Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
Instead of doing a list of ten items I am going to do three that will be so packed with ideas that it will feel like I did talk about ten different topics.
Library Bindings
A. Follett Bound
(sidebar: looking at books being created is very relaxing)
B. Turtleback
(image from thelibrarystory)
Going to be honest and say I do not see much difference between Follett Bound and Turtleback library bindings.
sidebar: If you know what the middle book that has the boy holding a basketball please comment below!
Who would benefit from library bindings?
A. mass markets, big books – I use mass market paperbacks as my purse book so I’m always thinking about durability.
B. General books I own off top of my head- A Game of Thrones because both of A and I carried around for months, Children of Blood and Bone because it is big and after a while the gold lettering rubbed off and the spine has creases. I got a library edition of Prom Queen and one of the things I liked about it is its portability for one thing but also it was able to not get damaged in my purse.
B. Because it would look cool and I’m obsessed with book formats and want books I actually read to be in unique formats.
Study Book Editions
C. Amsco Literature Program
(image from amazon)
The unique thing about ALP versus Turtleback or Follett Bound is that ALP has a readers guide at the end.
I like the simple design
Mock ideas (book and color pretty much based on original covers):
The Hate U Give, black
or 
Piecing Me Together blue or red
The Way You Make Me Feel would have a blue and pink ombre effect (way lighter pink than shown above)
It would also be interesting to invert the white to black and that be a special series.
D. Norton Critical Editions
(image from here)
What I like about Norton critical editions is the context and criticism that comes after the text. More likely than not I find myself wanting critical conversation about the books I read (which you will see below).
[insert syllabus]
Syllabus
A. I like the idea of discussion, analysis, and study of the books I read.
There needs to be a letting go of this idea that classics and literary fiction are the only things that can be seriously studied/have literary merit. Overall, I think personally there is probably a void of analysis I want around the books I read. That void feeds into this obsession with creating curriculums in my head.
Curriculums/Syllabuses
Japanese horror mangas- this idea started all because of two things:
A. A list of best horror manga that was populated by only men
B. Confusing Fragments of Horror author with Junko Mizuno (they have very different styles don’t judge me but for five seconds I assumed they were the same artist)
C. A joke in my head about Fragments of Horror that spiraled into a wait a minute (I will not mention it here because it is a possible spoiler)
Ultimately, A-C caused me to think about a curriculum that would study the differences and similarities of depiction of women in Japanese horror books, how do they portray horror in general, art styles
Feminism, Womanism, Emphasis on black feminism
A. A curriculum or syllabus that studies black feminism exclusively in young adult has been something I have been interested for a while.
Part of my desire because first and foremost I am a black woman but also so much of what is pushed as feminism in y.a. (and overall literature) is white.
B. Book List
- The Hate U Give
- Piecing Me Together
- Poet X
- Knots and Crosses (linking my manga spoiler review)
- Dread Nation
- The Belles
- Allegedly
- Monday is Not Coming
- Everything, Everything
- Calling My Name
- (non-fiction womanist texts)
There has been a black feminist or womanist conversation building in my head with every single black female authored and main charactered young adult novel.
C. Topics To Talk about off top of my head
Black vs Woman
How much black young adult literature falls under race issues only but fails to get to that intersection of misogynoir.
Decolonizing beauty: Colorism, reinforcing beauty
For example, there is this whole thing I’ve noticed where a character is light skin or white and immediately the story tells you they are the most beautiful person in the story. (In general in young adult literature there is a lot of reinforcing beauty standards that needs to be talked about in general)
Topics that could be expanded on in the syllabus (off to of my head)
classicism, interracial dating, respectability politics, etc
themollyweather 