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I never thought I’d hear myself say that.
I was at Barnes and Noble tonight spending the $50 gift card that was burning a hole in my pocket and, for the first time ever, I was actually recoiling from all the vampire stuff that was on the shelves.
Don’t get me wrong. I love me my vampires. My older school vampires. Interview with the Vampire. The Lost Boys. Near Dark. Anything manufactured prior to 2005. But this whole string of vampires in high school is just leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Oh yeah, I totally get the appeal for teenage girls. Absolutely no denying that. But at the end of the day, do vampires have nothing better to do with their immortality than go to high school and hit on jailbait? Really?
Not to mention the lot of them are just simpering pussies. While I highly doubt they’d be able to blend in with society if they went feral at the sound of the lunch bell, they’re just so mopey and blah and BORING that they’re kind of spitting on everything a vampire traditionally is.
One book I read fairly recently (more like 3 in one, actually) was Vampire Beach. I have never been so bored with vampires in my life. Of course the vamps are the hot, talented, unattainable high school crowd that everyone wants to be a part of but instead of being real vampires, they’re humanitarians and in order to feed, they throw parties. When they bite someone, it’s equivalent to dropping Ecstasy, apparently, and no pain ever comes to the victim. Where’s the fun in that? Not to mention their lives are just downright dull. They lay on the beach (yeah, they can go in the sun, according to them, they’ve adapted), surf and throw parties. Snore. I was hoping someone would go feral at lunch at that point. When one of them did (just not at lunch), it was over so quickly and painlessly it gave me the worst case of blue book balls since Breaking Dawn. Downer.
If I don’t read another vampire book for a while I’ll be quite content. I’ll probably wait until the shelves at the book store aren’t inundated with sappy high school vampires before I pick up another one. Although I do have one old school LJ Smith book in my TBR that I can see. And then 3 “vampire survival guide” type of books which I don’t fit into that category. Other than that, I’m branching out. I need a detox.
It’s got me down, man. I swear. I’ve been trying to figure out how long I’ve been working on this last edit on Earth Shatterer and I’m figuring, you know, a month. Maybe two.
Then I caught something on my Myspace . . . a post I’d written about starting the edit again . . . at the beginning of June . . .
Yup. That sounds about right considering that’s when I got the last of my beta input and started on the real overhaul.
Beginning of June. Four months. And I’m on chapter five. I think this says something.
It says I need to step away. It’s not taking me this long for it for nothing (wow, let’s beat on grammar some more, shall we?). I’ve been working on it pretty much nonstop (save for a couple little breaks) since February, was it? Maybe March? Yeah, I know. I understand that when my work actually gets to print, I won’t have the luxury of taking my sweet ass time getting the edits done. Deadlines and all. The thing is, deadlines are surefire motivating factors for me and personal deadlines don’t really work. Not for me. Because if I don’t meet them, nothing happens. I just reset. Bad mentality, I know, but that’s how I look at it.
So while I have the opportunity to take my sweet ass time working through these edits, I’m going to step away from my manuscript (just as I’m getting to the actual blending instead of total rewriting, another thing that really got on me) and do some side writing. I’m entering a very short piece into a teen lit Halloween contest on Absolute Write. It’s horror and I’m actually pretty proud of it. I want to write a little more branching out on my first Write It Wednesday piece about the crazy roommate and vampires. I want to write a Coney Island Psychic short and mainly, I want to read as much horror as I can this month. It’s a little bit of a goal of mine to make a dent in my massive sitting TBR pile and I can double up on that challenge (which actually is a challenge hosted by another review blog) but a YA challenge that I’ve let go stagnant because I went OCD on my ARCs and I’ve been reading them by pub date.
I also got my friend Jev’s newly released eNovella titled “Swan Song” which is his kick ass version of vampires. It’s available on Amazon (author name Jevron McCrory, from London) if anyone’s interested. 
Since I can’t take it anywhere with me, that would mean denting into writing time anyway to get it read. And I want to read it. So there’s that too.
I feel like I’m making excuses and I do feel guilty for letting my manuscript sit even longer but it’s not like I’ve stopped writing entirely. And I know I have an agent that’s waiting on a manuscript (sort of, she knew when she met me that I was in the middle of writing my first book so she was keen to waiting, and then I had to scrap that and wrote the second which is still being edited) but the way I see it, I would think they would rather wait a reasonable amount of time (this was March of 2008 and I’ve gone through 2 manuscripts, it’s not like I’m still toiling at the one) for something that they can actually sell instead of a piece of shit that’ll just get tossed anyway. I remember reading something about that on Kristin Nelson’s blog. She’d rather wait for a good manuscript instead of getting something rushed.
I just think my brain needs a bit of a reboot. I’m not out of ideas or anything on Earth Shatterer. Not even close. I’ve just been up to my eyeballs in it month after month after month that I really just need some space from it for a little while. And the little stories brewing in my head want to come out and play! But they totally understand that when it’s time to get back to work on ES, they must go back inside for a little while. They can’t distract me from the bigger project! Nothing will ever get finished if I allow that to happen!
