“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things. Of pep-rallies–and lockers–and hair gel–of prom queens–and kings–“
Just kidding. It’s time to break down the end of the HYoYA.
I’ll admit this upfront: I cheated a little. Some research had to be done for language learning and novel writing. I’ll do better next time. Maybe.
For a good, two-page list of the books I read this challenge, see the Goodreads shelf here. Not all books are rated.
Let’s talk about the problems listed in the introductory post.
1. Romance
This one actually didn’t drive me crazy–until I looked through my handy little reading list. Of the books that did have romantic themes as primary or important secondary plots, all of them were written by women. What the hell, men? Give us some smooches and crushes. Alternatively: What the hell, women? High school love triangles aren’t that important to a coming-of-age story.
The above comments may sound a little confusing. What I want is more balance. Fewer stereotypes. May I have that? Or do all high school women walk around complaining about boyfriends? I sure didn’t. Two of the male authors I read dealt with protagonists who weren’t quite at the age to be interested in girls. The other protagonist was in jail, so can you blame him? Maybe my irritation here is more for women authors, or perhaps more male authors need to feature romance. What do you think?
2. Dystopia
I didn’t find a lot of these. Hunger Games (Collins) and Divergent (Roth) were on my reading list because of current media rave/rage (pick your poison) but otherwise there wasn’t an abundance of dystopia. The new Spider-man got a little surprising when, in the third volume (spoiler:) the country started going to shit, but Marvel is trying to figure themselves out right now. There are so many crossovers happening in Marvel right now, so it’s going to take me a while to catch up. Keep it up, people.
A currently over-looked novel that I recall being popular is City of Ember (duPrau). It’s a post-apocalyptic mystery of corruption(!) and I might actually continue the series because I’m dying to know more about its world. Although it was more of a children’s dystopia, it’s worth a look.
3. Representation
As I thought, a lot of characters and authors were predominately white. 10/13 of the novels read were written by women, while only 4/20 graphic novel series were written by women.
In comics, the writers were typically white males. Granted, I didn’t look up or list all the artists from any comic.
I was so, so glad to see a character with Indian heritage in Chasing Shadows (Avasthi), but then, in most of the novels I read afterward, the representation paled.
At least we have Miles Morales in the newest Spider-man (Bendis), who is all kinds of adorable and becomes a more tortured hero than I believe Peter Parker ever was. Plus, don’t forget Ganke. Don’t ever forget Ganke.
As a person who happens to be white, I’d like to say I’m also tired of characters looking the same. I’m trying to fix that in my own novels. I really am (and it’s not even that difficult to do). Let me also go on a mini-rant here and say I could not, for the life of me, tell the difference between four white male characters in the Divergent movie, and they were usually all in the same room together! It was like watching an ABC Family marathon.
I need to have another HYoYA just to seek out more representations of people. I know for a fact there are more culturally diverse novels. I have seen them myself at the library! During this challenge, though, I tended to focus first on plots that intrigued me in my random book-binging, and second on reading lists thrust upon me by others.
Well, my friends, it’s time for me to thrust a list upon you! The following novels are my top five from this challenge based on writing and story alone and they’re somewhat diverse in terms of authors and main characters. (Click on these Goodreads links. You know you want to.)
What makes these five books great? All of these authors aren’t afraid of quieter moments. They’re able to find meaning in the smallest things. This is a quality I’m trying to sophisticate in my own writing, so these authors’ efforts are worth a lot to me.
In conclusion, this was a great half-year of guilty pleasures. I’m not the least bit sorry most of the books I read were comics. Superheroes are getting a larger, much deserved fanbase, and this must include teenagers based on all the merchandise you see in department stores. I’m finally, once again able to embrace some of the first fandoms I had as a child.
Will I do this challenge again? Absolutely. When? Maybe not during the same time next year. I have a month-long challenge coming up, which I’ll announce in a few weeks. After that, I should decide between this and four other potential reading challenges. Whenever I do another Half-Year of Young Adult, it will have a more tailored approach.
Read all my posts on the challenge here, in the Young Adult Challenge category on this blog.
I brought home Walter Dean Myers’ Monster about a week before he died. I’m not kidding.
The theme of this post is a little broad, but bear with me.
I’ve been wanting to read Monster since it was first published. Because my reading list can wrap around the world twenty times, I finally got around to it last month. This novel isn’t so much a novel as it is a screenplay and a diary. It’s both easy to swallow and hard to digest. Allow me to elaborate.
