Sampling the Pop: Barnes and Noble's Get Pop Cultured Freebies

On July 18 Barnes and Noble kicked off a three-week event celebrating popular culture. The event, Get Pop-Cultured, promises to provide book nerds with opportunities galore to celebrate their fandoms. For instance, if you're in to manga, Viz Media titles are buy two get the third free. Select stores will be having costume contests, kids' activities, games, author signings and giveaways until the end of the event on August 10th.

Four titles I'm looking forward to
 seeing more of (B&N Samples)

Preview weekend was July 18-20 and featured a plethora of sample chapters from upcoming titles in various genres although there seemed to be an awful lot of YA offerings on the table. I picked up several titles that seemed promising. Out of the eight samples I've looked at so far, five really caught my eye. I've reviewed all of them below; keep in mind that these impressions are based on very short samples.

Uncaged by John Sandford and Michele Cook -- Released earlier this month, Uncaged is the first in a new series by Sandford and Cook. In this series two teens take on the Singular corporation, a corporation with decidedly dark secrets including questionable animal testing. Like a lot of YA fiction of late, Uncaged takes place in a world that's definitely out to get its teen protagonists. Ordinarily I wouldn't be all that in to conspiracy and dark plots, but the opening chapters provided in the sample were enough to pique my interest. The characters are still pretty flat in these early chapters, but they show some promise as each gets to have either a snarky moment or touching scene.

Atlantia by Ally Condie -- Set to be released on November 4th, Atlantia is an intriguing post-apocalyptic story. The story's center is Rio, a young woman who just might be a siren. She lives in the underwater city of Atlantia, a  not-quite Utopia, but Atlantia is still better than the Above. Rio longs to see land and has decided that she will choose life Above when the time comes. But before she can do so, her twin, Bay, declares that she will go Above. Confused and hurt, Rio tries to solve the mystery of why her sister chose a life she claimed to have never wanted. The preview is only two chapters long, so I have no idea why the Above is so dangerous or why Atlantia's coming of age ceremony features young people who choose a life of hardship Above, but based on the two chapters I have read, I'm curious to see what happens next.

Nightmares by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller -- Due out September 9th, Nightmares is likely to appeal to a younger audience than Uncaged or Atlantia.  Those who enjoyed Lemony Snicket or The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place or even The Gashlycrumb Tinies should find something to enjoy in this book. Charlie Laird, the twelve-year-old protagonist, is not having a good time as the book opens. The three chapter sample reveals that his mother has died and his father has remarried. His stepmother claims to have been a childhood friend of his mother, but Charlie doesn't believe it for an instant, mostly because she lives in a creepy purple mansion and runs a decidedly odd herb shop in town. Oh, and something in the house is out to get him! All the classic fairy tale elements are here presented with a wink and a nudge by the authors and delightfully illustrated by Karl Kwasny.

The Young Elites by Marie Lu -- According to Lu's Tumblr for this first book in the series, The Young Elites is a bildungsroman for a villain. Again, I don't generally get into the complicated back stories of bad guys, but Lu's Adelina Amouteru is sympathetic, a girl cut off from others thanks to a virus that she shouldn't have survived. Fans of the X-Men will recognize some of the elements in this book -- a teenager who develops powers she can barely control, the parent who tries to deny those powers, and an outside world who wants to destroy those with powers. While all of that is neat, what I found compelling in this sneak peek was the atmosphere Lu has created. Set in a world reminiscent of Renaissance Florence, The Young Elites is filled with dark shadows and foreboding. Think of Edgar A. Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" or "The Cask of Amontillado" and you'll get a sense of the place Lu's created. The book is set to be released in early October.

Peanuts collections by Charles M. Schulz -- Andrew McMeel Publishing through its amp!Comics for kids arm has published several collections of Peanuts strips. The sampler given out during Preview Weekend featured three collections -- Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Friends, and POW!. This sampler is among my favorites largely for nostalgia; however, the collections are worth a look as they reprint full -color strips and feature some of the best-loved gags from the long running newspaper strip. Included are strips with Lucy the psychiatrist, Snoopy the Beagle Scout, and Charlie Brown as the long suffering baseball manager.

Two titles I was less impressed by (B&N Samples)

Of the other samples I chose, three didn't quite appeal to me, but they might be to the liking of other pop culture readers. First off is The Young World by Chris Weitz. Weitz will be a familiar name to fans of the Twilight series as he directed Twilight: The New Moon. The Young World is his first novel and features a world in which all of the adults have been killed by a virus. The children left behind must make do with a world that's been reduced to rather primitive conditions and hope that when they turn 18 they won't die. Told from through the eyes of several teens who are working to survive in what remains of New York, the book feels an awful lot like someone mixed Lord of the Flies in with the classic Star Trek episode, "Miri."

Danielle Paige's debut novel, Dorothy Must Die, revisits the world of the L. Frank Baum's classic, and like those other revisitations by Gregory Maguire, Dorothy Must Die begins with a what if?. In this case, what if Dorothy returns to Oz not as a hero but as a conqueror? Taking Oz and giving it a Gotham makeover didn't do much for me, but the book has been praised for its girl power potential. Released in April, the book is rumored to be the basis for a new CW series. The prequel text, No Place Like Oz, is available as a $1.99 e-book; it explains how Oz became so un-Oz like.

The sample for The Way of Shadows: The Graphic Novel by Brent Weeks features several black and white pages from the graphic novel to be released in October. This text  is an adaptation by Ivan Brendon of Weeks' first novel in his The Night Angel Trilogy; the art is by Andy McDonald. I liked McDonald's style but found the intense dark and gritty world a bit much for me. Perhaps I shouldn't have read this after reading the heavy The Young World and Dorothy Must Die. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy novel might find this book appealing though as it does take a hard look at one of the more popular dark characters, the assassin.

A promotional poster for a Stan Lee collaboration (B&N Samples)

I did pick up some promotional art for some other texts that look like fun, including a poster for the Zodiac series co-written by Stan Lee and promotional postcards for Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land, The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, Babymouse, and Comics Squad: Recess!.

All in all, Barnes and Noble's Get Pop-Cultured events are worth checking out. The remaining events feature specials for Frozen, Marvel Comics, James Patterson, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Muppet Moment of the Blog -- Habanera a la the Swedish Chef, Beaker, and Animal.