According to this article, it just might be. But it’s working its way up. In all honesty, I’m not sure whether to feel a little patronized by the article or encouraged. Or maybe both.
I think, at this point, it’s safe to say that hard reading, read: literary reading, is boring and not done by the masses. If that weren’t the case, The DaVinci Code wouldn’t be an international bestseller and teens would still be clamoring for Hemingway. But the truth of the matter is, most people, when they read a book, want to be entertained. Ruminations on a person’s inner struggle in life are not entertaining. Unless that guy’s a spy who’s lost his memory and he has people shooting at him. If the dude’s just sitting on the train, who cares?
The important part of the article is that it’s focus is young adult. Adults are tapping into the “guilty pleasure” zone of YA in place of their adult reads because they provide something much more exciting than they could get in their normal novels. But why is this a guilty pleasure? It’s not like the books are any lesser than those on the shelves in the rest of the stores. It’s not like they’re any easier to write (and if anyone says it is, punch them for me). I mean, naval gazing and literary masturbation is easy. Writing to engage a teenager who spends all their time on the computer is not. See what I mean?
While there are some books in the YA world that are guilty pleasures regardless of where they may be shelved, there are just as intellectually stimulating ones, heart-racing ones and spooktacular ones. So they can’t stop open bank vault doors. It just means you can read more in the same amount of time it would take to read a “regular” book.
The thing with YA is that, yes, you need to get over the embarrassment of going to pick one out. Libraries and book stores are not going to re-shelve the YA section to make it adult-friendly. It’s YA. You need to suck it up, endure the funny looks, and head over into that section yourself. And that can take some balls. If you’re like me, you don’t give a shit who sees you because the numbers support the fact that more adults are buying YA than the teens themselves. Plus it helps that I still look like an older teen. Bonus points there. But for many, they don’t really want to be caught in the “kids” section.
To that I say get over it. If you want a book that’ll thoroughly entertain you without all the fat that those contemporary books have, you’ll head over to the YA section and damn the people that look at you funny. Hey, Twimoms have no shame. Or tact. Or class. Or much of sanity. And they don’t mind.
But there is nothing wrong with it. Don’t think of it as a guilty pleasure. Unless it’s Twilight. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying plot. I have to disagree with that article that says our lives are plotless. Our lives are one giant plot with a bunch of subplots thrown in. We are certainly with plot. It’s the literary that wanted to take that away. And most YA books don’t come full circle and end all nice and neatly. Except Twilight. Just like life, one issue ends but there are still a bunch of others that are in existence.
Plot is awesome. Plot is fun. It allows me to escape from the real world and enjoy myself. Yes, how embarrassed I must be for keeping my imagination alive.
More and more teachers are allowing their students to choose their own reading in the classrooms as either supplementary or in complete replacement of what’s deemed as “classic” literature. Personally I think it’s a really good idea but just like anything else, a balance needs to be made.
If I were a teacher, and I gave my students the option of choosing whatever books they wanted, I wouldn’t want to limit them with that. I wouldn’t want to eliminate what I would call “trash” because it’s not at a high enough reading level. I’d let them read it but I’d grill the hell out of them for reading it. I’m make them find meaning in the puddles of those books and if they couldn’t, then I’d make them take a step up and reading something different.
I’d also want to keep said “classics” integrated into the curriculum. As much as I’m not a fan of the term “classics,” some of those books I feel all students should read. Leaving them to their own devices to choose whatever means they might miss out. So I say give them the option but they have to earn it. Earn it by reading these other books that they may not want to, but they should.
I always like the idea of talking about books together as a group because it’ll allow you to see the reading in ways that you might not have reading and dissecting by yourself. Perhaps provide a short list of books to choose from. And then when class discussions begin groups the kids that read each particular book together and have them flesh it out, either with or without set questions for each piece of reading.
I also liked the journal idea. Again, if you want to read whatever you want as part of school, you’re going to have to earn it. Writing book reviews or dissecting pieces of the text, whatever it is, is a good way for the student to stay connected to something that they enjoy but also learn something from it as well.
As a personal assignment, I’d have them read one book a month outside of class and keep one of those journals on it. They would do this the entire year and every month they would get graded on how they did and I would recommend books they might like to try next, hinting at more advanced work and see if they take the bait. At the end of the year, I think it would be a neat way to fan out how a student grew as a reader on their own as opposed to a reader in a classroom setting. When they have no one else to discuss the book with, how would they do?
It’s a good idea, this choose your own reading, but I think those outdated classics should still have a presence there, just not as overwhelming as it is now. If you’re forever living in those old classics, you’ll miss the ones that are being made today.
If I were a teacher, anyway.