Our hero, Steve, has been charged with murder. What makes this book great for people to study in school is the argument whether being employed as a lookout for a robbery, without being present while the robbery was taken place, can or can’t adjudicate him as an accomplice in an accidental murder. From the very beginning, we see how being in jail has transformed this teenager. Once someone in court passively calls him a monster, the word sticks with him and affects how he views everything going on with the case.
Courtroom scenes are always very dry to me, but the strange part about this book is that these were the easiest to read. Where Steve is an amateur director within this art form, he is his own master in the journals that go between each scene. These were the most potent portions of the book, second only to the surprise pictures (SURPRISE!). We hear about life in jail, conversations in the waiting room before sessions of the trial, and how Steve believes his family sees him.
My view is that Steve isn’t guilty. I find this to be the truth because I followed the trial. This was the intention of Steve (or Myers): “watch” the film and make your own decision. This was the intention of the story behind the story.
Because I read this just before the comic Injustice: Gods Among Us and the manga Naruto*, the concept of “monster” came together well. Steve’s view is the most complicated portrayal of these concepts because he’s the most innocent of all the characters I’m going to highlight here.
In second place is Superman. (Full spoilers ahead!) After his family members are killed, he takes it upon himself to rid the world of crime. Some of the means he uses to justify this long-lived revenge is waging war on other heroes and allowing other heroes to kill. He’s certainly not as innocent as Steve here, even if he is Superman. Some heroes side with the new ideals that are placed, some against. Grieving can be violent sometimes, but I have to side with Bruce here (because Batman). What’s even more cool is Steve’s references to superheroes while recalling a time of innocence. The theme of this post nearly made itself.
Another monster in this comic is clearly the Joker for committing his crimes in the first place. I can compare him easily to Naruto because each of them loves tricks and has a wicked dark side when they really want to. While the Joker is obviously evil, Naruto is the hero of his tale even though he’s the personal cage for a demon fox that once ravaged the town. All the townspeople despise him for his hijinks almost as often as they abhor him for his role in their spiritual world. Even if the Joker is much more evil, he’s always more alluring than any manga/anime character, and I defend this statement.
As if all of these stories weren’t comparable enough, a novel I’m about to (finally) read is Demon In My View, which features vampires.
This challenge will be extended to August 18th because I’m having so much fun! I also promise, for real this time, I will lay off the Batman.
* I can totally justify reading Naruto. Toonami on Cartoon Network advertises the dubbed anime all the time, and each commercial annoys me. I chose to read the manga in order to steer my mind away from the annoying voices. The manga is decent, but I don’t understand the mystic ninjutsu enough to continue the series. Airbending and such is one thing, but the author seemed to be making shit up as they went.
Judging a book by its cover only works 50% of the time.
Of the four books I chose for this post, I managed to get through only two. Let’s talk about all four.
I chose Susane Colasanti’s Keep Holding On because of the cover, but here’s the catch: I chose it because I didn’t like the cover. The copy I found was a random find. While shelving at the library one day, I happened across a picture of two people holding hands in a classroom, a heart painted on one hand. Normally, the abundance of pinks would be revolting to me. Since I’m trying to read all types of YA books for this challenge, I picked it up. No regrets.
This novel was pretty much what I thought it would be: romance and betrayal; high school cliques; drama; tame retribution… I still enjoyed it. The story featured more than just the advertised romance. Bullying was the novel’s message, a subject I hold close to my heart. (Spoiler alert!) I could have done without the suicide, though. It doesn’t always happen in high schools, and it doesn’t always happen within the same year of being bullied. Sometimes, it festers for years. Sometimes, it heals. Sometimes, it’s not committed by the obvious people. This was a quick read for its heaviness and, sure, I’ll recommend this to anyone.
Because I liked Colasanti, I decided to read another of her novels. Take Me There seemed appealing enough. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. I didn’t glom onto the main character as I did in Keep Holding On, which is odd; I’m generally tired of main characters who have a woe-is-me outlook on life. My own tastes betrayed me this time.
I’ll give any book 50 pages. Almost any book. If the author can’t make me want to keep reading after that long, I ditch the book. Take Me There was one such book, If I really think I should like the book, I give it another 50. If the book has less appeal by page 100, again, I ditch it. The third novel I tried for this post, Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25, received 100 pages of reading from me.
