Memoirs by Women

Dear blog, it has been a while. In between paid reviews and my day job, I can manage to squeeze in reading time just for me, but it's not so easy to squeeze in writing about it. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of listening to books via Audible. I’ve found nonfiction and memoirs, in particular, work the best for my attention span on the bus and while doing things around the house. 

And knowing my taste, of course all of them are by women.

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

I’ve been a fan of West’s since discovering her writing on Jezebel, and then following her to Twitter. She’s always been an articulate, hilarious, and engaging writer—and she’s from Seattle! In her memoir, Shrill, her voice has room to shine. She fills the pages with essays about her childhood and changing relationship with her body, how entering the world of comedy shook her former love of the genre, her relationship with her late father and his passing, and much, much more. Of course, her dealings with internet trolls are detailed as well, and how she handles them affirms her status as a steadfast fighter for women’s rights. West’s vulnerability pulls you in, makes you want to take stand with her in spite of the trolls lurking behind screens. I look forward to continuing to follow her work online and hopefully, in more books to come.

Sex Object: A Memoir by Jessica Valenti

I found Valenti through Twitter and instantly latched on to her writing on feminism. Her memoir, Sex Object, presents the stark reality of being a woman in the world, starting at an uncomfortably young age. Her story zigzags along her timeline, giving the book a frenetic pace that never lets up. It’s less of a linear portrait of a life and more of a big picture look at the exhausting, insidious threads sexism winds around her from girlhood to womanhood. She covers dating and the confusing power of her sexuality as a teenager all the way up to motherhood. The final part of the book lists real examples of Internet harassment Valenti’s received, and a sinking realization sets in that you’re becoming resigned to such grotesquery, maybe even dulled to it. But it stuck with me, and I started reprocessing similar life experiences with a new perspective. Valenti’s book gave me the power to frame sexism as sexism—and not my fault.

Year of Yes: How to Dance it Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes

I’ve seen a few seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, but not enough to call myself a huge fan, and I only started watching The Catch after reading this book and falling in love. I’d heard rumblings of how great this memoir was, especially on audio, so I downloaded it. And wow, if this is why her fans follow every show she makes, I completely understand. The woman can write. 

Rhimes relates how in spite of her success, she felt deeply unhappy for years. That is until her older sister told her that she “never says yes to anything.” That spurred Rhimes’ 'year of yes'—a year where she said yes to everything, even to saying no when she wouldn’t have in the past. This sent her on a journey that helped her connect more deeply with her children, realize which friends weren’t really friends at all, and finally come to revel in the joy of just fully living as herself. This one is uplifting without being cheesy, and Rhimes has a wonderful reading voice—icing on the cake.

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love& So Much More by Janet Mock

I’ve been a fan of Mock’s since I discovered her work on an online women’s magazine years ago. As a transgender woman in the spotlight, Mock has always been open and poised. Her memoir is a deep dive into her difficult journey to where she is now, highlighting her childhood in California and Hawaii up to her entrance into college. I often wanted to cry on the bus for the pain she endured, and also for the joy she discovered as she resolved to love herself for exactly who she always knew she was. Her relationship with her best friend Wendi, in particular, was wonderful to hear develop. Wendi really saw Janet from day one, and that carried them both far. I hope Mock writes more about her life in her 20’s, because I will pick that book up the day it drops. And probably listen to it, too. Her voice is incredibly soothing, even as she relates incredibly personal events most wouldn’t be brave enough to tell their own friends. 

I’ve got a long wishlist on my Audible account of more memoirs by women that I can’t wait to dive into. That is, when my next credit arrives…it’s really tough to wait when you fly through these things.

Right now I’m listening to Lab Girl, a meditative memoir by Hope Jahren about her life growing into the work of a scientist. I’ll write about that one later.

Spotlight on YA Setting & World Building

Last year, I read thirty-something YA titles between professional reviewing and leisure reading. I love a bildungsroman no matter the target audience, but I’ve never had a year of such teen-centric reading since I was one myself. Thus, it became clear over the months what truly separated the forgettable stories from those that spring to mind immediately during reader’s advisory interviews. I can’t love a book without solid, dynamic characters, but what really elevated these stories in my mind was not the people within them, but the worlds they inhabited.

---

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore:

This is my favorite book that I read last year. I included it on the end of the year list for Fox Hunting, but with the website change, it’s no longer visible. So, here is what I said:

“Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue (Firebird) has become one of my favorite books, ever. The character of Bitterblue is introduced in Graceling. Her father, King Leck of Monsea, had a grace (a power) that allowed him to control his kingdom by influencing the citizens’minds. After his death, Bitterblue became a teenage queen with little idea how to rule and almost no concept of life outside of her castle. This novel is the story of how she comes into her own.

It’s a testament to Cashore’s writing how engrossing the book truly is. Little action occurs; it’s a mystery that slowly unravels the secrets of Bitterblue’s father’s horrible reign while she desperately tries to fix the immense damage he’s inflicted. Most of the story takes place solidly within the castle walls, but the lack of movement only further insulates you within the protagonist’s mind and her painful growth as her friends each face peril on her behalf. Though she’s strong-willed, resilient, and determined, Bitterblue is no cookie cutter heroine. She has no grace to help her navigate her complicated life or protect her kingdom. Her evolution actually leads her even further from the direct action, morphing her into a leader that has the power to heal a broken kingdom through forces greater than mystical powers or brute strength.

The ending reads as achingly realistic and yes, I’ll go for it here – bittersweet.

I haven’t felt so enamored with a fantasy novel since Garth Nix’s Lirael.”

World building bonuses:

- The bridges: Monster Bridge (the highest), Winged Bridge (white and blue marble floor made to resemble clouds), Winter Bridge (made of mirrors). All built by Leck, all beautiful and bizarre and slightly disconcerting.

- The library: It’s run by a librarian named Death, which is pronounced “Deeth.” He’s curmudgeonly yet lovable, in the way only a librarian named Death can be. Complex written codes are broken and translated in this dusty library.

- Monsea: The reader gets to see Monsea through Bitterblue’s eyes – the eyes of a queen masquerading as a baker’s daughter in order to freely roam the streets at night. A queen who never knew the outside of her own castle walls, so sees and experiences everything anew.

- Story rooms/Thieves’ lair: Bitterblue finds trouble in taverns designed for story-telling. Her new thief friends hide a printing press and a list of dreams for their kingdom and its people.

