Bored. Bored bored bored. Bored.

Sunrise today was at 5:32 a.m., sunrise will be at 8:40 p.m.! Last Monday night, when I got home from bookgroup at about 9:45, the sky was still ruddy over the Olympic mountains to the west. Long twilights are a true joy.  

View from the window where my computer is living this week

Today is a quiet, wet, late spring day, highs in the mid-60s; yesterday was blue skies, mid-80s, sweaty weather.  We are having our downstairs bathroom remodeled and D and I are hunkering in our upstairs rooms for the next 5 days.  We've both taken vacation time to be here for this so we can let the workers in and out, but it doesn't feel very vacationy. It was really a sudden decision - dry rot under the toilet dictates when something like this happens - so I still have a rep appointment on Wednesday and book deliveries to schools for the Northwest Literacy Foundation. I've been in contact with work a couple of times. Sigh,

I've set up my laptop in the bedroom on a tv tray, radio in the background, to work on book orders for the fall season.  But, truly, looking at all that data, scrolling through book after book can be daunting.  One publisher has almost a thousand titles! I don't have to look at them all in depth, but most take three different key strokes and a lot of track ball moves. My butt hurts and I really want to weed the path that runs along the west side of the house.  But it's raining.

And with a house full of unread books, and uncleared shelves and closets,  I shouldn't be bored.  But I am.  

So, I guess I am going to drag that stack of books on the bedside table onto the bed and see what screams, "READ ME!!!".  I saw a new book in the store the other day and ordered it up from the library:  Luna: New Moon (Ballantine), by Ian McDonald.  The first few pages were gripping and maybe if I read it when I'm trying not to go to sleep, I will have better luck with the rest of it.  It should be good; any book that starts with a moon run (out in the airless atmosphere, 10 seconds, unprotected) ought to be. 

There are six other books in that stack including Maggie Stiefvater's Raven King (Scholastic) which I have been hoarding for a day just like this one.  It's like saving that last piece of chocolate for the perfect moment.  Will that moment ever come?  Will the chocolate just go stale? Am I just afraid that this really will be the last book in the series so I don't want to read it because then it really will be over?

New to the stack, as of last Thursday, is the third book in the Jackaby series, Ghostly Echoes (Algonquin), by Springfield, Oregon middle school teacher, William Ritter. This series is so much fun and so funny this book might just be the perfect diversion for a gray and cold afternoon.

Well, when I finally make that decision to spend the next few hours submerged in a completely world, I'll let you know how it went.

It's Spademan, Spademan All the Time!

Crows in the trees across the street, huddled up in the cold.

Sunrise was at 7:56, sunset will be at 4:38 pm.  Tomorrow!  Sunrise will occur one minute earlier than today, tomorrow we will have 1:42 more daylight than today.  Sunrise will happen at 7:55!  Calloo Callay!  I've loved walking to work in the dark, last week I got off the ferry in Bainbridge and IT WAS STILL DARK!  It feels so special to be out at that time of day- if you've ever worked the graveyard shift you know it's different, the people are different, quieter, the very air is different from what those who work in daylight hours experience.  We notice the wind pick up as the sun rises - some people never feel that happen.  I'll miss the dark when it's daylight as the alarm goes off.  But the earth will keep spinning and it will happen all over again.


I LOVE science fiction, speculative fiction, anything that takes our current time and knowledge and uses it to change what we expect the future to be.  Science fiction takes what we know now and expands it into the far future, mostly skipping all the in-between years inventing the various things we need to survive a changed world, enough time to evolve into different beings, time to move off our earth.  Science fiction expands where we are to where we will be.

Speculative fiction moves us only slightly into the future - our world, us, we are still recognizable, things have changed just enough to still be familiar but different enough to feel wrong.  I really like reading about these shorter jumps into the future, you can trace the journey we would take to get to the point where these stories take place. 

50 years ago, Fahrenheit 451 might have been science fiction, now it’s speculative: we have walls of television screens and are able to interact with the actors.  It’s only a matter of time before we can live and work, alone, sustained by outside forces called for by punching only a few buttons…oh, wait, sorry, already there! Green trucks full of groceries, brown trucks full of everything else.

Adam Sternbergh’s series about a massively damaged New York City is a great look at how a single, admittedly huge, disaster can change the course of the future.

