In Which I Fangirl like a Fangirl over FANGIRL and All Things Rainbow Rowell

I had dinner with Rainbow Rowell last week.

Okay, the phrase "had dinner" actually means: "I ate at a long table with 25 people and Rainbow Rowell walked by my end of the table quickly and sat at the other end and ate quickly and I watched her through the hazy lens of my two martinis on an empty stomach and when she was leaving I pretended I was taking a picture of my friend Natalie but I was actually taking a picture of Rainbow Rowell."

The next day I met Rainbow Rowell.

Okay, the phrase "met Rainbow Rowell" actually means: "I stood in a ridiculously long snaking line at the Books by the Banks festival in Cincinnati for 45 minutes and nearly came to blows with the woman in front of me who accused me of trying to get in front of her by saying EXCUSE ME, MA'AM, I WAS STANDING HERE FIRST!! and I was all like, Chillax, lady, no need to freak out, we are all Rainbow Rowell fans here and I'm sure she wouldn't want us to come to blows over line placement, and then I turned around and started talking to the lady behind me because, honestly, the level of freaky fangirling emanating from the woman in front of me was scary, but then it was MY turn at the front of the line, at last, and I said hello to Rainbow Rowell and she said hello to me and I blabbered like an absolute idiot about how my book was on the same Florida Teens Read list as hers and I knew she would win the award (she did) and I was just glad to have my book mentioned in the same breath as hers, and she just nodded and smiled and said, oh that's nice or something lovely like that, and then the security person (she had a security person!!) took my picture with her."

If you can't tell, I love Rainbow Rowell.

My first introduction to her work was the beautiful, heartbreaking novel Eleanor & Park, which is about a romance between two teens-- a half Korean/half American boy named Park who loves comics and 90's music (the book takes place in the 90's) and a poor/overweight/sensitive/red-headed/wrong-side of the tracks girl named Eleanor. 

There's a slow build up of their relationship, a sense that Eleanor and Park are in a lovely bubble, as forces outside of their control-- asshole kids who ride the same bus they do, Eleanor's terrible dysfunctional family life--threaten to tear them apart. Interestingly, they don't even hold hands until at least halfway through the book, and that scene, the drawn out lead up to the touching of their hands, is one of the most romantic scenes I have ever read. 

It's Eleanor's wrenching home-life, though, that is the most moving and memorable to me. Her struggles with her downtrodden mom and many siblings all piled into the same bedroom with each other and her yearning for privacy and dignity under the leering eyes of her stepfather are all painfully captured by Rowell. 

This feels real. Because, I suspect, it is. 

The book has been banned in some schools, for language--the concerned/outraged parents say-- but it's clear those people haven't read the book or if they have, they don't get it. Last year there was a blow up on social media, the story of a school inviting Rainbow Rowell to speak and then dis-inviting her after a parent called the book obscene. 

Someone asked Rainbow Rowell for a comment and she said: "When these people call Eleanor & Park an obscene story, I feel like they’re saying that rising above your situation isn’t possible. That if you grow up in an ugly situation, your story isn’t even fit for good people’s ears. That ugly things cancel out everything beautiful."

I was forever a fangirl after reading that. 

And then, I read her book Fangirl.

Or rather, I listened to it on audio. My husband, teen daughter, and her boyfriend, and I were driving 17 hours to Florida for Spring Break and I checked out Fangirl because it was written by Rainbow Rowell! and because I knew it was about a girl's first year in college and I thought my daughter might be interested. 

I put the first CD in and my husband was sleeping and my daughter was sleeping, but her boyfriend and I listened as main character Cath moves into her dorm, anxious about being away from home, anxious about not rooming with her twin sister, and only finding a little bit of solace in her writing. (Turns out she is a "famous" writer of fan fiction. She writes popular stories, eagerly followed by her many fans, on a Harry Potter-like series called Simon Snow.)

CD number two, and everyone in the car was awake, and we listened for the next 16 hours as Cath figures out how to navigate college and homesickness and her extreme anxiety and her loud-mouthed seemingly obnoxious roommate and the roommate's adorable boyfriend and her troubled twin sister and her struggling father and her distant mother and all the while interspersed with bits of her more and more popular Simon Snow fan fiction.

When we reached the end of the audio book, everyone in the car was crying and after we all wiped our tears, my daughter spoke up very softly from the backseat and asked if we'd put the first CD back on because she'd missed it.

We did.

