Please take care when
This has been a Public Service Announcement from the Coalition to Prevent Book-related Confusion/Scandalization.
I spend a few hours of the week in the company of some fairly nerdy college girls.
They are also quite Internet-savvy, as nerdy college girls often are (I should know), so they are probably reading this. Hello, my nerdy friends!
Anyway, they are often chatting away while I try to get some work done around the office and I catch snippets of their conversations about who Tweeted so-and-so while they were in class and what they were writing about for their Victorian Science Fiction class and the differences between costumed and non-costumed people at Anime Conventions.
One day a few weeks ago, one girl said to another – I’m assuming within the context of their conversation, in mock-serious tone…
The other girls said: “Giggle giggle giggle giggle…”
I said: “Say whaaaaaaaaaaa…..?”
Apparently, this popular-in-its-own-right picturebook – Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back– is a minor league internet meme.
I’m glad everyone likes Hunger Games. I’m glad Harry Potter is a big success.
But I especially like it when children’s literature hits the counterculture. When it shows up on Tumblr and the nerdy college girls of the world think it is cool.
(It also stands to note that I could not resist trying to assert my own coolness in their little nerdy friendspace by bragging that I am, in fact, a former Candlewick intern. Clearly my grasp on cool is questionable, at best)
Q: What’s black and white and red all over?
A: Every book in my apartment.
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston is a fun way to spend an afternoon. I love stories about college girls who attended women’s schools in the 1950s (see: Mona Lisa Smile); this was a fun, visual indulgence in the era.
Did you like Go Ask Alice? Do you want to read a book that is a deliberately identical book to Go Ask Alice, except with the Internet, prescription pills, and meth? Then you should read Lucy in the Sky. Relevant question: is it possible for a book written in 2011 to be considered “campy?”
I’m not usually a fan of historical fiction for young people because… well… they usually scream “HISTORICAL FICTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE!” The protagonists are usually too passive, too observant, just watching history pass by. On that note, I really liked The Water Seeker, maybe because Holt gives some of the adult perspectives, too. Plus, I haven’t experienced an Oregon Trail narrative since my elementary school computer lab, so I found the story very interesting.
Jason Myers’s Dead End was one of the most tragically sad, graphically sexual YA books I’ve ever read. And I read a lot of sad, sexy books.
A really depressing porno, basically.
Sometimes I get mad at sci-fi/fantasy books for making me like them. Lish McBride’s Hold Me Closer, Necromancer is one such book. Stupid Sam and his stupid endearing nature. Also, I still kind of like necromancy. Beats vampires and werewolves, anyway…
First of all, thank you for bearing through my sappy-sappy last post and thank you for your kind comments! I have been trying to keep this blog marginally book focused, but A) I’m not sure I will ever lose my Personal Blogger tendencies and B) I am just a super sappy person. Sorry.
But now, I’d like to talk about books. As I’ve mentioned many MANY times before, I am on the brink of a major shift in my reading landscape. I usually feel the reading itch this time during the semester, start fantasizing about all the books I’ve missed out on, all the books on my to-read list, all the books that are the complete opposite of everything I’ve been allowed to read… but because I am leaving school, this is feeling like a time for big changes.
A few weeks ago, the Internet was alive with inflammatory opinion pieces about reading. I’m not going to talk about Joel Stein because I cannot take anyone seriously whose argument is “YA books suck. I’ve never read any, but I’m sure they suck. Therefore, if you read them, you suck.”
Maura Kelly’s article in The Atlantic, though, really caught my attention. Her “Slow-Books Manifesto” urges enlightened readers to take their books like they take their food: “Read books. As often as you can. Mostly classics.” Eschew the processed, packaged, high-fructose corn syrup of books in favor of the grass-fed beef, the garden-fresh produce, the home-cooked meal.
This is a food analogy that I like. Actually, I kind of want to stop writing this blog and re-read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle instead.
But many YA book bloggers took offense to this article’s sentiment, arguably because they felt that much of YA – the books they read, promote, and enjoy – does not qualify under Kelly’s criteria for books worth a slow read. I agree that Kelly’s definition seems to be an arbitrary mix of The Western Canon + Contemporary Literary Tomes (Franzen, Gaitskill, etc). This is exactly the kind of Recommended Reading that has irritated readers and writers of “genre” fiction (romance, women’s, SFF, chick-lit, and YA alike) for years and years.
And Kelly’s arguments are a sorry lot. According to Kelly, classics alone “challenge us cognitively even as they entertain,” as if no other books have this capacity, as if some books can challenge the cognition of all people, innately. “Strong narratives help us develop empathy,” Kelly writes, indicating that she has likely never read a YA book in her life, never mind the question of what exactly *is* a “strong narrative”… the language she chooses throughout is so undefined and arbitrary, I begin to feel a little like I’m reading Joel Stein all over again.