I have shelved many of Richard Paul Evans’ adult books. They’re lightweight and easy to spot on the shelf. I call them “old people novels” because they’re short and always feature a wreath or horse (or something, I don’t know) on the covers. Again, I’m simply judging his entire adult work on book covers. This YA novel surprised me. It looks action-packed(!) and different from what I perceived this man to be. On this cover, a teen stands before a blue, industrial portal, flashes of electricity emanating from him. What I got, though, was one chapter of suspense and intrigue and the remaining 98 pages of smalltalk between characters. For some readers, the intrigue and mere promise of action would be enough to hold on to. For me, it wasn’t.
There was a great part, though, that might be political commentary in disguise:
I wondered what good it was being president of something if you’re always being told what to do by the members.
I see what you did there.
Finally, I have mixed feelings about Sarah Dessen’s Just Listen. This was on my personal list because it promised deep discussion about music, something I’d often thought about writing in the YA genre. Without this title, though, I would have hesitated to choose this or any of Dessen’s books. If you look at a page featuring all her book covers, you’d swear you can pick out the Mane Six from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
I have mixed feelings about Just Listen. It’s Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak times three. The drama. Oh, the drama. At least I made it past page 100. By the time I reached page 200, I figured, “Might as well keep going.” I’m glad I did. (If it’s on my personal list, I must finish it!) It was great worldbuilding. I’ll give it that. There was so much I learned about every person in the heroine’s intimate life that I thought I knew them myself. Sometimes the regret in their lives made my brain hurt. I didn’t want to continue reading, but I needed to. I’m glad I finally read this, but I’m also glad it’s over.
Perhaps the way all the conflict was resolved gave me the impression this thick(er) book wasn’t worth it in the end. For all this buildup, I expected something bigger. Instead, it fizzled. You could read Speak, followed by Becoming Naomi León by Pam Muñoz Ryan, and get a better payoff. However, there are two things Dessen does better here than Anderson and Ryan.
(Spoilers ahead!) First, she’s better at portraying what may happen after first- or second-degree rape. There isn’t much of a great big dramatic “justice is served” type of scene like in Speak. Everything is quieter. Because the heroine is afraid to speak up in much of her life, she doesn’t miraculously change when this event happens. It’s a character flaw that, yes, she eventually sorts out. That’s called Character Development, and it’s shown well here. Second, Dessen is skilled at going to and from flashbacks. So much so that I sometimes didn’t realize she had gone on a tangent until she was returning to the original scene. That’s great. That means I’m invested in what’s going on. It got overwhelming a little too often because of Teh Drama, but it was interesting watching a flashback that lead into a description, needing another flashback to provide more information, and so on. I’ll recommend this book to writers for these two reasons.
These two novels I finished have more than pastel covers in common. They’re both publications of Penguin’s Speak, which is aimed at teens with difficult subjects such as these. (Fun fact: Laurie Halse Anderson has published under here and Puffin. Love ya, girl.) This was pure coincidence. The Library’s genre labels covered this little part of the spine, but I still chose these particular books. Pretty neat.
Why does every damn book need to have a movie?
Warning! LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD.
Many novels these days, from recent best-sellers (Water For Elephants) to mass-read classics (The Great Gatsby) have had movies made from them. I haven’t seen or read either of these, but here’s what I did read and see recently:
These three books are good examples of what to do (and what not to do) when making a film or less inspired, blockbuster-craving movie. Although my opinions of them differ, they have much in common: they star teen characters, they’re more-or-less science fiction (if you count a realistic take on superheroes to be science fiction) and they’re all certainly action stories.
The Hunger Games and Catching Fire
I can’t decide which I liked more, the movies or the books. (Movies. Probably movies.) Although heroines usually grate on me, Katniss didn’t usually do so. And although I am, by now, tired of seeing Jennifer Lawrence’s face everywhere, watching her as Katniss helped me appreciate the hype. (Disclaimer: Lawrence is a fantastic actress. I simply dislike her because everyone else is currently in love with her. I might be a hipster.)
At first, the sight of Woody Harrelson playing Haymitch was startling, but the more I saw him the more I adored the character. In writing, Haymitch is the surly, sarcastic drunk who needs to be taken care of. On screen, he’s the surly, sarcastic drunk with a sharp wit who doesn’t need help from anyone, probably not even Peeta. Haymitch’s dislike for Katniss’ personality, in either case, is refreshing compared to the “you’re so special” mentality the protagonists of teen and tween stories tend to receive.
Because I watched the movies nearly immediately after finishing the novels (except Mockingjay), the differences between paper and screen were pretty fresh in my mind. I preferred the movie of The Hunger Games and the novel of Catching Fire. In the first movie, riots were shown, whereas in the book series we don’t learn about them until Katniss does in book two. THG can get away with straying from Katniss’ point of view, whereas the novel would break if it strayed from the first person point of view. I, for one, am glad the riots were included in the first movie because it encouraged interest in the second. I enjoyed seeing President Snow’s discussions in the movie, but in the novel of Catching Fire, Snow’s appearance at Katniss’ house was more chilling in writing.