Lirael by Garth Nix:

The sequel to Sabriel, Lirael (HarperCollins) begins 14 years after the events of the previous novel. Sabriel itself is rife with immersive world building, introducing the Old Kingdom through the eyes of a young necromancer. This book, however, really digs deeper in terms of setting.

Protagonist Lirael lives with the Clayr but does not fit in. In fact, she stands out like a sore thumb: a raven-haired, pale girl in a sea of tanned faces curtained by white blonde hair. But what eats at her is not her physical differences, it’s her lack of what binds the Clayr together: the Sight. Most Clayr show signs of the ability to predict the future (or possible futures) by age 11, but nothing stirs in Lirael. At age 14, she’s finally assigned a position in the library.

The library, contained within the Clayr’s Glacier, puts all other fictional libraries I’ve encountered to shame. Hidden, mystical objects abound within its long halls. And of course, Lirael encounters some of the most dangerous, magical elements. It’s here where she teams up with the highly memorable, bantering Disreputable Dog.

I could happily live in the Clayr’s library forever, but Lirael, of course, is bound for bigger things. And the world unfurls magnificently for her as she takes off to learn her destiny. 

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater:

The first in the Raven Cycle quartet, The Raven Boys (Scholastic) introduces us to the world of the rakish Aglionby Academy boys, rich prep-schoolers who reside in sprawling, gorgeous Henrietta, Virginia. The protagonist, Blue Sargent, comes from a line of women gifted with psychic abilities. She, however, lacks this gift, instead acting solely as an amplifier for those who possess it. The book takes off with a flying start: while accompanying her mother to watch the apparitions of the  soon-to-be-dead drift past them on St. Mark’s Eve, Aglionby student, Gansey, speaks directly to Blue. To further complicate matters, it’s long been prophesized that she will cause her true love to die.

Soon Blue finds herself face to face with the living, breathing Gansey while she waits tables at the Raven Boys’ favorite haunt, Nino’s. And in spite of her disdain for the rich, angst-ridden prep-school boys, she falls in quickly with Gansey and his friends.

Gansey, however, isn’t a normal Raven Boy. He’s on the hunt for Glendower, a sleeping Welsh king.

Blue and the Raven Boys traverse sprawling hills, magical forest glens, and ostensibly idyllic country roads. It’s the kind of landscape dripping with golden sunsets, toasted with cold iced tea. But some spots hang more in the shadows, like Monmouth Manufacturing, the now defunct warehouse Gansey and his friends Ronan and Noah inhabit. Piles of books and a cardboard model of Henrietta fueled by the power of insomnia make it quite the atmospheric space. And Blue’s house filled with psychics isn’t lacking in ambience, either.

I’m on the second book in the series now, and the contrast of a stuffy boarding school in a small town and an underbelly of magic and ley lines remains irresistible and ever-expanding in scope.

Honorable Mentions:

Servants of the Storm by Delilah S. Dawson:

Servants of the Storm (Simon Pulse) is a horror novel, rich in creepy, post-hurricane southern gothic atmosphere. There are gloomy bars hidden down mazelike alleyways, an elaborately eerie and irresistible carnival, and an overlying cloud of humidity and growing evil. The ending, which is abrupt and a riff on a Twilight Zone episode, will be jarring to some, but the mood and the setting are undeniably immersive. I’m really hoping that ending isn’t the final word and that a sequel arrives to further deepen the creepy twist on Savannah, Georgia.

Eleanor (The Unseen series, Volume  1) by Johnny Worthen:

If you’re looking for a book rife with the pain of not fitting in as an adolescent, the drama of first love, and an entirely unique, lore-based secret regarding the origins of the main character, Eleanor (Jolly Fish Press) has you covered. The viscerally gray loneliness of the Wyoming landscape entranced me. It acts as a compelling character itself. I’m a sucker for a well-done rural setting, especially if it adds a romantic, melancholy mood to the story. The small town Eleanor inhabits stands in contrast to the changes occurring within her. Side characters, especially the love interest, aren’t as dynamic, but it doesn’t detract much from the book, which stands apart from all other teen paranormal romances. 

---

If you have any suggestions for more YA titles with heightened atmosphere worth getting lost in, shoot me a tweet.

A Collection of Short Reviews

The longest running series on Fox Hunting is “On Our Nightstand.” Though our overarching mission for the blog is to spotlight indie books and comics with a literary bend, this series focuses on whatever our contributors are reading and enjoying each week, regardless of the genre or form. This has allowed us to feature a wider variety of titles. And, since the reviews are short, they're great for quick referencing if at a book store. :)

The most recent incarnation of the blog features a handful of stellar posts in this series, and we continue to feature new books and comics every week. However, many great reviews from the past (officially a broken record here) are no longer available online due to the website change over to Tumblr. 

I read a lot of really outstanding books last year, so I'm sharing every Nightstand post I wrote below. 

---

December 1, 2014:

On break at work one day I stumbled upon Thomas Page McBee’s column “Self-Made Man” on The Rumpus. As someone already drawn to lyrically crafted memoir, I was hooked immediately.

Man Alive (City Lights Books) delves deeper into the two events that spurred a long brewing but radical shift in McBee’s identity. He traces the aftermath of his father’s abuses as he’s made to detail the events to his mother and a police officer at age 10. At 29, he and his girlfriend are mugged at gunpoint on a dark street in San Francisco. The mugger shows McBee mercy when he hears his voice and codes him as female. These two events and those built around them in their wake expand and undulate in Man Alive, through vivid language and a deft examination of how they shape the person he’s become – and who he’s always been.

McBee meditatively repeats the acidic intonation women attach to the word “men,” like when his mother discovered what his father did to him: “Men, she’d said then. And I’d learned to say it in the same way, a lemon in my mouth.”

What makes a man emerges as a nebulous and entirely individual-based concept. And McBee unflinchingly runs toward his own evolving meaning of manhood, facing the ghosts of his past. Though often painful, his journey is mapped and detailed with great beauty. I’m a third of the way in and it’s difficult not to zip through each short chapter. But I’m trying to walk my way through this one, at a pace fit to take everything in one step at a time.

November 17, 2014:

Lacy M. Johnson’s The Other Side (Tin House Books) pieces together the sharp-edged memories of a past abusive relationship that left an indelible imprint on her. It begins with her escape after her ex-boyfriend (referred to only as "The Man I Live With") kidnapped, imprisoned, and raped her. Johnson’s memoir grabs you, shakes you so hard you’re too stunned to immediately process it, and never lets up.

