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Guest Post from Kersten Fons of the the Brentwood Library

Planning a book club for teens is amazingly fun, but challenging.  They are very picky about the books they read and don’t want anything too "schoolish." I try to combine a cool craft with each book I pick, and since I fell in love with the terrific pictures in Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, I wanted to do something that incorporated the pictures into the craft.  So I came up with… photo transfer tile coasters!

I’ve never been a huge fan of traditional sandwich cookies. I know that probably makes me a weirdo in your book, but two dry cookies sandwiched with a dreamy filling doesn’t make an ideal cookie to me. I’ll eat the filling, leave the dry cookies, thank you.

With its insta-social, insta-vintage snapshot-sharing network, Instagram would be the ideal way to keep up with the lives of your favorite authors… if it weren’t so biased to authors who are still alive, that is.

Fortunately, with a little imagination (and Photoshop), we’ve whipped up some perfect pix to flesh out the feeds of a few dearly departed literary darlings.

Ah, one of the most compelling and, well, dangerous of literary characters – the femme fatale. Love her or hate her (probably both), she’s a staple in many stories. Here’s your guide to the lady (usually) in black.

The femme fatale is most notably a classic in detective fiction and the noir genre, but her origins go back much farther than that. This archetype is part of the folklore of many cultures and she became a prominent literary character in the 19th century. John Keats wrote about the femme fatale in many poems; the character of Matilda in The Monk is a classic example; and Edgar Allen Poe used the archetype in his work. She is also a central piece to a lot of paintings from this time period (by artists like Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt).

The femme fatale will do the impossible to get what she wants, including flaunting her “sexy-and-she-knows-it” body to wrap millions of men around her red polished finger. However, the femme fatale isn’t a floozy – she won’t just throw herself at anyone. No, she sets her sights after careful consideration and follows through with a plan – one that never portrays her as a sexual prowess.

A common trick is deception, as the femme fatale fakes weakness in order to accept another character’s “help.” Once one has fallen for the femme fatale, there’s no getting away. She’s got you right where she wants you, baby.

The femme fatale character is everywhere. She exists in every corner of pop culture, although not on the cover of Britney Spear’s most recent album (aside from the name – Femme Fatale – the cover art is a terrible portrayal of the character type). Meet a few of our favorite femme fatales:

FAITH LEHANE
The Text: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Role: A “sometimes rogue, sometimes helpful” vampire slayer.
The Costume: All the cool clothes from the late 1990s + red lipstick.

VIVIAN RUTLEDGE
The Text: The Big Sleep
The Role: A ruthless and spoiled daughter of a very rich man.
The Costume: Classy white dresses + mysterious eyes.

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Maria Vicente is a literary agent intern living in Ottawa, Canada. She likes coffee, books, snail mail, and magic. You can find her on Twitter (@MsMariaVicente) or check out her website (mariavicente.com)

(Image via)

It’s very likely that for most of your young adult life, you are going to have to deal with the character-building experience of living with roommates.

In today’s tough economic times, it’s just not financially practical for most people to live on their own in their twenties. Living with another person can be tough—people never let on about how gross, irresponsible, loud, or lazy they are, so choosing your roommate can be a shot in the dark. So, how do you deal with a bad roommate? The easiest way is probably to be passive aggressive with the roommate instead of direct and to-the-point. I would guess that such an approach would yield better, faster results.

At any rate, it would be FUN!

To get you started, here are some handy tips from The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: College to get you started.

Some think that horror comedies are almost impossible to pull off because they elicit two different reactions but when you think about it, they really are one in the same. Fear and amusement may elicit different reactions (screaming and laughter) but someone who’s truly scared may find themselves laughing later or laughing so hard that they scream and even in cases of an extremely funny or scary moment, both can lead to the inevitable wetting of one’s pants.