2013 My Year in Books!

Woohoo! I've read 25 books this year! Which isn't too bad considering I've been in nursing school the whole year. (The following is major spoiler free. Some minor spoiling possible.. but I tried not to)

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
This is the second book in the Cinder series. I liked this one a lot. I love good YA books and this is some great dystopian/fantasy/awesomeness. Following Cinder's example this is another retelling of a classic fairy tale which I LOVE.
Recommended for: YA fans, teens, sci-fi fans, dystopian lovers, fairy tale lovers

The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson
This is the second book in the Name of the Star trilogy. It's no secret that I love Maureen Johnson and all of her books, but this one was great! I'm not normally a huge fan of ghost stories or books with ghost characters, but this one is awesome. Hilarious, witty, dark and gripping all describe this awesome book. You definitely have to read The Name of the Star first, but then devour this one. I'll just apologize for recommending this one now… because once you finish it… well you'll be upset!
Recommended for: YA fans, teens, sci-fi fans, people who love ghost stories, MJ fans, crime solving

Crewel by Gennifer Albin
Another YA dystopia novel. Can you tell I can't help myself from devouring them?? This one is an interesting take on controlling and creating "perfect lives". Adelice can weave time with matter and therefore affect real life, not to mention disrupt time and space. This is a super interesting take on sci-fi and fantasy. I like being intrigued and amused by something and this dystopian YA novel has a great premise. Apparently the sequels already out and I didn't know it!
Recommended for: YA fans, teens, sci-fi/fantasy fans, people interested in weaving?! :p

The Crane's Dance by Meg Howrey
I loved, loved, loved this book. I'm not even quite sure why I loved it so much. I underlined quotes that I loved, which I rarely do when reading a fiction book. It's about a woman who is a principal dancer in a ballet company in New York, dealing with the stress of her job, her sister's mental breakdown and her own seeming spiral into madness. It was great for sooo many reasons.
Recommended for: ballet lovers, artists, YA, adults, anybody!

Waiting to be Heard by Amanda Knox
I picked this up as soon as it came out. I never really followed her trial that closely when it was going on.. but I was interested in hearing the story from her point of view. This is an interesting book, allowing Amanda to have a voice, really, for the first time since her trial began. I'm still not sure what I think about the whole thing. Did she do it? I don't' know. I don't think so. If she did, I don't think that there was enough evidence to convict her..
Recommended for: real crime lovers, true crime fans, memoir enthusaists

Baghdad Burning by Riverbend
I enjoyed this book that is a slightly edited version of blog posts from a girl living in Baghdad during the American invasion who calls herself Riverbend. This was an enlightening read and offers a different view of the American invasion in Iraq. I've read a fair amount of books by other Middle Eastern authors and this one was fascinating as well. She provides an insider's account of what Baghdad was really like in 2003 and 2004 while showing that many people in Baghdad were well educated and that Islamic fundamentalism was rare before the American military showed up.
Recommended for: history buffs, people interested in the Middle East, feminists, memoir enthusiasts

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
My dad told me about this book before it was published. About how the author was being touted as the 'next J.K. Rowling'. So we bought it and I read with cautious optimism. This book is really nothing like Harry Potter other than the fact that many of the characters have more magical or mystical abilities. But I enjoyed it quite a lot. Should she be compared to Rowling? Time will tell. This is only the first of seven books that will be published in this series. I'm intrigued by the start of the series and interested to see where the rest of it will take us.
Recommended for: YA fans, sci-fi/fantasy lovers, people who like loooong series, fans of magic

Five Days at Memorial by Sherri Fink
I had read about this book before it was published and I knew that it was a journalist's investigations into possible euthanasia at a hospital in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. I was very interested in this book as a nurse and as a person who loves New Orleans. I approached this book feeling that I had pretty strong opinions about euthanasia, about right and wrong. But after reading this epic (it comes in at about 550 pages) my views on euthanasia, about who deserves to die, who deserves to live, and who makes these decisions during a natural disaster, were suddenly much less clear. The situation in hospitals in NOLA and in the city as a whole were deplorable. There were decisions being made that could have been avoided and there was tremendously bad aid provided by the government, the military, and private companies. My general take away from this book was that New Orleans was abandoned after Katrina and horrible things happened as a result.
Recommended for: medical professionals, anyone interested in ethics, New Orleans lovers