Woven into fraught scenes with her former boyfriend and Spanish teacher are painfully relatable insights:

“That image, of the self, does not belong equally to everyone. As a woman, I must keep myself under constant surveillance: how do I look as I rise from the bed, and while I walk through the store buying groceries, and while I run with the dog in the park? From childhood I was taught to survey and police and maintain my image continually, and in this role—as both surveyor and the image that is surveyed—I learned to see myself as others see me: as an object to be viewed and evaluated, a sight.”

Johnson’s writing is a force to be reckoned with, as is her spirit. I’m halfway through the book at the moment, and it’s as difficult to fully allow myself to feel the words as it is to tear my eyes away from them. I will definitely seek out and read anything she writes in the future.

November 3, 2014:

As a long time fan of short fiction, I’ve been hearing Amy Hempel’s name since high school. I picked up Reasons to Live in undergrad, lifting it off the shelf of a college bookstore and feeling like I was about to dive into something that would change my entire view on the form. I flipped through the stories, confused that some were only a couple of pages long. I took a step back from the book. I didn’t get it. I wasn’t pulled in by these sentences, which were alien in their self-assured brevity.

But I kept creeping back to Amy Hempel over the years. Kept picking up another slim volume and stealing a glance inside. Was I ready now? Did it make sense?

At the library branch I have come to think of as the “one with all the best short story collections” this weekend, I did a quick search for Amy Hempel. I had a feeling. The book waiting for me was heavy rather than slight. I placed The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (Scribner) into my backpack. I knew it was time.

How could my readerly brain have needed this long to see the magic in these sentences? The depth and mystery contained in the very first story, “In a Tub,” which is a mere one and a half pages – blew my mind. When I was younger, I felt a deep need for a plot as bold and taut as a tightrope, and these flashes into characters’ psyches felt like looking at a puzzle with missing pieces – a little bundle of mental work I felt like I shouldn’t have to parse. I wanted the work to do the work for me. Now, the stories I’m reading feel radical and thrillingly familiar. A handful of thin pages contain quick glimpses into lives as deep and unknowable as wells, mingling the mundane with small moments of magic. It feels like I'm learning about myself, reading this now.

Some books are worth the wait.

October 27, 2014:

Margaret Atwood has been a favorite of mine for years. Reading Oryx and Crake was basically a revelation. So when I heard she was releasing a new collection of short stories this fall, I had to have it immediately.

Stone Mattress  (Nan A. Talese) begins with a set of linked stories, each spotlighting key members of a community of writers in the twilight years of their lives. In “Alphinland”, Constance faces an ice storm after the death of her husband. As the wildly successful creator of the fantasy novel series, Alphinland, she has built a world inhabited by analogs of her former flames and foes alike. Her ex-boyfriend, Gavin, resides in a state of suspended animation, hidden in an oak cask in a deserted winery, while Jorrie, the woman he cheated on Constance with, is stung by hundreds of emerald and indigo bees at exactly noon everyday. Gavin and Jorrie don’t fare as well later on in life (though by no means as dramatically as they do in Alphinland), as seen in their own stories, “Revenant” and “Dark Lady.”

Atwood’s characters, as always, are fully realized and endlessly fascinating – even when only given brief time to shine in short stories. Her take on epic fantasy novel series (including the disdain her old poet cohorts consider them with) is both familiar and refreshing. I’d read a book set in Atwood’s Alphinland, that’s for sure. I’ve only read three stories so far, and though I’m sad to leave this group of friends behind, I’m thrilled to see who (and what) Atwood introduces me to next.

October 21, 2014:

I picked up Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back  (Doubleday) after I heard her on an Otherppl podcast and was thunderstruck by her raw honesty and passion. When I got my hands on her debut novel, I wasn’t surprised at the fierce immediacy I felt with protagonist Marie, who still lingers with me long after the final page of the story.

Marie becomes a mother accidentally at a very young age. Her response to this unforeseen shift is complicated, seeming at first to be outright rejection. A career server, she moves from restaurant to restaurant, carving out a reputation with each crew. Marie doesn’t shy from her proclivity for substances or sex. Though this proclivity is in part a reaction to grappling with her feelings regarding her daughter, there’s no sentimentality to be found. When reminded of her reputation by coworkers, she doesn’t even blink. She acknowledges all of her actions, brutal as they may be to witness, as her own choices. There’s no linear narrative or plot here, only flashes in a timeline, from before Marie became pregnant to her later days working at a high-end Dallas steakhouse.

A searing character study, Love Me Back, brings you unflinchingly close to Marie’s interior life. It draws a perfect circle around an unforgettably human character often erased from both life and literature. Tierce now sits on my list of favorites, alongside my old standby, Mary Gaitskill, who I am reminded of throughout Love Me Back.

October 6, 2014:

Women in Clothes (Blue Rider Press) began as a conversation between friends and blossomed into a tome that offers a glimpse into the lives and minds of over 600 women and the feelings they attach to clothing. This collection, edited by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton, and Mary Mann, finally gives the way we dress and present ourselves as women—often lumped into the category of frivolous lady interests—the examination it deserves. What stories lie in the well-worn lines of that denim jacket you admire on the woman in front of you at the grocery store? Have you ever thought of the memory cues a piece of an outfit might elicit in someone who labored hours on end as a child to construct it for the unknowing wearer (e.g. cummerbunds)? Women in Clothes lays out a chorus of diverse voices presented in survey and short essay form.

The book is described as a conversation amongst women, and it is fitting that I came upon it through a conversation with a female coworker of mine. I expected to be intrigued by the anecdotes and survey answers, hoping to gain a new sociological perspective. The book is definitely interesting in that way, but more so, it’s moving. One section pairs old photographs of writers’ mothers with blurbs that describe what the writer thinks about them at each moment pictured—what their clothes seem to say about them, who they once may have been. I found myself tearing up over the singular stories, but also at the sudden, intense feeling of connection with all of the women involved.

Readers and writers are often highly observant, but Women in Clothes adds a new layer (pun intended) to how you can see the world. And once you start reading, you’ll want to share it with others immediately, adding to the already vibrant conversations and connections that spring from this collection.

