Quick! There's still time to nominate for the Cybils! Also I read Return of the Thief and I am still babbling incoherently.

October arrived without me noticing, and I suddenly realized that Cybil's season has arrived! The Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards want you to nominate your favourite books from 2020. Anyone can nominate! You have until Oct 15, so don't procrastinate! (I'm mostly talking to myself here.)

Don't know which book to nominate? Charlotte's Library has a helpful list of un-nominated (at the time) Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction, and alibrarymama has more.

I ... gosh, I've hardly read any of this year's YA and Middle Grade. It's just been—well, it's been 2020. I will be looking forward to the lists of nominees to get my reading recommendations for the next little while. Let's see: Deeplight has been nominated already; so has Call Down the Hawk; so has Return of the Thief.

Return of the Thief! The long, long, long-awaited final book of Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series. I managed to make it last two whole days, but I had to finish it last night. It was so, so, so, so good. That's all I've got for you right now: I don't even know where to begin to talk about it. There are elephants. They are awesome. 

I think I need to read all six books in order now and see the whole grand scope of the story play out and notice all the little details that she weaves together with such deft trickery (she's been keeping track of all this for more than 20 years, people!) and take the time to savour these characters. I love these characters so much. I'm so sad this is the last book, but so happy they are all infinitely re-readable.

I'm not sure I'll actually be able to write a review of Return of the Thief. A master's thesis, maybe.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone! I am thankful for authors like Megan Whalen Turner and books like Return of the Thief and characters like Eugenides and Attolia and Eddis and Pheris and fellow bloggers who I can squee with about how awesome authors and books are. And organizations like the Cybils that keep the conversation going and support new and diverse authors so that we and our kids can keep having wonderful reading experiences!