I caught this Diversity in Reading meme on a fellow book blogger’s blog and it got me thinking; should we read diversely simply for diversity’s sake? It all comes down to “should,” doesn’t it? What should we do as opposed to what do we want to do? Should I read that author or the other author because it’ll “broaden my spectrum of reading” even though I may not be interested in the book and will struggle to get through it? Doesn’t that kind of sap the joy out of reading?
This is how I choose a book if I’m just wandering around a book store aimlessly and without recommendations in hand: see pretty cover, read book blurb, buy book if it sounds interesting. Yes, I judge books by their cover. If I’ve never heard of it or it hasn’t been recommended to me, an eye-catching cover is what’s going to make me grab it off the shelf, now isn’t it? I don’t have story hooks throwing themselves at me and I don’t have the time to be “equal” and give every book blurb a chance.
Notice how the author doesn’t come into play. Unless it’s an author whom I’m familiar with and writes in a certain genre or target that I don’t like, the author is pretty much the last thing I look at. I couldn’t tell you the race of 3/4 of the authors on my shelves. Does it matter? Is it not contrived to force authorial diversity on your shelves just so you can say how diverse you are?
If I like the sound of the story, I’m going to read it. Bottom line. The author could be pink with 6 heads for all I care. So why does an author’s skin color or gender or sexual orientation even come into play when choosing a book? Why should it? If the book is good, doesn’t it deserve to be read regardless of who wrote it? Doesn’t it deserve to be bought and flaunted and hyped up without a peek into the skin color of the author?
Does it make me a bad person because I don’t actively seek to diversify my reading? I don’t think so. I’m going to read books that interest me. If that happens to be by a black person, white person, Indian person or transgendered person, so be it. I really don’t care. I just want to read. Nothing so wrong with that, is there?
According to the Telegraph, it’s not in a classroom. The article goes on to say that reading, and especially a passion for reading, is pretty much garnered everywhere else but a classroom because teachers are either teaching books that kids don’t want to read or “don’t have the time” to properly teach them. WTF? What is going on in the British school systems that English teachers don’t have the time to teach their students whole books? What’s the point of an English teacher then and just what are they doing that’s taking up so much of their time?
I don’t know much about that situation but when I was in school, if it was found out that you cribbed your way through a book, you got detention. Even now, kids are reading entire books, not excerpts. Granted they may not be books the kids are too thrilled about but I know quite a few teachers slide in a “your choice” reading assignment as a means of engaging the students and allowing them to read something for school that they actually enjoy instead of something that makes them want to gouge their eyes out.
Yes, I do believe a love of reading is born at home and the parents aren’t going to read newer books to their kids but the books they loved as children. Whether they are classic books like Little Women or Winnie the Pooh, in that sphere or the “oldies but goodies” is usually where the reading starts. Once kids get their fill of those they move on to books they enjoy; usually the newer, more contemporary books with a much more updated reading style.
That can lead into the whole “books nowadays are crap” argument that seems to never have an ending point but considering each era demands certain styles to its writing, it’s unfair to judge each against the other. No, children might not get into the “classics” as easily as, say, Darren Shan, but does that make contemporary literature any lesser than the “classics” where many writers were paid by the word (thus resulting in superfluous writing)? Different times, different writing. But that’s beside the point.
I don’t think a love of reading can be completely eliminated from a classroom. An engaging English teacher that wants their kids to read, not only books on the curriculum but popular books that they want to read, I think a love can be borne of a classroom setting. The setting just needs to be right and encouraging and a lot of the times that falls to the teacher to create. If they just don’t give a damn and “don’t have the time” to teach books properly, well then kids are going to suffer for it. But if teachers actually sat down and tried to work in fun into their state-mandated teaching syllabus, it could actually work. But that involves the teacher giving a shit. Why be a teacher if you don’t care, I have no idea but there you go.
A love of reading can come from anywhere so long as the environment’s there to encourage it. Yes, being forced to read books that you’d rather set on fire is not a fun thing but if you have someone there telling you, “well, you might think that one suck but try this one,” it could be all the encouragement that kid needs to start reading and actually see that not all reading is soul-sucking. Kids have to not associate reading to homework and force. The free will has to be there and the fun has to be there in order for them to move on and pick up a book on their own. I think the second a child finds out that read can be fun, and reading whatever they want and not being discouraged that they’re reading the “wrong” thing, the love is born.
So I’m participating in Operation Teen Book Drop this year simply because I read about it and thought it was a pretty neat idea. What it really is are the three sites in operation for this mission, readergirlz, GuysLitWire and YALSA, along with a slew of publishers and authors, come together to horde up thousands of books and drop them off to teens interned in children’s hospitals all over the country. What the rest of us do to help is gather up some books and drop them off in public
places for others to grab. Kind of like a secret Santa drop off thing. The drop day is April 16th.
I figured I’d buy up maybe five books and drop them all over the mall since, around here, that’s the most likely place teens will be to snag them. What YA books do you think I should leave around? I think The Luxe by Anna Godberson will be on the list. What else?