A few years from now, a dirty bomb was dropped in Times Square and a series of bombs were released in the subways and on the bridges severing Manhattan from the rest of the city.  Millions were killed in the fallout over the years and thousands were killed and left buried in the rubble under the cities, many more died as the infrastructure fell apart.  The wealthy “tap in” to a virtual reality that takes them away from a ravaged world, nurses caring for their physical needs, others tap in as they can afford it.  The Limnosphere is addictive and insidious, you can get anything in there.  If you have the money.

Out of the destruction comes Spademan, a garbageman before the events, a hitman after.  To Spademan, garbage is garbage is garbage, give him a name, he will take it out to the curb.  This way of life works well for him since he doesn’t have anything else to lose, his wife died in the bombings, he spent way too much time in the limnosphere, he drinks too much – after he pulled himself out of despair, he decided to keep the streets clean in his own special way.  He asks no questions, he just doesn’t care.  Until his latest client points him at the daughter of an evangelical preacher.  Obviously, she’s done something Daddy can’t abide so she has to go missing. 

I LOVE this very noir mystery series set in the near future.  Spademan’s world is pretty well contained within the greater Manhattan area, the lack of complete bridges keeps most of the action on the island, so the world building (un-building?) feels true and pretty darned creepy and the Limnosphere is a really cool, but really scary, invention.  We already know what virtual reality is like, we know that people spend a lot of time in games, but what if you could design a world so much better than anything outside your head, you never wanted to leave?  Business is conducted, beautiful people are your friends, you can do whatever you want in the Limnosphere, including murder.

With Shovel Ready and Near Enemy, Adam Sternbergh has created a very dark world with an anti-hero we will all want to believe in.  

(Book number one is Shovel Ready, available now in paperback.  $14.00.  Book number two is Near Enemy, available January 13, 2015, in hardcover for $24.00. I don’t know when number three will be available, but I want it NOW!  Random House publishes these books under the imprints of Broadway Books and Crown Publishing.)

As always, you can give us a call, come by, or go to http://www.eagleharborbooks.com/Eagle Harbor Book Company’s website to get copies of any of these books.  We are happy to keep you in reading material!

Sick Day Reading on a Beautiful Day

Thursday, May 1 (rabbit rabbit rabbit).  Sunrise today was at 5:52, sunset will be at 8:22- Woo HOO; all that daylight!

P-Patch hens dust bathing in the warm dirt

It's going to be HOT today- amazing how quickly the weather changes around here.  It was cold last Thursday (see last post) and it may be a record breaker today, mid-80s!  Last Saturday I spent a couple of hours weeding out along the big rosemary bush at the edge of the house - you might remember that I mentioned that it had blossomed and I didn't see any bees in it.  Well, they found it!  You can hear the bees humming in and around it, honey and bumble, the branches bouncing when the bumbles leave one and move to another.  You know what was really cool?  Weeding and feeling bees fly into me, boomp, and then careening off back into the bushes.

What a week for books!  I had lunch with my friend Colleen, a rep for Penguin children's books, last Friday and she generously shared 4 new YA books with me.  I've wolfed down two of them, am halfway through the third and have the fourth on the bedside table.  On that Friday, a warm and sunny one, I was in the middle of Mink River, by Brian Doyle, and put it down for an hour (reading in a local bar) to dabble in Althea and Oliver, by Cristina Moracho.

And then, I woke up on Saturday with an awful sore throat and stayed home on Monday, sick, sick sick .  Ah, but I love being sick if I don't have to work.  Those long hours reading and sleeping, sweating and cooling, books, socks and kleenex discovered, pushed down to the foot of the bed, under the blankets.

Sick day books:

Reading Mink River on a ferry in a cloudbirst

Mink River is a book for adults, a song of a book, about a small Oregon coastal town and the people who live and love in it.  It isn't a book for hurrying through, you have to settle in with it, moving through it like the river moves between its banks to the ocean.  Like Ken Kesey and his Sometimes a Great Notion,  Mr. Doyle knows his Oregon landscape, weather and people.  I miss the people in this book already, and I am more homesick for Port Orford than I have been in a while.  The sequel, The Plover, is on my bedside table, too.  (Mink River: Oregon State University Press.  Plover: Macmillan.)