September 23, 2014:

In the world of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (Knopf), the Georgia Flu epidemic has swept across the globe, killing countless people and sending civilization back to a time before electricity, a dangerous time in which strangers cannot be trusted. The novel begins the night that the flu descends, with fake snow falling softly around a modern production of Shakespeare’s King Lear. As Arthur Leander, star of the show and once-famous actor, succumbs to a heart attack, a paramedic rushes the stage but it is to no avail. A young actress bears witness to the spectacle, her handler nowhere in sight, and cannot be calmed down. More than a decade later the flu has done its damage, and that same actress, Kirsten Raymonde, has joined a traveling symphony who perform Shakespeare for tiny towns as they travel by caravan. She can’t remember much of her life before the flu, but searches for clues about Arthur’s life, clinging to the science fiction comics he gave her shortly before his death, a couple of issues of Station Eleven. When Kirsten’s traveling symphony encounter a dangerous man who claims to be a prophet, it isn’t long before the members of their caravan begin to mysteriously vanish as if plucked from the sky.

Station Eleven slowly builds an ominous atmosphere around its characters, settling the reader into this new world that has no spotlights to illuminate stages, no hum of air conditioning to cool its inhabitants, and no solid sense of safety. Through a series of flashbacks to Arthur and other character’s former lives, old ghosts reach out their tendril-like hands to steer the future. I’m a little under halfway through and am enamored with the story, especially with the character of the artist who created the Station Eleven comics. I can’t wait to see where these characters end up and whether their paths will cross or diverge throughout the wild and new frontier.

September 17, 2014:

After a bit of a reading slump, I flagrantly ignored my TBR pile and impulse ordered the first book that really struck my interest. This turned out to be Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books), by Wendy C. Ortiz. When it arrived in the mail I eagerly dove in, falling in love with the fluid prose and the immediacy I felt with teenaged Ortiz. When she was thirteen, a new, charming 28-year-old English teacher arrived at her middle school. A quick and passionate fan of her writing, this teacher soon initiated long telephone conversations with Ortiz to discuss the book she was working on. As she curled around her princess phone, he professed to having a crush on her, thus beginning a five year sexual relationship that would shape her and all of her future relationships to come.

Ortiz pulls you inside the skin of her teenaged self, never shying away from the pain and confusion she navigated. The home she shared in Los Angeles with her alcoholic mother feels palpably cavernous; her freedom is vast, but the responsibility of being the only capable family member is suffocating.

Rather than stepping out of the narrative to comment on the relationship, or detailing the later fate of her teacher (now a registered sex offender), Ortiz keeps the reader firmly held within her headspace as a teen. This makes each scene of manipulation and abuse all the more powerful; without a voice to supply safe distance and guidance through the darkness, you’re left only to feel it, attempt to analyze it, and work through it with her. The lines between you seem to blur.

The day I received the book I raced through half of it. I caught my dog chewing through the bottom corner of the pages that very night. Unable to wait for a new copy, I resigned myself to gently ripping each of the melded pages apart as I turned them. The tearing sound felt oddly fitting as I pulled apart the last bits of Excavation. I haven’t felt so many things while reading in ages.

September 2, 2014:

Amy Bloom’s name has been popping up all over the Internet lately. I know she’s recently released a new novel, but everyone praises her as a master, a title often reserved for authors who have established a more well-known body of work. I tend to gravitate toward short story collections when it comes to determining an unfamiliar writer’s true prowess. There’s just some glimmer of magic in short fiction that not every writer can capture. Turning to Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Random House), I quickly learned Bloom has that magic touch.

The first four stories in the collection are interconnected. Partway through, it seems like the whole book will be about Clare and William and their respective spouses, but Bloom weaves their beautiful, painfully familiar story in just under sixty pages. She dips in and out of the mundane lives of two long-term best friends turned lovers, exploring how slow burning love in one’s middle age can feel just as intense as it does for the young. It’s shocking how little melodrama features in this affair story with a melancholy ending, and equally surprising how little needed to happen for me to be sucked in immediately. No longer skeptical, I’m onto the next story and eager for more.

August 25, 2014:

This week my reading took place almost entirely on airplanes. Needing a book that would sustain my attention for hours on end, I turned to Annihilation (FSG Originals) by Jeff VanderMeer, the first in the Southern Reach trilogy. Before I even read the novel’s premise, I was fascinated by FSG Originals’ decision to release all three books sequentially this year, an odd choice for a publisher. The books are set in mysterious Area X, a remote bit of wilderness totally cut off from civilization. At the time that the novel takes place, there have been ten previous expeditions to Area X, from which most party members did not return. Those who did reappeared in their homes with no memory of how they got there, and all died of cancer not long after. Annihilation follows the eleventh expedition. Four women—known only by their roles in the group as the anthropologist, the surveyor, the psychologist, and the biologist—quickly discover that Area X holds more startling secrets than any of them could have imagined.

VanderMeer’s writing edges on the literary, elevating a plot that initially echoes the familiar atmosphere of television shows like Lost and The X-Files. Above all, it was the odd relationship between the biologist and Area X that gripped me the most. An intense lone wolf who places her work above all else, the biologist’s experience offers an unusual lens through which to view all the mysteries of the strange setting.

I’ve just picked up Authority, because once you’ve read Annihilation you can’t really stop there. I can’t wait to dive back into the eerie landscape of Area X.

August 11, 2014:

This week, after feeling its pull from the row of shelves currently slanting perilously off of my wall, I picked up a book I’ve had lying around for a while now: Jo Ann Beard’s collection of autobiographical essays entitled The Boys of My Youth (Back Bay Books). In these essays, Beard dives in and out of her memories, starting with her childhood in the ’60s. She wanders the home of her grandparents, rooms laden with what, to her, appeared to be nonsensical junk—jars full of buttons, ornate furniture, and one rotating fan that seemed to move of its own accord. One evening, sprawled on the floor as Bonanza plays above her on the glowing TV screen, she feels the weight of the stillness of her grandmother’s current existence. One long street with no curves or forks—just a series of quiet days toiling in that house crammed with so much life debris. She begins to sob, thinking: “I’m a monkey, strapped into a space capsule and flung far out into the galaxy, weightless, hurtling along upside down through the Milky Way. Alone, alone, and alone.” Her parents come to pick her up when she can't calm herself. When asked about it later she replies, “Bonanza made me sad.”

Later, Beard and her cousin careen through dusty dive bars and blast down country roads, narrowly avoiding true danger but always finding just the sort of trouble they’re after. She correlates their own thick bond with that of their mothers, who smoked endless cigarettes and drank as they ruminated about the girls they were about to usher into the world. Two “mouthy, spindly-legged girls” not too different from themselves.

Beard’s prose hums with electricity, and the players in her past, including her younger self, all shine with a melancholic beauty. I’m eager to see where life takes her next.