Allegiant by Veronica Roth
This is the final book in the Divergent trilogy that started in 2012. I was intrigued when I first heard about this series because it had been written by a 22 year old, who had just graduated from Northwestern. Her book had been chosen for publication and a movie studio had already optioned the rights to all three books, before the first was published and the second and third were even written. I thought this was an amazing accomplishment for a new author. I loved Divergent. It was innovative and a new take on the now common YA dystopia genre. I like Insurgent fairly well, although not as much as Divergent. Then came the much anticipated third book, Allegiant. I had grand hopes for the finale. I so wanted to like it. And I did like it, well enough. But there wasn't as much action or excitement as the first two and… I don't know it felt more like a middle book than a finale.

The ending of Allegiant has been widely discussed and many readers are incredibly angry with the way it ended, some going so far as to send death threats to Roth. Completely uncalled for behavior, that should never be condoned. Just because authors are now public figures and allow their readers a lot of access to them, DOES NOT mean it is alright to send authors death threats when you don't like a choice they make in THIER book. Did I love the ending of Allegiant? No. Did it make sense for the characters and the story? Yes.
Recommended for: YA fans, dystopian lovers, futuristic society fans, sci-fi/fantasy lovers

I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

I meant to read this memoir as soon as it came out, but alas school got in the way. I had heard about Malala when the rest of the world did in 2012 when she was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan for speaking out about girls' rights to attend school. I knew that she was already a kickass proponent of girls (and every child's) right to an education but until I read this book I didn't realize that she had been an outspoken opponent to the Taliban for years. She started writing and giving speeches about the importance of education when she was around 11 years old. She submitted writing that became part of a few blog posts about what it was like to live as young girl under Taliban rule in Pakistan. You can tell from this book that Malala is an incredibly smart girl and more than that she has the drive and the passion to learn everything she can and truly change her world for the better.

Recommended for: feminists, children, memoir enthusiasts, teens, adults

Too much "Darkness" in YA

For background on what I'm about to discuss please see the first article by Meghan Cox Gurdon and the second followup article.

Maureen Johnson, author of ten YA books participated in a discussion with Meghan Cox Gurdon on NPR this morning. If you missed the live show, check out this link. (click the listen to the mp3 button at the bottom.) For more information about MJ check out her twitter account.

*All quotes are in bold. I have also used abbreviations for names for ease. Maureen Johnson = MJ and Meghan Cox Gurdon = MCG*

I try not to read these type of articles because usually they just make me angry, but after MJ discussed the articles on her twitter for a while, I decided that they were something worth looking into. Also, if you want to see the huge discussion that MJ opened look at the comments on either of the articles or search for the hashtag #yasaves on twitter. You’ll find some great stories of how YA has influenced people’s lives.

Now, let me say right now, I am not attacking Megan Cox Gurdon personally. I’m sure she is a perfectly nice woman and I do not presume to know her personally. I am simply discussing the articles she wrote on the Wall Street Journal website. Since she has put these articles out in the world I take that to mean that they are fair game to be commented on and discussed.

I do not want to promote hatred, I like to imagine I spend my life combating hatred; I simply want to discuss this debate about YA literature. If you want to flame the author of these articles or anyone else for that matter, go somewhere else.

I’ll start out with a quote from MJ that I believe is very important to this entire argument about “darkness” in YA. She said, “Whatever this darkness is, because it’s a squishy undefined concept…” What she said is true. What is darkness? There can be no definite definition in my opinion, although to MCG it appears to be subjects like rape, murder, violence, self harming and eating disorders. But what is dark to one person could be a fact of life for another. Which brings up my argument of how are we to say what is right for kids and teens to read? I do not think that MCG was suggesting that we ban all books that contain these elements, although many people have alleged this. (I hope I’m correct in this assumption.)