I could go on about my love and admiration of all things Rainbow Rowell, about how my book club read Landline, one of her adult novels, and it was one of the few novels that we all agreed was good. About Rowell's latest novel, the one she signed for me, called Carry On, a book of Cath's fanfiction about Simon Snow... (I am marveling at the brilliance of this!!!)

But I won't because I fear that this blog post may never end if I do.

Instead I will leave you with this:

 

The Third Annual Jody-intz Awards (My Take on the Best Young Adult Books)

This year I almost didn't make a list of my favorite books. This year I'VE got a book out and I thought it might be weird to judge the um, competition.

But it doesn't feel weird. Maybe because I don't view other books as competition.

There's room for lots of good books out there. When I read a really good book, I'm thankful for it, inspired by it, grateful that I live in a world where good books are floating around. Now, with my own book floating around, the grateful feeling is exponentially amped up. I walk into a bookstore or a library, and I see my little book on a shelf next to books by writers I admire. (And I must say here that the shelf real estate in the C section is particularly fine. Rae Carson!! Kristin Cashore!! Jennifer Castle!!) I don't think I will ever get used to the idea that something I've written is parked next to books by these authors. And if I ever do, someone, please, slap me.)

Now without further ado--here are the books that I loved last year--the ones that got me thinking and feeling and swooning and sighing and crying--

1. In the nail biter/page turner category The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey. Yikes is all I can say about this one. Aliens have taken over the world and gone all Invasion of the Body Snatchers on us. This book's got action and heart. Warning: clear your calendar. Once you open the first page, you will not be able to put the thing down until you reach the end.

2. Best Beginning of a Series. Tie between Divergent by Veronica Roth and The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater. Okay, first--Divergent. (Yes, I have come late to this party. The book was released several years ago but for whatever reason it was not on my radar. If you haven't heard of it, you will soon. The movie's coming out in March.) The Raven Boys. Oh, Maggie Stiefvater, how I adore you and everything you have written. Just got back from a long car trip and listened to the second book in the series, The Dream Thieves. Adored that one too. For the uninitiated, this series has action and lush writing and moments that will stop your heart. I was hooked from the very first line: "Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she'd been told that she would kill her true love."

3. Best END to a Series. Hands down winner The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson. This trilogy blew me away. I'm not a fantasy fan, typically, but the strong female lead Elisa drew me in and the complex and non-stereotypical love interest Hector KEPT me in.

4. The Writer-I-Just-Discovered-and-Read-Every-Book-She-Wrote-in-a-Row Award goes to Courtney Summers. JEEZ is the word that sums up Summers. The woman knows how to worm her way into the mind of a tormented and tormenting teen girl. I've read criticism of Summers' books--that the female leads are unlikeable. Maybe. But oh man, you will be viscerally pulled into these girls' stories. My favorite was Some Girls Are. I stayed up half the night reading about how the tables are turned on a "mean" girl.

5.  The Double Punch of Brilliance and Heart Award is a three way tie between September Girls by Bennett Madison, 17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma, and Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos. These books made me FEEL and THINK and had the added bonus of making me forget I am a writer, by letting me simply fall into their stories.

6. I was going to mention Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell in that last category but I think it deserves a category all of its own. I rarely cry while reading books, but this one got me tearing up after reading the Dedication Page. (I'd write the line that made me cry, but if I did, I'd start crying again. So, sorry. You will have to pick this book up yourself and see what all the fuss is about.)

7. Best Twist: What I Was by Meg Rosoff. This book was written several years ago but seems to have fallen off the radar. The main character's a troubled boy at a remote boarding school who develops an intense friendship with another boy, an orphan who lives alone. Things--and people--are not what they seem.  I must mention here that Meg Rosoff's newest book Picture Me Gone is on my TBR stack and I keep hesitating to pick it up--not because I don't want to read it, but because I like knowing that I've got a Meg Rosoff book still to be opened and treasured.

8. Book That Flew Under the Radar and Deserves Wider Readership. The award goes to Jennifer Castle's You Look Different in Real Life, which also wins the coolest premise award. Here's the blurb I wrote on Goodreads:
"Five teens chosen to appear in a documentary film every five years... but it's the voice of the main character, Justine, that pushes this novel into what will surely be readers' Top Ten of the Year lists. Justine is insightful and brilliantly observant--mixed with a bit of biting snark. What's it like to grow up on film? To have your childhood memories edited and manipulated? Is it ethical to portray people's most intimate and heartbreaking moments for an audience's entertainment? Absorbing read that you'll be thinking about long after you finish."