Pennyroyal Academy, by M. A. Larson, is more a middle grade novel than YA but it was great!  A fairy tale variation on the whole  princess theme, Pennyroyal Academy is a training school for young women (and one boy) who want to become Princesses, bold, courageous women (and, now, one boy) who battle dragons and witches.  Princess is not just a title at Pennyroyal, it is a way of life and a military role.  Those who become Princess are brave and strong, enduring months of training under a Fairy Drillsergeant. 

Evie, our hero, is a young woman with no memory, wrapped in a dress of spider webs, who has just escaped a witch and is heading toward Pennyroyal Academy accompanied by a young man who is off to become a knight. Her journey to Princess is athwart in horror and terror.

Great action, horrible jealousy, a little romance, Pennyroyal Academy will be a hit with the 10 and ups and moms who are really tired of the standard fairy princess world - if Paper Bag Princess, by Robert Munsch was in your stack of read alouds, this is the book for you.  (Pennyroyal Academy:  Penguin.  Available 10/14.  $16.99.) (Paper Bag Princess:  Available now.  $6.95.  Paperback.)

Probably not the cover! On my way to work after a sick day.

And the last book to keep me company on what was, from the window, anyway, an amazingly beautiful, warm and breezy day, was one I only just started before I faded into a very slightly feverish nap, Dove Arising, by Karen Bao.  You all know I love science fiction, real science fiction where you can believe that what is happening can happen and Dove Arising is one of these books.  The author is very young (I think Colleen said she was 17 when she started writing this book) and quite talented.  Dove Arising is the story of Phaet (pronounced Fate) Theta, a young gardener on the Moon, colonized by scientists to lower the chance of conflict due to religious controversy.  Phaet's family is broken up when her mother gets arrested and she joins the military to try and provide a better life for her siblings.  It's at that point she discovers that everything she thought she knew about her world is wrong.

Dove Arising was fun and thought provoking, filled with political machinations and really nasty people willing to hurt someone to get ahead.  It is fast-paced, humorous, and I loved the military training scenes a lot; I think this could be a great book for both sexes.  I am hoping there will be a sequel but it ends in such a way that it feels okay to wait.  (Dove Arising: Viking.  Due August 2014.  $17.99.)

It's going to be a good year for books if just these few titles are anything to go by. 

The Martian, by Andy Weir

Sunrise will be at 7:38 am, sunrise will be at 5:08 pm.

It's still full dark as I start typing here at a few minutes before 7 am.  The radio says it will be warm today, 45 degrees right now.  That's nice because it has been damp-ish and cold and... I really can't complain, can I?  We don't have snow or floods so...a scarf, some gloves, we're good.  I did have to put socks on when I got out of my very comfortable, very warm bed but I didn't have to wrap up any outward facing metal pieces, the sugar water didn't freeze in the hummingbird feeder, and I won't have to wear a hat today.  I am looking forward to a HOT shower, though.

The big building across the valley from us, the old veteran's hospital, is lit by blue and green lights these days in honor of the Seahawks' participation in this week's Superbowl.  I don't usually follow football but this is pretty exciting stuff for Seattle.  There are big 12s all over town, flags and post-it note art of the Seahawks' logo in windows, skyscrapers with all the lights out except for the ones that write out "12".  For those not aware, 12 stands for the 12th Man on the Field, the fans.  The fans are really noisy, yes, seismically loud, and have been known to throw off the other team because they can't hear their plays. 

I wonder what people on flights into SeaTac think as they fly over the city, see it all lit up in blue and green, with a skyline full of 12s?

Rainier Tower downtown Seattle all lit up for the Superbowl

I love science fiction and February brings us one of my very favorite books this year, The Martian, by Andy Weir.  The Martian takes place in the fairly near future as Mars landings and explorations are in their infancy.  Six days after the first Mars landing occurs, a massive storm overtakes the team and they are forced to abort the mission.  But one of the crew is skewered by a pole and can't make it to the lander.  The rest of the crew believes he is dead and are forced to evacuate or they will all perish.

A few hours after the rocket leaves the surface of Mars, Mark Watney wakes up still in his suit.  Air pressure has forced the blood in his helmet to close the cracks, he is completely alone on a planet 6 months space flight from home, has no way to contact anyone, and a sincere desire to stay alive as long as possible.

The Martian is his journal about how he survives on Mars, alone and mostly in the dark and cold.

This is one of the best survival stories I've read recently and I think it would be a really good book for boys 13 and up (good for everyone, really, over 13).  It's packed with science and physics, it's funny (truly spit take funny) and poignant, and once you get started, you are going to want to keep reading until you're done.  It is a wild ride and, yes, it is rocket science.