From the end of MCG’s second article. “It is that question—the condoning of the language and content of a strong current in young-adult literature—that creates the parental dilemma at the core of my essay. It should hardly be an outrage to discuss the subject.” I do not believe that it is an outrage to discuss this subject; in fact I think it is awesome that so many people hold such strong views on this topic. The main thing I want is for people to have a view on this subject, for them to read the articles and believe something!

“The essay, titled "Darkness Too Visible," discussed the way in which young-adult literature invites teenagers to wallow in ugliness, barbarity, dysfunction and cruelty.” I take issue with this statement. I do not believe that any literature invites its readers to do this. What is the point of a book? Ask 10 people and you would probably get 10 different answers. Books are many things, an escape from our everyday life, a view of another person’s world, a source of knowledge on some subjects, etc.

An example of how "dark" books can affect teens is that I read every single one of the books in the Gossip Girl series. Considering these books came out in 2002 and I began reading them shortly after, I was roughly 13 or 14 when I began reading this series. Is this the intended age of readers? According to the amazon entry for Gossip Girl it is intended for grade 9 and up. So I wasn’t that far from being the “right” age. However I have always been mature for my age and I feel that I suffered no ill effects of reading these books. Did it make me want to go out and buy couture clothing, smoke pot or have sex? No on all accounts. It was simply an escape for me, a doorway into a different world from my own.

“The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives.” I am not trying to say that parents should step back and allow their children to read whatever they want. A parent has the right to decide what their child reads. I am just saying that these parents should not go further and try to get books taken off of the shelves at libraries and bookstores.

That being said, my parents rarely, if ever controlled what books I had access to and I turned out a normal well adjusted adult. I was always more mature than many other kids my age and so when I was 12 reading books that were meant for 15 year olds, it didn’t bother me at all. I can definitely say that I wasn’t harmed irreparably by anything I read as a teen or pre-teen.

In my opinion a child not having access to a variety of books could harm them more than reading "dark" books, because they would grow up and never be exposed a lifestyle other than their own. They could grow up believing that their way of experiencing the world is the only correct one, and this can breed both hatred and ignorance.

“I began my piece by relating the experience of a Maryland woman who went to a bookstore looking for a novel to give her 13-year-old daughter and who left empty-handed, discouraged by the apparently unremitting darkness of books in the young-adult section.” Okay, so I have an issue with this. I read a lot of YA fiction and in spite of my discussion on the “dark” aspects of YA I am honestly not very attracted to these type of dark books. I have read some of them but they definitely do not monopolize my YA reading. If I can manage to find books that I don’t consider “dark” than how could this woman not find one book that she considered appropriate for her 13 year old?

“The larger question is whether books about rape, incest, eating disorders and "cutting" (self-mutilation) help to normalize such behaviors for the vast majority of children who are merely living through the routine ordeals of adolescence.” I abhor this argument. I hope there is never a time when rape and incest are NORMALIZED. I would like to think that our society would never normalize such violent crimes as these. Why would any teenager read a book containing one of these subjects and say, “Oh, I think I’d like to go out and get raped?”. MJ pointed out a similar argument on the NPR broadcast. So, I do not believe that this is a question at all. In fact we as members of society should work as hard as we possibly can to see that this doesn’t happen!

“Adolescence can be a turbulent time, but it doesn't last forever and often—leaving aside the saddest cases—it feels more dramatic at the time than it will in retrospect. It is surely worth our taking into account whether we do young people a disservice by seeming to endorse the worst that life has to offer.” Yes, it feels more dramatic at the time, but does that make it any less real to a teenager living in the throes of dramatic life? By acknowledging how teens experience life aren’t we validating their opinions and views? So what if they look back on their thoughts 5 years later and think… “Wow, I was so overdramatic?”. If there is anything good to be gained by allowing teens the ability to express themselves and have validation for their views shouldn’t we be trying as hard as possible?

MJ also commented on the NPR broadcast that her fear was that adults would read these WSJ articles and not want their children to read YA anymore. In my opinion this would be the worst outcome of all. To me, reading is so important in a teen’s life. Whether it’s to help them figure out what they think about life, how they view others or just to know that they’re not alone, it is important.

YA saves.