Weblog Love on Wednesdays

Today's Weblog Love on Wednesdays post is a kind of connect-the-dots post, if you will.

Dot #1: 100 Scope Notes posted a book trailer for Guys Read: Funny Business, which I watched because:
1) I like what the Guys Read organization does (getting guys to read, duh!), so much so that;
2) I read the anthology Guys Write for Guys Read and liked it enough to recommend it to my semi-reluctant-reader nephew (14 at the time, now 15); and
3) I would be willing to read more of their antholgies. The trailer is a good set up for the book and did a sufficiently good job of hooking me.

But you're thinking, "Right, but that picture in the upper right-hand corner is of a book that is not Guys Read: Funny Business. What gives?"

Dot #2: There were a number of authors highlighted in the afore-mentioned book trailer that I was familiar with (Lubar, Kinney, Yoo...), but also a couple that weren't on my radar, so I wanted to check them out. And one of the guys who wasn't on my radar was Adam Rex. I did an Amazon search for his titles and most seemed to be aimed at the middle grade readers. (Now, I'm not opposed to MG books, I just don't read a TON of them.) None the less, one title stood out: Fat Vampire. That didn't sound like an MG title (because vampires didn't get picked up as a huge trend in MG books, like they did in YA), and the cover didn't look MG.

Dot #3: I had my interest in Fat Vampire piqued, so I did some searching and could find hardly anything about it. It comes out in July 2010, but even the publisher's website (an imprint of HarperCollins) has hardly any information about the book (i.e., plot). I did read one interesting thing about it, a book recommendation/blurb by (my beloved) Frank Portman, "Fat Vampire is a deft, simultaneous skewering of several sets of pop culture conventions: teen vampires, lovelorn nerds, high school group dynamics, and clashes of cultures, real and imagined. It is also the most authentic, original riff on geek culture that I can remember reading. That it manages to do all that and also be an engaging story with great characters and sterling dialogue that just kind of explodes off the page is something like a miracle."

Completed Picture: That sealed the deal. I'm going to read this book.

Thanks (and some Weblog Love) to everyone who played a part in me eventually finding this gem.