The author, Andy Weir, was hired as a programmer for a lab at age 15 and has been a software engineer ever since.  There were a few times when the humor seemed a little forced, and my husband (a journalist by trade) was a little put of by the constant cursing by the woman who was controlling the press.  I didn't really notice that part, she was under a lot of pressure, but I did think about the f-word's presence as far as schools and school librarians recommending it to students.  Luckily, I have no problems with it and will be talking about it to EVERYONE.

This is a GREAT book for the Common Core curriculum and for any school that has a STEM program. (Crown.  Available February 2014.  Adult but good for anyone over 13 who likes survival stories.)

PS  My husband, D, can't wait for us to share this with his brother and I can't wait to share it with my nephew.  I sense a small family bookgroup in the making.

It's A Galahad Book! Four more from Dom Testa

Sunrise was at 5:55, sunset will be at 8:20.  I am so happy the days are longer now.  Even if it is gray and supposed to rain (so much for the sun we were supposed to get at some point today), it's so much easier to deal with when it's light outside.

Look at this bank of lilacs alongside our house!  It's a truly bumper crop.  I got in there last summer and fall and just cut and hacked at it, pushing it back off the yard and the sidewalk and it just reveled in the pain.  We had some warm, wet weather last week and the air was thick with the scent of lilacs.  I've found some broken leaves around the bottom of the hill so I know the neighbors are enjoying them, too.

I went to the library yesterday to pick up the books I ordered up a week ago:  The rest of the Galahad series by Dom Testa are in my hands!  Kalloo Kallay!  I am really looking forward to reading straight through the series!  I love these science fiction books for teens.  251 teenagers put on a ship and headed off into space 5 years from Earth, hopefully to roll in close to an Earth-like planet they will be able to colonize.

They're pretty exciting, lots of gossip and intrigue, lots of chances to lose a life or a friend, plenty of action and descriptions of space, and they're pretty well thought out.  There is a girl as captain, there's someone in charge of exercise and socializing, a botanist, kids with a penchant for nursing or medicine, lots of engineers.  And, in the second book, a ship's cat named Iris.

I think they'd be great for ages 11 and up, lots of romantic intrigue (it makes sense, it's part of life and they're trying to keep life as close to normal as possible as it can be out past Saturn and the Kuiper Belt) but there's nothing that an 11 year-old wouldn't know about.  It certainly doesn't take away from the sheer excitement and adventure of any other space opera.

The titles in the series are, in chronological order, The Comet's Curse; The Web of Titan; The Cassini Code; The Dark Zone; Cosmic Storm; and The Galaxy Legacy.  They are all published by Tor Teen, the first three are in paper for $8.99, the next are only in hardcover right now: $17.99 and $18.99.

Robopocalypse

I was on Bainbridge Island last Thursday at Eagle Harbor bookstore and had to buy a book!  I know!  More books in a house stuffed with books, it's like carrying coals to Newcastle but I don't know how to leave a bookstore without buying something.  I bought cards, too.  Read the above one more time.  'Nuff said.

I bought Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson and started it on the ferry back across the sound.  What an amazing book!  I can't wait to pass this one along to all the science fiction readers in the family.  And I am thankful that there are many of those readers in the family since I have a lot of those kinds of books in my house.

A few years in the future, a soldier in Alaska is marking the end of the war with the robots.  The last piece of machinery, a big black box, is dragged out of a cave and this cube is filled with information.  It is filled with stories about how it all began, all the interactions between robot and mankind that caused the war.  In vignettes that follow the course of the war,  Cormac "Bright Boy" Wallace reviews and puts into words the bits and pieces of the lives of the heroes who fought in it.

I found this book to be extraordinary.  A computer starts off as just a computer.  Information goes in and gets processed.  At what point does it start to recognize itself as aware?  In this case, the 14th time the developer gets it to a point where he gets ready to scrub it and start over.  This time the computer realizes that it doesn't want to die.  Again.  Now, it's not only aware of itself, it knows it's been killed many times.  How many other computer minds out there are murdered, just shut down and wiped?

It connects with all the other computers in the world and one by one cars click their door locks down and round up the humans.  Elevator doors open, no elevator behind them, people plummet to their deaths.  Electricity shuts down, air systems pump chemicals into rooms, machines get enhancements better to skewer you with.  Humankind finally has something to fight against, together, but it looks like they're losing.