But despite poor argumentation, I think that for me, as I move from a time of mandated reading, of 2-5 books on the syllabus each week, I could use a little slow reading.
There is something about trying to stay up to date with the YA scene that is simply wearying – so many books being published, and every other book is just SO good getting SO much buzz, you simply must read. And even if I pace myself, try to read some longer, denser books alongside quicker reads, I usually abandon the longer book. The lure of the new, the easy, the fun, is too much for me.
For me, it’s difficult to juggle a slower-read with other books. And y’all know how much I love to juggle books. A slow-read requires my full attention. And my competitive spirit that urges me to get to 100 books a year makes me feel lazy if I’m not “on pace.”
But here’s the catch. I think plenty of YA qualifies as Slow Read-worthy.
It took me months to get through Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. I read a chapter and put it down. Read a chapter and put it down. This is a good book, a popular book, but was not easy for me to get through. And I’ve wanted to read Aidan Chambers’s This Is All for years now – it’s the intimate diary of a teen girl, which is something I like to read, and the format is innovative and interesting. But it’s an 800+ page tome; it doesn’t fit neatly into my purse so I can read on the bus. Even an intense voice can be daunting for me – I’ve checked out Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up twice now, but can’t get past the first few chapters because there is so much Min there – maybe this is the strong narrative Kelly was talking about? If you have ever picked up M.T. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing, you know exactly what I am talking about: I think this is one of the most brilliant books ever written, but it took me 3-4 readings to come to that conclusion, most of which occurred in 10 minute chunks because my brain couldn’t handle any more than that.
I might take the rest of the year and chill from the reading rat race. There are a lot of books on my shelf collecting dust that have been too intimidating to be read while juggling jobs, papers, and assigned reading; books that while maybe will not enhance my cognition any more than a shorter book, are still probably worth reading. In a month I will have a chance to do something different, and I’m thinking about taking it slow.
Ellis has a lot of problem-people in her life – a mother who works midnight shifts as a radio host, a social-climbing best friend who parties too much, a male friend who is in love with a girl who won’t give him the time of day. But she does have one person in her life she can count on, who she can tell everything to, who will always be there for her – her dad, who has been in a coma for years and lives at a long-term care facility. 37 Things I Love (in no particular order) begins when Ellis learns that she might lose that silent presence in her life when her mother is talking about ending life support, and follows Ellis as she tries to fight this decision and learn to cope with tragedies beyond her control.
This is not the kind of book that I would usually pick up to read, but I was quite surprised with what I found. Magoon navigates deftly back and forth between fluffy, teen-y drama (my stupid drunk best friend! Agh!) to intense emotional turmoil (my dad is going to die…), often within a single page. Ellis’s denial, avoidance, sorrow, and rage is all there, but not in a hit-you-over-the-head-with-my-wavering-grasp-on-my-sanity way. It’s subtle. It’s complex. I also appreciated the mix between happy moments and sad – life, for Ellis, doesn’t stop when her father might die. She seems to have adapted to maintaining life even with a dull ache of grief behind her life at this point, and she continues to have triumphant moments, experience personal epiphanies and life-changing moments, and appreciate the people who give her joy – the 37 things she loves. This is a quick read, a fast ride, but the depth of character packed in is pretty amazing.
There are 6 books standing between me and the End Of Grad School.
I’ve already read 4.
THERE ARE ONLY TWO BOOKS STANDING BETWEEN ME AND THE END OF GRAD SCHOOL!?!!!!
We have already talked about how I have no idea what I am going to be doing post-May-2012. I’m sure I will be doing Some Things that are Functional and Good (don’t worry, I already have some things in the works…) but one thing I know for sure is that I will be READING. And I will be READING WHAT I WANT TO READ.
What do I want to read right now?
I’ve so enjoyed and appreciated the wide range of YA/children’s lit that grad school has provided me, I feel like I’ve lost touch with the kind of books that resonate with me, personally.
That’s completely okay, by the way. I’m a professional. I didn’t sign up for a degree in Reading My Favorite Books.
But yeah, I’m basically two books away from returning to the motherland.
Which are, I’m realizing, the kind of books that I’d like to write.
Last summer, I wanted to re-read all of Sarah Dessen’s books in order of publication. Summer is a great time to read Dessen – even her books set in other seasons just feel summery in your hands.
However, there were also other books I wanted to read and things like… oh… classes. Work. Trips. Life. I read That Summer and Keeping the Moon (somehow managing to forget I was supposed to read Someone Like You in between), but then summer was over and I entered The Fall of Sci-Fi Fantasy.