August 4, 2014:

After a long spell of reading books driven by dark themes, I picked up Kate Racculia's Bellweather Rhapsody (Houghton Mifflin). The Bellweather Hotel has shades of the modern day version of Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel with a tinge of sinister murder mystery mixed in for good measure. After witnessing a murder-suicide as a child bridesmaid in the Bellweather, Minnie has returned to confront the scene that haunts her still. At the same time, hundreds of gifted high school musicians flood the hotel for the annual Statewide competition, including twin prodigies, Rabbit and Alice Hatmaker. To top it all off, an impending snowstorm threatens to trap them all on the decrepit grounds of the Bellweather as tensions rise and mysterious happenings begin to occur.

A mammouth, past its time hotel housing a host of quirky characters will get me turning pages every time. Racculia, a former bassoonist herself, layers in vivid insights into the lives of young musicians. The characters all teeter on the edge from the get go, but Racculia infuses humor into the escalating plot, creating a tumbling joyride for the reader. Though there's a snowstorm, this is definitely my kind of summer read and I can't wait to continue.

July 28, 2014:

This week I was on the hunt for another engrossing memoir complete with lyrical language, vulnerability, and insight into issues I'm familiar with—a similar style to that of Cheryl Strayed's Wild. I picked up Justin Hocking's The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir after spotting the Graywolf Press logo on the spine. You know how some books just seem to find you at the perfect time? That's how this one felt.

Hocking uproots himself from a comfortable life in his home state of Colorado to follow the dream of being a writer in New York City. With an obsessive passion for skateboarding and emotionally tumultuous relationships, he finds himself far from the anchor of his girlfriend and soon tethered to a soul-sucking job in "the pit" of a major publishing house. He carries with him an obsession with Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and he soon finds parallels to it in the new hobby that helps save him from an otherwise rocky era of his interior life: surfing at Rockaway Beach. Hocking intersperses the history of surfing and of Melville and his masterpiece with memories that jump through time, retracing the destructive patterns he attempts to free himself from. His journey is both painful and poignant. It will resonate with anyone who has ever faced their demons head on and chosen to sit in their suffering rather than drown it out. Hocking finds solace in his shared connection to the sea with his hero, Melville:

"The ocean was for him--as it was for me during my New York years--the one place that felt like home, a lush wave garden free from all the thorns and thistles of the broken world."

One can't help but feel a similar connection to Hocking through his immersive and laid bare writing.

July 21, 2014:

I have really been meaning to read more poetry since - well, since I can remember. But, it turns out I'm not very adept at finding collections that speak to me. Enter: Lauren Ireland's collection of postcard poetry, Dear Lil Wayne (Magic Helicoptor Press). Ireland wrote short but poignant poem-letters to Weezy during and after his 2010 incarceration, compiled within this small, purple book.

Ireland ruminates on impending death, the feeling of being in love, what it feels like to be a poet, and an impossible to evade sadness. Hints of humor and references to hip hop weave amongst these musings: "...I tried to understand why I am always so sad. Too many bitches, not enough crew. I feel better when I tell you things. For a minute." The deftness of Ireland's words strikes a cord - her short letters may not hit their target audience (Weezy), but they sure hit home for readers. Though it's painfully lonely at times, it spurs an instantaneous sense of belonging at its high points: "You wouldn't understand, but it's hard to be boring in a fascinating world." I'll definitely be picking it up and rereading random poems - for both the humor and the pathos.

July 14, 2014:

My attention span and the rising temperature outside seem to be inversely proportional. Thus, I knew I needed a page-turner, but I wanted something character-driven that still had a literary writing style. This week I turned to Megan Abbott's latest novel, The Fever (Little, Brown and Company). In sleepy, small-town Dryden, the Nash family's lives center around high school. Though the perspectives rotate between Tom, the patriarch, and his teen children, Eli and Deenie, it's Deenie who sets the stage: her best friend has a seizure at school, sparking the spread of a mysterious contagion.

The premise may sound like a combination of a teen drama and a post-apocalyptic thriller, but The Fever breaks free from both molds. Though still glued to their cell phones and tethered to their precarious social statuses, the teens that inhabit Dryden never read as caricatures or mere plot devices. Abbott mirrors the fever-like state of adolescence with the hysteria induced by the contagion. Awash in murky atmosphere and pulsating with suspense, The Fever will make you forget the summer heat.

July 7, 2014:

After listening to Smith Henderson's interview on Brad Listi's podcast, Otherppl, I knew I had to get my hands on his debut novel, Fourth of July Creek (Ecco Press). I have a penchant for stories detailing the lives of social workers, and Fourth of July Creek ups the anty with protagonist Pete Snow mirroring his clients with a life equally out of control. An alcoholic disconnected from his own family, Pete crosses pathes with Benjamin Pearl, an eleven-year-old boy raised in the woods. He tries to help him, but quickly learns Benjamin has more up against him than tattered clothes and sore-ridden feet. Patriarch Jeremiah Pearl greets Pete in the woods with gunshots and whisks his son away, first forcing the boy to strip off his new civilian clothes in the frigid wilderness. Pete is left to grapple with the sharp edges of his own life as well as a brewing manhunt involving the F.B.I. and none other than Jeremiah Pearl himself.

I'm not very far yet, but I'm already swept away in the current of the lives of Pete and his charges: all dragged too far out to catch a glimpse of the safety of shore. Additionally, Henderson's language highlights the raw beauty of the Montana landscapes his characters tear through. I'm hooked.

June 30, 2014:

I’m always on the lookout for new short story collections to devour. Recently, one title kept popping up all over literary lists: Austin-based author Elizabeth McCracken’s Thunderstruck & Other Stories (The Dial Press). Almost immediately, the language leapt out at me. In the first story, “Something Amazing,” McCracken writes of a neighborhood west of Boston after the death of Missy Goodby, a six-year-old stolen by lymphoma. Missy’s mother retreats into herself as rumors swirl among the neighborhood children that she’s a witch. “The soul is liquid, and slow to evaporate. The body’s a bucket liable to slosh,” McCracken writes. Tragedy finds new ways to bloom as two brothers from the neighborhood lose their way, one crossing paths with Missy’s mother, which results in a tender, unsettling scene.

McCracken describes the delicate ways people find to twist the knife into their own hearts. However, she still leaves room for the brief moments of small whimsy that brighten everyday lives. Just reading the first few pages of her work reminded me of the magic feeling of discovering those truly electric, succinct turns of phrase found in the best short fiction.

