Archive for the ‘Chat’ Category

Farewell, vampires.

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

This EW interview with Neil Gaiman is worth looking at. And talking about. Gaiman not only talks about some of the famous vampires of our time — though he stays away from YA. (Probably because it’s a frank discussion of sex. But that’s part of the vampire thing, isn’t it?)

But on his own blog he says of the undead, “You shouldn’t be glutted with vampires: they should be a spice, not a food group.”

I think Neil’s right. But in the last few years, we’ve gotten to meet some pretty awesome vamps thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the species.

A few of my favorite vampires:

• Lucius Vladescu, the snarky love interest from Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey.
• Mina Hamilton from Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley. Actually, her entire vampire ‘verse is pretty cool and unusual.
• Balthazar, the cool vamp from the Evernight series by Claudia Gray. Vastly preferable to that Lucas character, in my opinion. Also love the hilarious aged vampires who don’t understand modern technology.
• My favorite vampire? Would be Spike from the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. (Did you know there’s a whole host of Buffy teen novels out there? I didn’t. But I’m going to pick some up.) Anyway, I can’t imagine why Neil Gaiman didn’t mention Buffy or Joss Whedon. The man is truly responsible for bringing back vamps. Anyway, Spike is by far the best vampire ever. He’s snarky, he’s evil, he’s comic relief, he’s wise without knowing it — in all, I think he’s probably the most well-rounded character on the series, and the one who evolves the most with the passage of time. (Forget Angel. He’s a sap.)

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In other news: We’re all poor nowadays, right? Well, if you’ve yet to read Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, Simon and Schuster is giving away a .pdf version for free. I should mention that this promotion is in advance of Scott’s upcoming book, Leviathan. For some reason I have a hard time with this title, as it always makes me think of (a) Thomas Hobbes and (b) David Levithan.

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Non-YA that is YA-ish

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

I just read The Finishing Touches by Hester Browne. It’s solid English chick lit of the best kind, but as I read it I couldn’t help thinking about how many YA themes it touched upon.

The story centers around London’s last remaining finishing school, tracking girls from the 1980s and girls from the present, when the school is basically crumbling with an all-time enrollment low.

Finishing school is supposed to take place during a young woman’s “gap year,” the year she takes off between high school and college. Which means many of the characters are in their teens. Others, of course, are in their mid to late twenties, which seems these days to be the barrier between YA and non-YA.

The thing is, I think a lot of women in their late twenties go through a second adolescence of sorts. We have careers, learn how to cook and clean for ourselves, pay bills. But, at least in my social circle, suddenly everyone is pairing off (for life!), and there tends to be a lot of jealousy. Also a lot of “Who am I?” sort of questioning. When you’re twenty-five to thirty, if you aren’t sure of your career yet, that’s when you go back to school or start a new job. That’s when you say, “Forget it! I’m joining a book club so I can make some new friends!”

This particular novel deals with the “Who am I?” question more than most, because one of the main story lines centers around a twenty-seven-year-old woman trying to find out who her birth parents are.

But the other day I was reading a YA novel that wasn’t about high school, and I realized the line has blurred. Nowadays I keep wanting to say that good literature is for teens, and so all good books should go on the YA shelves. (Obviously not quite fair for the adults, but my reaction is one of, “Oh, you’re stuck in the plain old fiction and literature section, eh? How do you expect anyone to find you there?”)

Right. So there are books for teens that aren’t necessarily about teens. What do you define as YA? What are some books that are close, but don’t quite fit the bill?

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What, we don’t like Catcher in the Rye any more?

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

The New York Times published this article today. It included interesting observations about why today’s teens don’t relate to Holden Caulfield.

Alas, one of these observations provoked the high school debater in my head.

Barbara Feinberg, in an e-mail to The New York Times: “Holden is somewhat a victim of the current trend in applying ever more mechanistic approaches to understanding human behavior … Compared to the early 1950s, there is not as much room for the adolescent search, for intuition, for empathy, for the mystery of the unconscious and the deliverance made possible through talking to another person.”

Emphasis added. I think that today’s YA novels, many of which are masterpieces, are addressing that need better than Holden does. It’s not because Catcher in the Rye is something teens can no longer understand because they don’t understand whining, or feeling alone, or wanting to experience something new. It’s because the current generation has good literature to read that documents their struggles.

For instance, my top two authors of ‘08, as you may remember, were E. Lockhart and Laurie Halse Anderson. They’re both writers who address Big Complex Issues, write well, and … let’s be frank. We’ve got better heroes for our time than Holden Caulfield could be. Studying Holden is like studying our parents.

Now, I haven’t read Catcher in the Rye in about five years, but I don’t think the fact that it’s a bit pathetic to the modern observer makes it completely obsolete. Wes Anderson has a whole career in making films — good ones — that are all basically about variations on Holden Caulfield.

Right. So what do you think? Talk amongst yourselves. Oh, and while you’re reading that article, tell me who you think today’s Holdens are? We’re not really stuck with Harry Potter, are we? I’ve got some more interesting characters in mind.

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