But it’s almost summer again, and I want to jump right in. I love how every heroine and story in a Dessen novel is completely distinct, but that the books feel like series-in-spirit. I love the intricate communities Dessen creates with her characters. I love the offbeat love interests. I love that romance doesn’t come easy, but the payoff is worth the trouble.
Her books, her style, her career are basically The Dream.
I have written an exceedingly excessive review of this series already. But all personal-endearments aside, I think that it’s safe to say that these books’ success lies heavily on McCafferty’s successful creation of Jessica Darling’s voice. It’s the same voice that I think can turn people away from these books – the zippy language, the pop-culture jokes, the snark. But there’s nothing about Jessica’s voice that is ever NOT Jessica’s voice. Every line is authentic and reflective of her character, of where she’s at in her life’s journey. She has a lot of attitude, but she has a lot of pain behind it.
I also like how McCafferty takes the sometimes-tired Diary Format in odd, completely meta directions. Jessica writes in the journal – the pages you, the reader, are sharing – but then she stops because she’s worried that she’s been too honest. In between two books, she reports she has burned the first one. In Charmed Thirds she only writes during college breaks, because the school year has been too busy, but also because she’s done things during the school year she can’t justify to herself if she visits the honest-journal space. It’s a variation on format, but it always serves the story, which is so difficult and admirable. Lots to learn here…
For a recent job application, I had to put together a 2 minutes video pitching a favorite children’s book.
No, I am not going to link to that video because I kind of hate myself on camera, but believe me when I tell you I wrote about the Alice books.
These are not necessarily terribly elegant books, the issues are issue-y, the conflicts tend toward the superficial. But I do not care because I am so attached to these characters. I grew up with them. I love that Alice starts as a middle grade series and inches slowly toward YA in a path that seems natural, authentic. I’d love to revisit this series (especially with the fancy new covers…) and I would love to write a world so enduring as Alice’s.
Okay. By this point you probably think I am a ridiculous person. However, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is not just a packaged-concept series, a somewhat stupid title, a fluffy teen movie franchise! This is a series with deft third-person narration that dips into our four narrators heads with ease. And unlike the movie, the relationships between these character don’t add up to a big nostalgic “We’ll Be Friends Forever!!” love fest punctuated by moments of unrest. These are DEEPLY complicated friendships layered with personal issues, family traumas, and just life.
I am more impressed every time I read this series, and I would like to give them a re-read before I get around to reading the last book, Sisterhood Everlasting. I’ve heard mixed reviews, but I must read for myself. I must.
This book has inspired me to “must” read a potentially bad/upsetting/tootoosaddening book. That says a lot.
This is the only “series” here that I am not personally attached to over a long period of time. But in January, I finally read Anna and the French Kiss. I wasn’t instantly hooked, but by the time I finished, I found myself “accidentally” starting to read Lola and the Boy Next Door, Perkins’s second novel that very same day. Perkins takes the Sarah-Dessen school of romance and brings it to the city, and also brings a tighter narrative focus. I think this worked against Anna, in some ways, but worked well for Lola.
I’m interested to follow Perkins’s career, and I’m also interested to re-read Anna and take a look at the first half that I looked over.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is the book I love. But what pulled me into E. Lockhart in the first place was Ruby Oliver. The series begins with Ruby losing her first love and also becoming a school pariah. The rest of the series is her recovery… she rebuilds friendships, makes new ones, finds new loves, yes. Yes, this is all to be expected. But this is also a series about Ruby realizing her own weaknesses and negative tendencies… and then trying to fix them.
I can’t think of a writer who captures the real-ness of teen romance with more acuity than Lockhart. Horrendously bad, but at the same time horrendously amazing, and always an exercise of loving yourself. She does all this in a miraculously short span of pages. Envy.
When I was about twelve years old, my parents invited me to watch my first scary movie. For two or three nights, I joined them after small-children bedtime and we watched the miniseries version of The Shining. I was old enough, mature enough, and it wasn’t the R-rated Stanley Kubrick version… but it still scared the crap out of me, and to this day, I am still heavily freaked out by “Haunted House” type books and movies.
This is probably why I couldn’t read Frost at my apartment, alone, after 9 p.m.