February 3, 2014:

I just started reading the winner of the 2011 National Book Award, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA), by Jesmyn Ward. Fifteen-year-old Esch lives in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, with her alcoholic father and three brothers. A hurricane brews over the Gulf of Mexico when the book opens, while Esch’s brother Skeetah’s pit bull is in the throes of labor.

The book spans 12 days, following the tribulations of the poverty-stricken family from Esch’s perspective. Though I’m not very far into the story, I’m already gripped by the lyrical writing. The description of China, Skeetah’s pit bull, in labor is vivid and balanced with both beauty and grotesqueness: “Everything about China tenses and there are a million marbles under her skin, and then she seems to be turning herself inside out…China is blooming.” Each character springs immediately to life. Esch's observations thrum with heat and a feeling of impending change. I’m eager to find out what unfolds as the family grapples with one another and the looming storm ahead.

Michael P. Williams' "Chrono Trigger"

The second review I wrote for Fox Hunting took me deep into nostalgic, nonfiction territory. When Boss Fight Books offered advance reader copies of their current titles, I had to snatch up Michael P. Williams' Chrono Trigger. 

It did not disappoint. 

Though originally published on the Fox Hunting blog, this piece, just like the review of The Isle of Youth, fell prey to the archives when we revamped the website. 

---

Published and developed by Square, Chrono Trigger emerged in the early heyday of RPGs as the most expensive cartridge of its time. It was also one of the most distinctly engaging games of the era, leaving a permanent stamp of nostalgia on many who played it. What first drew me to Michael P. Williams’ book was my own childhood connection to the game. I watched my friends play it for hours on end. My hands went numb from propping myself up on my elbows while I lounged on beanbag chairs, gripped by the music and the story. I even wrote my own script for an additional quest, which we then meticulously filmed with a bulky handheld camera. I felt an immediate kinship with Williams, who also experienced his first play-through in 1995, the year it was released, only to revisit it as an adult.

The plot of the game starts with the popular RPG trope of an everyday boy-turned-hero assembling a ragtag team to subvert the threat of a doomsday event. Teenage Crono and his tech-savvy friend, Lucca, join up with Marle, a princess in hiding. Together, they open a gate in space-time. They go on to welcome other party members intermittently, including a knight-turned-frog, Frog; a resolute robot, Robo; a wild woman from the past, Ayla; and a mysterious sorcerer, Magus. Time travel and side quests abound. Lavos, an alien parasite, acts as the ultimate boss who the group must eventually conquer to save the future. As Williams notes, Lavos is called Ravosu in the Japanese version, which suggests a nod to Ravukurafuto, the Japanese rendering of famed horror author H.P. Lovecraft. Lavos is an “erinaceous Godzilla with none of the endearing qualities.”

Williams goes far beyond penning a straight history of the game (though there’s plenty of information about the making and reception of it), instead creating a “Gate Key,” as he calls it, that “unlocks new ideas and views into the rich worlds within and beyond the world of Chrono Trigger.” Explorations of characters’ sexuality and gender unpack confused feelings young players may have felt but were unable to parse upon their first play-through. For instance, Lucca at times seems to have romantic feelings for Robo. Based on her character’s portrayal, one can surmise she may be asexual—or even “robosexual.” Williams examines the ethnic makeup of the game, noting that the monsters “demonstrate a much more pluralistic view of racial relations.” Ever thoughtful and never quick to condemn, Williams critiques narrative flaws with an eye for the times that produced them.

In addition to offering a storyline summary and deep study thereof, Williams weaves in his own life experiences. Growing up in Southwest Philadelphia in a fractured family, thirteen-year-old Williams dove into video games while his mother struggled to take care of him and his sister. In an act of empathic engagement, he envisioned himself fitting into Crono’s shoes, wildly desiring to be someone on the brink of a great adventure. After college, Williams taught English to young students in Fukushima, Japan, where he was a minority for the first time in his life. Seamlessly transitioning from anecdotes concerning gender relations in his workplace to gender relations within Chrono Trigger, he draws a connecting thread between his study of the game and his life that acts to alleviate any readerly fatigue that could arise from reading too long about just the game. A particularly affecting passage describes the emotions Williams grapples with after the triple disaster in Japan in 2011. Desperately reaching out from the US to his old friends who’d just faced an earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear meltdown, he finds himself falling down a rabbit hole of nostalgia, remembering his former students and neighbors. “At the Bottom of the Night,” the song that plays as Lavos descends, seems to him to be an appropriate soundtrack for this devastating time. In this scene in the game, “not even sadness can survive. It is just a vast, starry emptiness.”

In the latter half of the book, Williams details the history of the localization of the game. He interviews the original English translator, Ted Woolsey, who added many of the characteristic flares that players of the 1995 edition will remember. These include references to the popular culture of the time: changing the Japanese names of Magus’ three generals from references to food (vinegar, soy sauce, and mayonnaise) to names of ‘90s musicians (Flea, Ozzy, and Slash). His largest alteration to the original Japanese dialogue was giving Frog his signature “knightspeak,” making him appear far more proper than other characters. In the Japanese version, Frog is the least proper speaker. Williams also interviews Tom Slattery, who made changes to the translations thirteen years later when the game was re-ported for the Nintendo DS. Offering new insight into the often harried process of translating games as well as the passion that went into doing so adds another satisfying layer to the author’s ode to Chrono Trigger.

Williams takes on a discussion of time travel that would make less dedicated writers’ heads spin, dissecting the many ways it works and doesn’t within the timelines of the game. Most interesting about this section is the notion that the game was designed by a committee and thus subject to the ideas and whims of many, creating a narrative less driven by logic than by the need to be inclusive of the minds involved. Even the Akira Toriyama image on the cartridge contains a mistake: Marle’s summoning fire, when her character only uses water magic.

Near the end of the book, Williams adds that telling the complete history of Chrono Trigger would necessitate detailing the involvement of all who’d had a hand in creating it—an impossible task. But he could tell us his personal history with the game, and his sincerity in asserting “I wanted to tell you all of it” is deeply felt.

Williams refers to himself as a “boy scout gamer,” who always had a strategy guide handy, determined to obtain every item available and gain every experience possible. He brings this same dedication to Chrono Trigger. As a love letter to the game and the indelible mark it left on him, Chrono Trigger succeeds mightily. Anyone who loved the game at any age will instantly be transported back to that time in her life, with the added bonus of leveling up in historical knowledge and empathic engagement with a meticulous, passionate author.

