Books I Read in 2011 that I Recommend You Read

I'm awful at picking favorites, so I don't have a top 5 books list of 2011, or even a top 10 list. But below are some of my favorite books I've read in the past year that I highly recommend. They weren't all published this year, and they're of all sorts of genres, and I recommend them for all sorts of reasons.

• Looking For Alaska – John Green
• Everything about John Green's writing just makes my heart happy. It's smart and funny and compelling and rings true.
•  Room – Emma Donoghue
• This one's a bit disturbing, but it needed to be. And the five year-old narrator is extremely well done.
• An Abundance of Katherines – John Green
•  Paper Towns – John Green (Can you tell this is the year I discovered John Green?)
• Fall For Anything – Courtney Summers
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – John Boyne
• This one might break your heart a little. A quick, lasting read.
• Where She Went – Gayle Forman 
• I highly recommend the first book, If I Stay, too. I wasn't sure how I felt about this second one switching point of views before I read it, but I think I may have even loved it more than the first. 
• Divergent – Veronica Roth
• Don't start this if you've got a lot to do. I was sucked into this world and the voice of Tris and couldn't put it down.
• Imaginary Girls – Nova Ren Suma
• Immediately after finishing this book, I couldn't decide how I felt about it. But I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since, and that says a lot.
•  Before I Die – Jenny Downham
• The prose is just beautiful and heartbreaking.
• Invincible Summer – Hannah Moskowitz
• I couldn't get enough of the families in this story. The book takes place over four summers, but it's about so much more than summer and teenage summer love.
• Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson
• If you loved Speak, you have to read this. It's just incredible.
• The Help – Kathryn Stockett
• I didn't think this was my sort of book, so every time someone told me it was great I just smiled and nodded. But it really is as wonderful as everyone said, and it certainly made me stop and think about the world we live in and how people are treated.
• How to Save a Life – Sara Zarr
• Will Grayson, Will Grayson – John Green and David Levithan
• Beyond Belief – Josh Hamilton
• This is a memoir of one of my favorite baseball players who very easily could've died from a crack addiction. His story is so complex and inspiring, I can't recommend it enough.

Here's to another great year of reading in 2012!


Have you read any of these? What were your favorite books you read this year?

A Friday Reference to Friday Night Lights

I try not to, but I usually feel the need to defend myself when friends see me reading a young adult novel. I go to a school where being literary and high-brow is much more acceptable than reading the latest young adult release, especially in my writing classes. When I do defend my choices, I cite the same reasons:

These books are good. They are incredibly well-written. Just because they are written with teenagers in mind does not mean they aren't quality. And because I want to write young adult novels, it is important that I read them.

Things happen. And quickly. As someone who depended on murder mysteries and legal thrillers through middle school and most of high school, I need plot. And in young adult, most of the time even the books that aren't high concept still pull you in right away. Because, let's face it, teenagers aren't going to give a book 50 pages to see if they like it.

In high school, every little thing that happens feels like the most important thing ever. It just does. Because in high school we feel so old and grown up and we don't yet know just how complicated and messed up and tough things can really get, so everything that happens to us is either the best or the worst and every crush is a love we'll never get over.

This last reason is why I most enjoy both writing and reading young adult - the intensity and urgency of every emotion. But there's another thing I love: Friday Night Lights. I first started watching the show because my cousin was a regular extra on it, but after the first few episodes, there was no getting me to stop. I don't think it hurt that I began watching it shortly after I moved to Chicago for college, and I was definitely homesick for Texas.

From tvovermind.zap2it.com

I can't say what is so incredible about this show as well as well as this article does (which I found via the incredible Nathan Bransford's blog). But in the article by Sonya Chung, this resonated with me the most:

"FNL reminds us that high school is an entire lifetime.  Everything important that’s ever going to happen to you happens during those four years."


This isn't saying that nothing important will ever happen outside of high school, just that some version of every important thing will likely manifest itself in some way in those four years. That's the great thing about young adult novels - the emotions may be the same as in adult novels, but they're compressed and intensified in this way that reminds you that high school actually isn't everything, but life is indeed short. Sometimes, I think, the world could benefit from certain aspects of our teenage selves continuing with us into adulthood. (Though I'll never mind if the drama gets left behind!)

So young adult novels? They rock. No matter how old you are.

Mean Girls, Realism, and Young Adult Books

It took me years to watch Mean Girls, and let's just say it wasn't instant love or anything. So how I ended up watching some of Mean Girls 2... I have no idea. I'm going to blame it on the lack of baseball at the moment.

Even so, my mind somehow related the movie to writing. There was a scene where a girl got food splattered all over her, and everyone in the cafeteria pointed at her and laughed. Literally. Pointing fingers and many over-exaggerated chuckles and all.

The thing is, there was a two-week period in my junior year when the same friend of mine got hit by food at three different lunches. We weren't the "losers" or anything (my high school was surprisingly diverse and well-mannered). I'm 99% sure the food wasn't even aimed at our table, unless as a joke. And it always happened right at the end of lunch, so there was a lot of mayhem with everyone leaving and we couldn't figure out where it came from. One time it was a barbecue sauce type substance, one time it was some sort of jello that had something inside of it. We all used our thinking caps (AP students that we were), tracked down a spare shirt in one of our gym or dance lockers, and got her changed and to class relatively on time. (In fact, after she was late for the third time, our crazy Calculus teacher joked she should start wearing a raincoat to lunch.)

I am still convinced that the three occurrences in such a short time period and the fact that it always hit the same person even though we were in different seats was a mere coincidence. Frankly, we thought it was hilarious. And my whole point is, no one else really even noticed what happened, much less pointed and laughed.

I think high school is a very important period of life (no matter how desperate I was to move on to college), and that's a large part of why I write contemporary young adult. So many things that happen in high school are amplified in our minds, becoming the most important or disastrous or embarrassing thing that has ever happened. EVER. And that's what makes it so interesting.

High school is a terrifying time all on its own. But for some reason, movies like to amplify this. They make the universal cliques more distinct, the embarrassing moments ten times longer and more ridiculous, the teachers crazier, and on and on. The stories that are told about high school are important, but I believe they can be told realistically, too.

I think there's a quote saying something to effect that fiction has to be more realistic than real life, because it has to be believable. That makes perfect sense. And I think this is something that young adult books are better at than movies. I also think the importance of this shouldn't be overlooked. When something is the right amount of realistic, it's relatable. And, at least for me, when I can relate in even the smallest way, that's when something I read has the most effect.

So, digging into all the crazy and twisted things that assuredly happen in high school and how they affect people, I'm all for. But over-exaggerating events to the point they're hard to watch? Please, for the love of books, leave it to the movies.

Note: I am speaking specifically about contemporary/realistic books - not fantasy or sci-fi or the like, which each work in their own ways with their non-realistic elements :)