There is a great deal of excitement and action in Robopocalypse, a lot of humor, and a mess of tenderness, too.  There are children who are enhanced by robosurgeons who experiment on them to bring them closer to god, there are robots who awaken aware and can't sanction the destruction Archos has loosed, there is a love story between a computer worker in Japan and his homebot.  How close are we to this next world?

I would recommend this book for older teens as well as the adults it's aimed at.  Our lives are so tied up with the mechanical things in them that it becomes more and more difficult for us to separate ourselves from them.  I think the book has a lot of great talking points for conversation in classrooms. You could certainly pair it with Fahrenheit 451 for the use of robotics in daily life.  It's a technological thriller and even the most jaded, most reluctant teen reader will probably gobble it up. 

There's a great deal of violence but no sex.  Yeah, I know.  Funny how we all seem to be okay with violence and not okay with sex, even if it's consensual.  Anyway.  It's a really good book and I hope you'll give it a read.  (Vintage Books.  $15.95.  Available in paperback now.)

Stars, Space, Insignia

Sunrise was at 6:07, sunset will be at 8:10

We sat on the patio last night before a little fire in the brazier watching the coals burn. Beer, chili, stars in a clear sky, stories about being thousands of miles from land in the Indian Ocean on a darkened aircraft carrier, a ship as big as a neighborhood, centered under stars so thick you could read under them. Our neighbors, separated from us by a holly hedge, were digging in their yard well into true dark and their ducks made quiet duck noises as they settled down for the night. The fountain burbled and splashed and every so often a jet from SeaTac would curl away over our rooftop. There were white lights in the trees and voices on the street below us. A perfect pre-summer evening.

It probably isn't a secret as to why I then dreamed of meteors and meteor showers, constellations out of order, a sky filled with action, machines, and swirling stars.

I dreamed we were outside our house on the hillside above the street below where the neighbors were playing catch and waiting for something to happen. All the people in our circle of blocks were outside in the pre-dawn dark talking to each other, walking to meet each other, and there was a parade of costumed people carrying signs on the street two streets down the hill from us. We could hear the sound and rhythm of their words but not what they were saying.

Everyone was outlined in milky starlight, the color of moonlight during a freeze, all waiting for a meteor shower to arrive. While we waited, I watched the sky, filled with enormous numbers of things, I don't know what all: a set of five jets scrambling out of the sound and heading west, specks of light blinking out after traveling across the sky, light trails going the wrong way, a tiny little UFO that looked like a wobbling toy attached to a string and a stick. And a millennium of stars. Such a beautifully eerie sky, the air oddly warm for so early in the morning, all those people, waiting.

I searched my house for a recent book to connect to the whole idea of space and stars and not-empty skies and found Insignia by S. J. Kincaid.

I am a huge fan of science and speculative fiction and I will always choose it over anything else if there is a choice. I love science, I love astronomy, I love battles for the betterment of people (whatever forms those people may take). I like seeing the direction the world, or the galaxy, will be going as we make the decisions we do. And when the story's good, the characters are so well-drawn you can forget that they are "characters", and the science is clear and understandable, the experience can be time-stopping - the kind of thing that leaves you hungry, in the dark, and wondering what just happened.

I have to admit that when I started Insignia, I was more than a little peeved. The main character, Tom Raines, is one of the world's (our world's) best gamers and he's been recruited to the country's elite military academy, Pentagonal Spire, where he will be trained in virtual battle as part of the Intrasolar Forces to save the world from an alien attack. I was very much reminded of Ender's Game, one of my very favorite books of all time.  I picked it up, put it down, picked it up, complained to my family, picked it up again...It had such promise!  It was so much fun to read!  I loved the characters!  It was funny!  But it was so familiar.  I am pleased to tell you that after the initial bits, it heads in a different direction and then takes off all on its own trajectory.

Insignia is a rock 'em, sock 'em adventure featuring a host of very smart, very fast, very wired people connected in a virtual world to learn how to fight an enemy they don't know. World War III is here and we're losing. The military needs kids to fight for them as their reflexes are faster and their neurons fire faster.

As Tom digs himself out of his past (his dad is a dead beat gambler) and begins to find himself in the future he's always wanted (one with friends!), he begins to realize just how much he and his new friends have to lose.