If critics of Catching Fire say book two was all over the place, the movie, to me, was worse because it felt rushed. I was more intrigued by the first half of the novel with the utter uncertainty of the fates of the rioting districts. Once they got to the arena, I lost interest, but even so I wanted to see more interaction between the characters during the Games in the film.
This movie series is so sickening I seriously can’t have a midnight snack while watching it. The filmmakers did such a good job that the movies can stand on their own. Then again, I can’t ignore how once, while reading Catching Fire, I was actually biting my bookmark. Sometime shortly before the Mockingjay movie is released, I’ll look forward to reading the book.
I only wish I could say the same for Divergent.
Divergent
I’ve avoided writing any review on this to prevent myself from going on a rant. The novel was recommended to me, and the same friend let me know the movie was better. She was correct, but I don’t believe either was up to par with The Hunger Games (or any other well-received book). Somewhere in the middle of reading Divergent, I decided not to watch the movie. If the book frustrated me so much, not even a potential blockbuster could be that much better. Alas, I saw it anyway for the sake of this post. (You’re welcome. …Have you thanked me yet?)
“The movie is better,” I repeated during the trailer. But, as soon as Beatrice began her narration, I found myself moaning. No. Don’t world-build your movie with a narrated prologue. With novels, it depends on what you do, but movies? People, have you learned nothing from M. Night Shyamalan?
Unless this is the opening theme to every episodes for all the kiddies out there, it’s not needed. It’s simply evidence of hasty filmmaking. Do your world building!
To the movie’s credit, besides the opening and the closing, Beatrice’s inner monologue was non-existent. This was one hell of a step up from the book because things actually happened without her questioning herself at every turn of the page. However, even in the movie I and others were confused about certain things, such as why the Divergent population hasn’t been ruling the city all along and (my personal pet peeve) why it isn’t taboo for Beatrice to have a relationship with her trainer, who helps determine progress scores of all the competitive students.
All in all, this was one film where I was relieved to find out subplots and some of the main plot differed from its original.
I’m not usually a fan of filmmakers taking liberty with creative license for the sake of providing a semi-formulaic plot for the common man, but I make exceptions once in a while.
Kick-Ass!
I saw the first two movies before reading these comics, and I must say I’m a fan of both. Kick-Ass 2 (the movie) is combined with Kick-Ass 2 Prelude (the comic) and I’m okay with that. The plots are different, too. The movie shows more of Mindy’s life in high school and, yeah, gets formulaic with her attempt to fit in with the cool crowd, but as long as Hit Girl is triumphant I don’t think any of us can complain. (On that note, I’d like to address writer Mark Millar directly. *ahem* WHAT THE FUCK, MILLAR? WHEN IS KICK-ASS 3 GOING TO BE FINISHED? You can’t leave a girl hanging when she’s trying to write a post about the whole series!) Despite the plot of the second movie, I’m glad it features more Hit Girl because she’s more fun than Dave.
I find it difficult to decide which I like more: the movies or the books. More importantly for a fangirl, I find it impossible to decide which I dislike more. Even after reading Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, I’m not on board with terribly graphic violence. Just violence? For some reason, yes. The movies are more graphic visually whereas the comics, to me, are more graphic linguistically. Spoken swears roll off the actor’s tongue, whereas written swears linger within the dialogue box. Violence is prominently in the viewer’s face, but the coloring in the comics are more blunt than other comics I’ve read recently (especially Marvel).
Now that I’ve gone on about that, you may be wondering why I’m a fan of Kick-Ass in the first place. I just am. The exaggerated action is part of what makes the series so fun. Superheroes, come on!
The main character, Dave, makes a good point here:
Suddenly I got why they embraced us like they did. Why the movies were created in such a dark decade. Why these characters were created in the first place. We all just need a little color in our lives and the certainty of a happy ending because real life doesn’t work out like that.
Real life isn’t as comic book-y, either, so this is why over-the-top nonsense with a plot is and can be fantastic.
Should all books be made into movies? No. Like real life, some just won’t work out. I have a series that would make a great action film series, but there’s another series I’m working on that would make a terrible movie no matter who directed it.
After this post, this reading challenge is done with the über-popular books. I’m off to pursue lesser-known teen titles.
Befferkins, the Random 