Laura van den Berg's "The Isle of Youth"

I've always been an avid fan of short stories. They're a separate, unique art form from book length narratives, and I often find the most beautiful language shines brighter in short form. Several years ago, I became consumed with making my own anthology of favorite stories that I could pass along to friends. This became a tall stack of haphazardly bookmarked collections, parcelled out either one at a time or handed off in a teetering tower. 

I dubbed it my "short story mixtape."

Laura van den Berg's The Isle of Youth reignited my love of short stories at the end of 2013. If I were to revisit my short story mixtape, I'd be hard pressed to choose just one story from this collection to add to it. I now even list van den Berg as one of my favorite authors. I wrote about the collection for our Fall/Winter 2014 staff favorites list at the Seattle Public Library and book talk it often to patrons seeking fresh voices that thread magical realism through literary fiction.

I reviewed The Isle of Youth for Fox Hunting in November of 2013. Now that the blog has moved from WordPress to Tumblr, the review remains hidden in the old archives. So, I've dug it out to repost below.

---

Laura van den Berg’s short story collection The Isle of Youth (FSG Originals) follows a series of women teetering on the edge as they stare head-on into the reality of lives they never expected to inhabit.

In the first story, “I Looked For You, I Called Your Name,” a wife remembers the series of horrible events that befell her honeymoon and her burgeoning disassociation with the relationship, even on that seminal trip to Argentina. In “Acrobat,” a woman becomes so entranced by a team of Parisian street performers that she fails to hear her husband’s request for a divorce and follows the painted faces into the night.

Lee, the protagonist of “Antarctica,” travels to the icy continent to see the explosion site of her seismologist brother’s untimely death, only to be followed by memories of her brother’s wife and the burden of keeping her secret from her brother all these years. This piece is the most harrowing in a book full of tangible growing pains. Even without the desolate backdrop, Lee’s guilt and need to cling to old mysteries is both tender and bleak. In a flashback to her own wedding, she ruminates on how she “tried to shake the feeling I was living someone else’s life.” This sentiment runs like a current through every story in the collection; each protagonist acknowledges the tipping point before her and acts out accordingly, leading to hard-won, albeit painful, self-discovery. Van den Berg writes in such a deft, alluring style that the stories feel dreamlike without the inclusion of any fantastical elements.

Almost immediately, we’re alerted to the fact that the cousins in the story “Lessons” are “a group of people dedicated to making life as hard as possible.” Raised in relative seclusion, Dana, Jackie, Pinky, and Cora hitch a ride away from their increasingly paranoid father and embark upon a string of robberies that culminate in violence. The relationship between Dana and her little brother Pinky takes the youth outlaw story to new emotional landscapes. “Opa-locka” places siblings and crime center stage as well, and the amateur detective team Winslow & Co. face both mysteries of their present and of their pasts. They find themselves in over their heads in both cases. The title story, “The Isle of Youth,” also deals with a fraught relationship between sisters, in which the protagonist, while in a stalemate in her own life, takes on her twin’s identity as a favor, only to rediscover the vast, jarring gaps between them once again.

A different take on the rebelliousness of youth than “Lessons,” the story “The Greatest Escape” follows a mother-daughter team of magicians who are down on their luck. High school senior Crystal uses her sleight of hand to pocket miniature bottles of vodka from a liquor store and dreams of leaving Hollywood, Florida for the real Sunset Boulevard, until the truth of her family’s past shakes her vision of her own future. Another commentary on the fluidity of self identity and the ability to hide parts of yourself that, once revealed, seem to have always been in plain sight, this story shows Crystal already on a destructive, lost path, as if instinctually aware that things could always take an unexpected turn.

Evoking a consistently noir feel in each piece, van den Berg’s writing is crisp and taut, with no forays into sentimentalism or even romance. But there’s a cutting joy in each character’s insight into her own identity; even when it’s an unpleasant realization, it’s necessary and provides a new rock to stand on after much shaky ground. Hints of Lorrie Moore’s knack for small observations and subtle wit are present, but van den Berg’s ability to make a complex, short piece a page-turner is wholly her own. In “Acrobat,” a woman remembers how her now estranged husband commented that her “emotional weather” could change without warning. Van den Berg depicts the brewing emotional weather in each woman in The Isle of Youth so expertly that her character’s feelings bleed into the settings of each story, creating a broiling, palpable tension.

Van den Berg conducts a successful, deep exploration of the themes of the disconnections, failures, and mysteries of relationships and how they interact with the images of ourselves we’ve drawn in our minds. Though these themes all noticeably recur in each piece, they never grow dull or feel like variations on the same story. Instead, each manages to shine new meaning on the careful study of internalized self versus the reality of identity.

A highly evocative writer worth following, van den Berg is also the author of the collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us. Her first novel, Find Me, is out now.

Thoughts on Book Critics and a Brief Origin Story

Countless journalists have bemoaned the decline of both the publishing industry and libraries for years. Oddly, since I earned my masters in Information Science (once referred to as a Master of Library Science but rebranded to be inclusive for the tech angle new to the program), I’ve seen more signs of passionate readers everywhere - primarily online. Whether it be the flood of new library students, many quite young and fired up about activist librarianship, or the wide array of book focused websites and podcasts popping up constantly, there’s no shortage of highly engaged, highly social readers on the Internet. I can’t even name all the new literary journals that have materialized in the past few years in my hometown of Austin. There are just too many. And with this influx of new hubs for content and communication come many avenues for criticism.

Recently, I have seen many articles concerning the death of the book critic, or the lack of need for book critics at all. A piece on Book Riot echoes some of my thoughts on this matter. I’m not a “professional book reviewer” in that I don’t write for the New York Times or LA Times, but I do write for a well regarded website that only posts book reviews - one that I truly respect. However, I do believe “professional reviews” aren’t the be all and end all of how to determine the merit of a book. My decision about procuring a book usually stems from many "unprofessional" sources such as blogs, book focused websites, and Good Reads. 

I believe in a mixed approach to this issue. I don’t think professional book reviews are dying; I see their role evolving. They still exist, but people often (rightly, I believe) pair them with the views of the public when choosing what to read. I think a critical, honed eye is important when presenting the view of an established review site, and a keen awareness of each genre you’re reading is key as well. Some of the big name so-called professional publications may sometimes offer opinions by those who have truly delved into each genre - but more often, it seems to me that lesser known websites and blogs are run by readers who can offer more relevant insight. True fans of say, the mystery genre, can really tell you how JK Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling stacks up against its neighbors on the shelves.  A professional reviewer who mostly enjoys literary fiction (often an obvious bias) can review it from the context of the works they've read in the past, but they almost surely won't be able to bring the depth of knowledge a devoted mystery reader could.