Leena is looking forward to her final year at boarding school – she’s a student leader, an overachiever, and she and her three best friends are going to live together in this cute little cottage by themselves called “Frost House.” But on the first day of school, Leena finds out that Celeste Lazar – weird, art-freak, loose-cannon girl on campus – is going to be her roommate – Leena and her roommates are miffed that their perfect bubble has been broken. What makes things worse is that Celeste hates Frost House – the windows freak her out, she thinks the closet smells, the creaky old house noises keep her awake at night. For Leena, though, everything in her life starts to go downhill EXCEPT for when she’s at Frost House. Leena can’t keep peace between her roommates and Celeste, she loses the trust of a valued teacher-mentor, and she finds more and more excuses to self-medicate from her stolen pill stash. Celeste’s complaints about the house become more and more bizarre, but Leena sees Frost House as a sanctuary; so maybe the house knows something that Leena doesn’t? Maybe Celeste just doesn’t belong and needs to leave?
This book is a mysterious-haunting book/psychological-who-is-crazy, who-is-not? book, which again, see: The Shining. Baer also does some freaky things here to just create a sense of Uncanny: Things Are Just Not Right about the book. Celeste’s brother David for example, is prominent throughout the book as Leena’s love interest and Celeste’s ultimate protector. But Celeste and David’s relationship is full of family secrets and their closeness becomes kind of… creepy.
On a lighter note, Baer’s writing feels very contemporary YA – she gets the language, the issues, the friendships between teens. But for me, that just made the creepiness even creepier, like whatever is going on in that house could possibly show up at any time in my favorite Sarah Dessen book or something. Urghhhh.
You might want to keep this book in the freezer when you aren’t reading it. Just sayin’.
When news about the movie and the casting and the posters and the pictures and the trailers and everything else came out, I was indifferent. Books into movies are tricky. I don’t get disappointed, I don’t get invested.
But I have to say, I am having trouble thinking about much else other than my Hunger Games tickets, which will be waiting for me at the box office at 7:30 tomorrow night.
That was a lie, actually. I have a lot a lot A LOT of other things to think about. So much, in fact that, I am going to take my first ever official Blog Break.
First. Ever.
I have been blogging since mid 2003.
I used to scoff at folk who “needed some time away.” Blogging, for me, is more of a sickness than a hobby. I don’t want to stop. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes I don’t post as much as I want to or think I should, but I never WANT to leave it. I want to keep trying. I know I will keep trying.
But this morning, I understood.
In the next week I have to…
And do all that while maintaining my usual online class stuff, working 30 hours a week, interning, sleeping, feeding myself, etc
I have so much to do and so little time that my procrastination urges are in overdrive. This morning I was sitting around watching 30 Rock after eating breakfast – instead of working on something productive – and The Things I Need To Do were brewing around in my head and then I thought to myself, “Oh, but when will I have time to BLOG!? I need to BLOG!!”
It hit me that no, I actually should probably get a job rather than blogging this week. And that unless I actively step away, tell the universe SEE YOU NEXT THURSDAY, I will come back here and then I will not only be more stressed out, I will not get my shit done.
I love YA romance, but I am extremely picky.
I like romance, but I’m a smart girl. I don’t fall for silly romantic ploys, in real life or in fiction.
Pete Hautman’s The Big Crunch is probably the smartest romance I’ve read in quite some time. Apparently I am not alone in this thinking, as it was given a Los Angeles Time Book Award nod a few weeks ago, standing up against former Printz winning author Libba Bray, critical darling Life: An Exploded Diagram, Printz Honor The Scorpio Races, and the immensely popular Patrick Ness. The Big Crunch doesn’t feel out of place in this bunch – he did win a freaking National Book Award – but it is of certainly quieter than the LA time nominees. Contemporary realism that doesn’t scream LITERARY. Lots of pink on the cover. Romance.
It’s quiet, but yes: it’s smart. Very smart.
The Big Crunch is the story of two teens and their completely typical love affair. June and Wes remind me that teen romance is rarely of the Romeo & Juliet, the Edward & Bella, or even the Sarah Dessen variety. Teen romance is not often foreshadowed, not always quick to bloom, not always logical. Teen relationships are weird.
June is new at school, but she’s used to it. Her dad’s job has her at multiple schools every school year. She knows how to fit in enough to get what she needs – a group to sit with in the cafeteria and maybe someone to kiss, if she feels like it. Wes broke up with his long-term girlfriend over the summer and he’s not sure why he did it, especially now that she’s moved on and it’s stressing him out. It’s not love at first sight for Wes & June – their social circles occasionally collide, they meet by chance walking home, and eventually, these tiny moments add up to a love.
But even then, things are not easy. Some factors that challenge their relationship are beyond their control – parents, friends, timing – but Hautman also doesn’t hold back from exposing, through close third-person narration for both Wes and June, the many tiny ways that people in love can betray one another. The pettiness. The exhaustion of being together and the tendency to blame the other party.
People are not always nice. All endings are not happy. Love is awful sometimes, and this is the kind of love that can shapes our future relationships sometimes, shape who we become.
I find that much more compelling than anything perfect.
