To kick off the month of August with style, I'm hosting ten wonderful guests from August 3 to August 16.

They'll be covering various topics from the genres they love, their personal experiences / stories and awesome things they've learned while writing, etc. I've even got a tendonitis expert lined up to help with wrist pain. So please stop by!

As for me, I've had a very productive working month in July. I've finished up to Step Three for the All's Fair revision. My accountability group has been enormously helpful in motivating me and keeping me working hard. (If you're interested in joining, please check it out here.)

To reward myself and to “reset” my eyes for the next step in the revision process, I plan to read during the next two weeks. The following titles are currently on top of my TBR list (alphabetical order by author's name):

• The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
• Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• A Little Bit Wild by Victoria Dahl
• Negotiating a Book Contract by Mark L. Levine
• Succubus Blue by Richelle Mead
• The Awakening by L. J. Smith
• The Struggle by L. J. Smith
• Passion by Lisa Valdez

The ever-wonderful BookDepository just dispatched Kiss of the Rose by Kate Pearce as well, so hopefully I'll get it before August 15.

I hope your summer's as productive as mine, and may your August be blessed with awesome books!

I've been on a bit of a YA reading binge recently. Okay, that really means I read like four YAs in a row, which to some of you may not be a lot, but is to me, especially since I'm in the midst of a big brain-draining revision. (I love revision, though it's grueling, thank you very much!)

Anyway, in some of them, the setup of the world (I read mostly paranormal and/or SF YAs) makes me snort out loud. It's primarily because the authors say their world has this set of rules or that, but none of them adequately address the unintended consequences of each set of rules.

Since I'm feeling lazy, I'll copy-paste Wikipedia's definition:

In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not (or not limited to) the results originally intended by a particular action. The unintended results, not recognized by the actor, may be positive or negative. The concept has long existed, but was named and popularised in the 20th century by the American sociologist, Robert K. Merton. The law of unintended consequences is an adage or idiom warning that an intervention in a complex system invariably creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes.

…

Unintended consequences can be grouped into roughly three types:

• a positive unexpected benefit, usually referred to as serendipity or a windfall.
• a negative unexpected drawback, occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy – e.g. while irrigation schemes do provide people with water for agriculture, they often increase waterborne disease which can a have a devastating negative health effect, such as schistosomiasis.
• a perverse effect, that may be contrary to what was originally intended (i.e. when an intended solution to a problem only makes the problem worse). This situation can arise when a policy has a perverse incentive and causes actions contrary to what is desired.

Every new policy and rule almost always changes the characters' individual motivators and artificially creates winners and losers. For a example, outsourcing manufacturing in the States made a lot of goods very cheap, so consumers won, but many who worked in factories in America lost their jobs. (This is a big oversimplification, but you get the idea.) The new economic dynamics caused a strong downward pressure on blue-collar workers' wages and standard of living, among various other unintended consequences.

So I find it hard to buy into a scenario when every new rule, etc. does exactly what it was designed to do. It feels like the author just doesn't understand how economic incentives work or doesn't want to dig deeper than the surface.

P.S. As for the cartoon…I kinda feel that way about the way our government officials tried to help the small folks on Main Street.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is by far the best novel I've read this year. I don't really care that much for dystopian books because they tend to be very boring and/or unrealistic. But The Hunger Games was just perfect. It actually made me believe that such a future is very possible in America.

The book's fast-paced, immediate and pretty violent, but nothing unsuitable for teens. Recommended highly.

Grab your copy at Amazon or BookDepository or your favorite store.

Blurb:

Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games.” The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When Kat's sister is chosen by lottery, Kat steps up to go in her place.

Some people have asked me what my rating on Goodreads mean, so here's a quick cheat sheet. (This applies to fiction only.) I also put the baseball analogy in brackets.

1 star — Goodreads interprets this as “didn't like it”. I give 1 star to books that had mechanical, character, plot and/or craft issues to a degree serious enough that that I couldn't overlook them. They're obviously DNFs (did not finish). [Out]

2 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “it was okay”. I give 2 stars to books that were just okay. Many books that get 2 stars from me end up being DNFs as well. But others may enjoy the stories I rated 2 stars as they don't have any glaring issues the way 1-star rated books do. [Got on base, but may or may not come home.]

3 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “liked it”. I give 3 stars to books that were enjoyable enough, but that didn't have anything that would've elevated them to something better / more impactful. Basically they're the kind of books that did the job, but didn't do much beyond that. [Got on base, then made it all the way around to come home.]

4 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “really liked it”. I give 4 stars to books that were not only enjoyable but had that special something that elevated them — beautiful prose / style, clever plot twists and/or some other elements that made me go “wow”. [Wooo…some exciting plays, possibly a 1- or 2-run homer.]

5 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “it was amazing”. I give 5 stars to books with stories so well told that they shut off my internal editor. They're virtually flawless. [Grand slam, baby!]

Please note that individual tastes differ, and my 2-star books could be somebody else's 5-star rated titles. :)

How do you rate the books you read?

Kiss of the Rose giveaway winners are:

• Lexus (from newsletter subscribers)
• @Leontine1976 (from Twitter entries)

Lexus — you should have an email from me in your inbox. @Leontine1976 should've received an @ reply from me.

Thanks, ladies!

P.S. I used random.org to select the winners.

Can you believe it's already July? 2010 is officially half over.

Since finishing the first draft of my Sekrit Love Story in May, I took June off to give myself a little bit of distance before I start revising. Mostly I spent last month reading books I've been dying to read for a while and watching soccer. I finally got to read Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. What an excellent YA. If you like gorgeous prose and an interesting twist on werewolves, you ought to try it.

Now that July 1st is here, a pristine print copy of Sekrit Love Story is ready for my highlighters and color pens. July and August will be all about revision.

How do you plan to spend your summer?

P.S. For those of you who missed the announcement, don't forget about my Kiss of the Rose contest!