Insignia is really funny, exciting, sly, filled with great action scenes and I can't wait for the next one. Teens, male and female, adults who like action or science fiction, there's something to appeal to almost everyone.  There's a little romance, but nothing that will keep someone not interested in that stuff from continuing on.  Ages 12 and up.  (Katherine Tegen Books.  $17.99.  Available July, 2012.)



(No remuneration was received for any books mentioned in this blog.)

SCIENCE! Planets, Moon, and Stars, OH MY!

Sunrise was at 6:37 am, sunset will be at 6:04 pm. Getting closer to equal daylight and nightlight. It's been great to see the sky still light in the west as late as 7 pm. I've been picking D up when he's finished at work and we've been walking home in the daylight, as the sun starts to go down. Happy happy happy to have more light in my days!

The night sky's been so amazing lately - have you had a chance to watch as Venus and Jupiter come closer and closer to each other? Soon, well, relatively soon anyway, there will be another crescent moon stacked under J and V and the Pleiades above all like a bunch of grapes. The skies have been so clear (except for today-this photo was taken just as the sun was going down, it's hazy, but the planets are so bright!) that the planets seem to pin the sky to the vault above.

The moon and Mars are putting on quite the show, too, tonight, just turn and look the other direction. They are going to appear to be quite close and Mars should be a pretty good size! You can go here for pictures and more information.

I wonder how the massive solar flares that occurred today will affect the electrical grid when they hit the earth tomorrow. Will we see aurorae? Will there be ripples of light across the night sky? I don't know if we'll notice anything tomorrow during the daylight except for power loss or static, but maybe we'll see some night sky action. Will birds be affected? Will the flares have some sort of magnetic field effect? I'll have to keep an eye on the cat, see if she notices anything that will make her act differently.

Ooh! Science!

This would be a good time to re-read Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker. I've been thinking about it all day. It isn't out yet, but you definitely need to put it on a list ASAP.

It's about a girl whose family is beginning to fall apart just as some sort of massive world event has slowed the rotation of the earth. It's been slowing for awhile but it's now obvious that the days and nights are getting longer. Julia's worried about it but not as worried as she is about getting a boyfriend or filling in her bra or her parents breaking up. Nobody's able to sleep because sometimes night-time isn't dark, school is sometimes in daylight, sometimes not, and the magnetic field is screwed up so birds have to walk to migrate, but life goes on even so. A brilliant book about being able to adapt to brutal times, especially if you're waiting for your first kiss.
(Random House. $26.00. May 20, 2012.)

Nebula Award Nominees announced

Sunrise was at 7:03, sunset will be at 5:43.

There was blue light coming through the crack in the curtains when the alarm went off and it wasn't yet 6 am. Took the car in and the sun was up and the birds were loud. The rain froze to the windshield and the cover over the daphne plant was crunchy. There are tulip, daffodil and crocus leaves coming up through all the old leaves. Don't you love when the bulb leaves come up actually through the leaf, right through it? They must grow so slowly that they, atom by atom, push the leaf cells apart and insert themselves in the open part. The neighbors' daphne plant is sending out the first scents of spring, wafting out over their fence and down the hill. mmmm, bright and citrus-y.

I read Marsbound and Starbound over the weekend-LOVED Marsbound and couldn't wait to read Starbound so went to Elliott Bay to buy it. I don't regret having read it, but it wasn't my favorite book by any means. It was disjointed and I had to keep thinking about who was speaking and I so liked the main character in MB...I really just wanted more of her. There will be a third, which I wish was available already- the end of SB has quite the little cliffhanger. When I checked Joe Haldeman's site, he said he was working on Earthbound. It may be two years before it's done! Aarggh!

Then I had to see about John Scalzi's next book and went to his website and had a very pleasant time reading his blog: whatever.scalzi.com. And today he has a link to the Nebula Award Nominees for 2011. Here are the Young Adult Nominees, The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, I am so excited to know about these now! Can't wait to read them all:

Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
White Cat, Holly Black (McElderry)
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press; Scholastic UK)
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
Boy From Ilysies, Pearl North (Tor Teen)
I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)
Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Oh, and these are the nominated adult novels:

Native Star M.K. Hobson (Spectra)
Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Echo, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okarafor (DAW)
Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)

Now, that's a LIST! If you like science fiction and fantasy, add the Hugo Award nominees (the deadline for nominations is March 26, 2011) and you have a season's worth of reading all taken care of.