One book critic recently stated that it might be helpful if critics gave context to their work by detailing where their view on books came from. Kind of like a history of their formative reading years. Though a well-meaning idea, I don’t think this is necessary. It's helpful to know if someone’s background matches up to yours - you’ll know immediately how much to trust their opinion. But it's unlikely you'll read the same reviewers work for every book you consider picking up. There are so many books coming out each year, no reviewer (or reader) can read everything (sadly).

Regardless, I’m taking this notion of a reviewer's reading history and running with it. I have compiled below a very short list of young adult books that turned me into a  book lover. The young adult genre isn't always viewed with respect (another post), but that doesn’t make it less significant in shaping young readers. These books aren’t the only big ones from my first years as an avid reader, but they’re the ones that loom above all the others. As a (maybe) bonus, these are all from the ‘80s and ‘90s, so you won’t find many on recent recommendation lists. 

If I had to give this name a list, I'd call it: Throwback to YA Paranormal Romance: The Early Years. Something like that. 

These books have stayed alive in the back of my head like glowing corners in an attic, so there’s something to be said for that.

And I don't mean like Flowers in the Attic. Though yes, I definitely read that too.

1.  The Dark Angel Trilogy by Meredith Anne Pierce

Those wings resemble a console controller - sinister, yet playful.

I loved these books so much I committed the ultimate library sin and refused to return my omnibus copy. I don’t know where it is now – but I had the hardback edition which was slate gray and featured a portrait of the Darkangel himself – looking much older and less ethereally beautiful as described (so many love interests in paranormal YA are described as ethereally beautiful but I swear, in this case, I believed it).

A powerful vampire, the Darkangel can’t come into full power until he’s taken his fourteenth bride. Enter Aerial, a slave girl he kidnaps to take care of his already accumulated thirteen. Of course, she finds him irresistible (and also insufferable at times). This sounds horribly cliché but don’t be fooled – this trilogy contains some of the most engaging world building I’ve ever read. It shifts into a quest story and Aerial and the many characters she encounters pull you in immediately.

This is the first trilogy that made me cry. And I didn’t cry because of the ending. I cried because it was over.

2. The Forbidden Game Trilogy by LJ Smith

Dark elves: they wear turtlenecks. 

I can’t express how obsessed I was with everything LJ Smith wrote, for most of my childhood. Her books lead me to my first experience with Internet fandom and friends. Back in the days of dial up, I’d log-in to the fanclub chatroom or my AIM or ICQ and wait for the ridiculous screen-names of my friends to appear so we could discuss who we shipped before shipping was a concept with a name. Back then, before The Vampire Diaries became a TV show (which I have yet to investigate), I used to have dreams about finding all of the out of print LJS books in creaky, dusty bookstores. I called out of print book specialists I found in the phonebook. 

No one ever had them.

And though I just found out Smith didn’t originate some of her book ideas, that doesn’t lessen my feelings. 

The Forbidden Game: The Hunter leapt out at me from a shelf at Hastings (anyone remember those?). The cover featured what appeared to be a haunted house perched on top of a board game and a boy who looked just like Billy Idol.

A young Billy Idol. 

Our protagonist, straight-A student and preternaturally beautiful Jenny, stumbles into a mysterious game store when looking for ways to entertain guests at her boyfriend’s birthday party. Billy Idol doppelgänger Julian mans said store. He gives her an unmarked board game that seems to hum in her hands. It turns out this strange storeowner has been following her since she was a child (I didn’t think this was creepy at the time, at all) and he’s created a game that pulls all of her friends inside of it. He's not a small business owner at all! Which means suddenly, Jenny and all of her friends, all transported into the looming house from the cover of the book, forced to face their own greatest fears. These fears include plants sprouting from their skin, an alien encounter, and a deadly, messy room. Yes, deadly in its messiness. You must read the book to truly understand that sentiment. 

This was my first foray into the trope of “creepy bad guy seems more alluring than boring bland boyfriend, startlingly perfect girl in love triangle must choose between them and is often frustrating in her indecision.”

But there’s bonus Norse mythology! And dark elves! I’m not sure how I’d feel about the relationships in this book now, but I loved the whole thing as a teenager. I probably reread it ten times. If you're worried - know that Jenny makes a responsible decision in the end. And there are a lot of awesome runes and giant bridges in the end. It's great. Trust me.

Again, the strength was in the world building. I can see now that I definitely favored world building over character depth growing up. I have almost entirely reversed that preference as an adult.

3. The Night World Series

I mean, the caption on this cover speaks for itself. No lies found.

More vampires! And witches, too! These books are far more hinged on romance than even the two previous series. The word “soulmate” flies around with wild abandon, and each book is about a different girl finding hers. Also, Smith never finished the series, so the impending battle hinted at from the beginning never occurs and the whole thing really boils down to romance without it.

My personal favorites were Secret Vampire (vampires and terminal disease), The Chosen, Black Dawn, and Dark Angel, the last being an obvious theme for me, and also the most clichéd of them all – a She’s All That riff featuring an untrustworthy angel.

Clearly, I was a bit of a sap. Many of the stories I wrote myself were in this same vein: paranormal element, young female protagonist finding herself, and an intense romance plot. I can’t stomach nearly anything romantic in literature as an adult. It feels contrived and there’s no sense of the magic I felt reading it while growing up. Perhaps I just haven't found the right books yet. I make it a point to explore different genres, so maybe this one warrants revisiting.

In spite of my different taste, I feel no embarrassment for paranormal romance being my preferred genre growing up. I owe these books my lifelong love of reading and writing. This is why I don’t believe in shaming anyone for his or her reading choices. You can love Dan Brown or you can love David Foster Wallace or you can love them both and everything in between. You do you.

These books (and many more I will post about) saved me from the perils of my own intense shyness and insecurities as a child. I read under tables while everyone else ate, I read during gym class on the sidelines, I wrote my own versions of these stories and found pride where I’d previously found pain. This is why I believe in young adult books and the work of youth librarians.

This is where I come from.

I don’t think the number of readers or reviewers are lessening and they certainly aren't dying out. Everyone has a reader origin story, and everyone has a right to an opinion.