9. And finally, last but not least, in the category of Book I Wish Existed When I Was a Kid Award: Gary D. Schmidt's Okay for Now. This book came out in 2011 and was one of the runners up for the National Book Award--deservedly so. Main character Doug's just moved to a new town, a dump, he thinks, and he's far from thrilled. He's far from thrilled about most things. His crappy family life. School. What looks like a dead end future. The narrative voice is funny, though, so all of this isn't too unbearable. Slowly, readers are sucked into Doug's new life in his new dumpy town, and slowly, he (and we) see that maybe the place isn't such a dump after all, and maybe too, it's how we view ourselves and others that makes all the difference.

PS: Yesterday the American Library Association gave out the official Printz Award for Best Young Adult book of the year to a book I haven't read yet but undoubtedly will:

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

5-Star Summer Reads

Looking for a few good YA books to read this summer?

Here's my list (at the moment) of the top 2013 YA releases in no particular order:

The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr

I am a big fan of Zarr and always eager to pick up her latest book. The characters in this one depart a bit from her usual, focusing on a teen concert pianist from a wealthy, high achieving family (Zarr's other books feature kids growing up firmly in the working class world.) Lucy realizes that she's privileged--it's one of the many issues she's grappling with. The main source of angst, though, is her ambivalence about her talent. Nearly a year ago, she walked away from her promising piano career.

The pressure from her family (and from herself) grew to be too much. She hasn't touched a piano since, but her friendship with her brother's new piano teacher has her questioning her decision to quit and pushing her to figure out if there is a way to make music a part of her life again.

This book has a couple of strange plot strands--the relationship with the piano teacher is the big one, but all of the characters are so fully realized and the story itself pushes and spreads in a variety of directions that feels like life unfolding in the real world. What Zarr has to say about living a creative life--when you are amazingly good at what you do--is thought-provoking and inspirational.

17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma

This is one of those novels that takes a big risk. The language is lyrical and metaphorical. The subject matter is potentially lurid (kidnapped teen girls). And the narrative is almost completely internal. Oh, there were so many ways that this book could go wrong!

My big pet peeve with literary novels is that those beautifully crafted metaphors draw attention to themselves and pull readers out of the story. (When I'm noticing what a lovely simile you just used, I forget what's going on in the narrative.) And very few writers are able to depict difficult subject matter without slipping over the line into soap-opera-y drama.

Add the whole internal stream-of-consciousness angle, and honestly, I didn't think Nova Ren Suma could pull this one off.

But, let me just say WOW. This book pulls you in from page one and keeps you turning pages with the mesmerizing hypnotic voice of girl who suddenly believes that she is seeing the ghosts of missing girls.

Look for 17 & Gone on the short list for the Printz Award this year...

Dear Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos

It rarely happens to me anymore, but once in a while I read a book and forget that I am a writer. The part of me that is constantly editing and analyzing shuts up and I simply fall into the story. I don't know why this happens with some books and not others. I wish I did! But I think it comes down to the voice--something about it resonates and pulls me in.

The voice in Dr. Bird's belongs to an anxious, sensitive, battered soul of a boy named James Whitman. James carries Walt Whitman's poems around with him. He hugs trees and contemplates grass blades. He talks to a bird therapist in his head. He worries about his sister Jorie who has been kicked out of school and out of the house by their %&^*# parents. There's a mystery at the core of the book: WHY did Jorie get kicked out? But really this book is about James trying to cope with the crappy aspects of life.

Here's something that a lot of adults seem to forget about being a kid: it sucks. So much of your life is out of your control and you're seeing for the first time the unfairness, the flaws in the adults who rule the world (and you). There is no magic answer to how you figure things out--how you grow up--of course, but I get the feeling at the end of this book that James will be all right.


Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

This love story blows all other teen romances away. The main characters are complex and flawed. Eleanor is a little overweight and weird and bullied. She's hurting, just treading water to survive in her dysfunctional family. Park is quirky and quiet. He stands out in their gritty midwestern town because he's half Korean.

The two don't have a love at first sight moment, instead, their relationship slowly, almost painfully, unfolds. They don't even hold hands until at least a third of the way through--but that moment is more charged than all of the ridiculously over the top teen Harlequins put together.

Oh, it's also set in the 80's, which will make teens today feel like they're reading historical fiction, I suppose. For adults of a certain age, uh, ahem, me, it will feel like time travel.