Five Books That Changed My Life

Lately I haven't had much time to read, although I always carry a book with me in case I encounter a five-minute period when I'm not walking somewhere. Most days I only read during my 20-minute bus ride and my 30-minute lunch break. Even worse, I haven't read a book that I absolutely LOVED since Mockingjay. I find myself returning to old favorites rather than squandering my reading time on something I might not like.

So here is a list of five books (or series) that changed my life in one way or another.

1) The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce

In sixth and seventh grade I had a mysterious chronic illness that kept me home from school for weeks. My mom would call me from the bookstore and name off titles, trying to find one that I hadn't read yet. (Sadly, we didn't have a library nearby. How is that possible?) Alanna: The First Adventure was one of these. I blew through everything Tamora Pierce had ever written (at that point, only two series) and wanted more--so I started to write it. I have been writing ever since.

2) Mandie and the Foreign Spies by Lois Gladys Leppard

Back up four years, to second grade. My grandmother kept me in books when I was young, and she made sure that I always had the next book in the Mandie series. In this one, Mandie and her friends are in France and get into some trouble. Mandie finds herself in an abandoned tunnel with a bad guy and must scream for help--in French. I was aware of foreign languages before second grade, of course, but after reading this book I had to learn French. So began my love of languages which eventually turned into a linguistics degree.

3) Smack by Melvin Burgess

I already talked about this book in my previous post. It's a stark and honest look at teen drug abuse, and it is the main reason I've never done drugs. But it's also an important book because, when it came out in the 90's, there wasn't much in the way of Young Adult fiction. My local library (I'd moved across the country to a place that had libraries) had a lot of British YA. As the genre gained popularity in Britain, it followed suit in the States. So this is my homage to British YA, of which I read a lot.

4) Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Those of you who know me in real life know that I spent a year abroad in Scotland during college. This series is the reason that I chose Scotland, despite the fact that another country would have made more sense for a Slavic Studies major. But I was so intrigued by the history and people of Scotland that I couldn't pass up the chance to live there for a year. I'm thinking of rereading this series.

5) Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Before vampires were lurking around every corner, I was obsessed with them. (Now that they're popular, I turn my nose up at vampire novels as if I hadn't spent half my life reading every one I could get my hands on.) Sunshine came into my life during my sophomore year of college, just after my mom and sister got into a really terrible car accident. Then, I read it to escape from a situation that made me feel helpless. Later I reread several times: when I was alone and sick in a foreign country, when my best friend died, when a long-term relationship ended and someone broke my heart. You wouldn't think that a vampire-hunting novel would be so comforting, but Sunshine gives me hope that a normal and underachieving person can do amazing things.

Banned books seem to be the topic of the month--just in time for Banned Book Week. (Banned Book Week is September 25th to October 2nd, but I'm sure you already knew that.)

Books are challenged and banned in schools all the time. Usually it doesn't get much publicity, because the banning happens in a place where censorship is, at least to some extent, accepted, but every so often an author chooses to make it known that she does not accept or appreciate that her voice has been silenced in that community.

Ellen Hopkins is one such author. This summer she was invited to speak at a Young Adult book festival outside of Houston, Texas. A librarian and some parents did not feel that Ellen's books were appropriate for teens and made enough of a stir that Ellen was uninvited from the festival. Of the other seven authors invited, six withdrew and the festival was canceled. Hundreds of voices were raised in protest of censorship, and I started to pay attention to the controversy.

Next, Sherman Alexie's book The Mostly True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was challenged in a Washington school. Last week it was removed from the shelves. Then came the #SpeakLoudly movement, which is still going strong. For anyone who hasn't encountered it yet, this is a campaign--mostly online--to protest Wesley Scroggins' assertion that books such as Slaughterhouse 5, Twenty Boy Summer, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson are detrimental to young adults' moral and intellectual education.

