Thanks again to Heather for having us here.

-The YAthenaeum Team