As I follow the various controversies, I feel the need to share my personal experiences with banned books. Some of them have changed my life, and I think it's a terrible shame that others like me might not have the chance to have their lives changed by these and similar books.

When I was in Junior High, I encountered a book called Smack by Melvin Burgess. Like Crank by Ellen Hopkins, Smack tells the story of a slow descent into drug addiction. At the time I was reading it, my friends in sixth and seventh grade were experimenting with cocaine, ecstasy, and prescription drugs. Smack scared me so much that, to this day, I haven't touched an illegal drug. Are there descriptions of teenagers shooting up and having the time of their lives? Yes. Is there teen sex, drinking, and pregnancy? Yes, yes, and yes. Did the book make me more likely to engage in any of those? Absolutely not. In fact, the opposite happened--the book scared me straight at a time in my life when my family was falling apart and it would have been easy to fall into bad habits and addiction without immediate repercussions.

As for Speak, I am appalled that anyone could call this book "pornographic" or "filthy" or "demeaning." Speak is about a girl, Melinda, who survives a sexual assault but feels too ashamed to tell anyone about it. Instead she becomes withdrawn and silent, cutting school and alienating the few people at her school who will still talk to her. Melinda's sense of shame comes from people like Wesley Scroggins who consider rape to be pornographic and filthy. Speak tells us that it's not.

If I had read this book before I myself was raped, maybe I wouldn't have spent a year hiding from the world--but I did. I didn't speak.

If I could say one thing to Wesley Scroggins and other book banners, it would be this: Please don't take away our voices. When you limit a person's learning to things that you believe in, you don't prepare her for things that exist outside of your bubble.

As a teacher, I understand that it doesn't make sense to have a book like Smack in a third grade classroom library--because it isn't DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE. But when Smack is removed from a middle school, that is censorship. And it's wrong.

Review of XVI

XVI

by Julia Karr

Young Adult science fiction

Pub date January 6, 2011

Ever since The Hunger Games got popular, publishers are more willing to take a chance on young adult dystopian science fiction. I couldn't be happier--it's my favorite genre. XVI is another one that I've read recently.

Sometime in the near future, Nina Oberon lives in a world where turning sixteen is a huge milestone. Gone are the days of "sweet sixteen"--in Nina's time, turning sixteen means that girls are fair game for boys who are looking for a good time. Once you've been branded with a XVI tattoo, you're expected to be up for just about anything. But for girls like Nina, who aren't sure that they're ready for sex, it means constantly avoiding older boys in dark alleys and quiet corners.

Just before her sixteenth birthday, Nina's family experiences a terrible tragedy and she finds herself relying on former strangers. She begins to realize that her life is not what it seems--and she's caught up in a race to find out what it is before it's too late.

Karr puts forth some interesting ideas in XVI. Her version of the future is loud, uninhibited, and a little scary because it's not completely unbelievable. I'm curious to see what her next book has in store for us.

Juliet

by Anne Fortier

Adult Fiction

Available now in hardcover

As many of you know, I am a sucker for a) mysteries, b) Shakespeare-themed books, and c) historical fiction. Lucky for me, JULIET is all three.

Julie Jacobs is a drifter without much ambition. At 25, she has spent most of her life living in the shadow of her twin sister Janice. When Julie's great-aunt and guardian dies, leaving her entire estate to Janice, Julie escapes to Italy with a cryptic note, a key, and a mountain of debt. There she finds that her birth name, Giulietta Tolomei, is also the name of the woman who inspired Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet--and it's no coincidence.

There are a lot of things I love about this book. The "curse on both your houses" isn't completely over the top, and has just the right amount of creepiness. An extremely annoying character succeeds in redeeming herself (which is rare for me--I don't forgive easily). But what I like most is Julie. She is the kind of character that you expect to run into on the street: real, flawed, and with a history of grudges and mistakes that influence her choices. She, along with the wealth of research, make the story believable.

I highly recommend this book for fans of Dan Brown, Carol Goodman, and Jennifer Lee Carrell.