Top Ten Teen Angst Books

A while back I posted a list of my Top Ten Underrated Teen Angst Movies. Actually, though, I don't watch a lot of movies. I mostly read books.

I've thought a lot about why I never outgrew teen fiction and I've come to the conclusion that most of the time, a 35 year old will write as a 15 year old. The resulting fiction will read like a 25 year old has written it. And maybe that's why I like it. Or maybe it's just that I'm a writer (I've written two books for non-adult people). Anyway. Here is a list of my ten favourite teen angst books and why I like them.

10. Why We Broke Up- Daniel Handler

This book is a super long letter from a girl highschooler to a boy highschooler, all about their relationship from beginning to end. It's beautifully written: the girl is super-quirky and the boy is a conventional. Since it's written from the perspective of the girl, you get to see how the jock boy is actually weird (to quirky people) in that he doesn't think about stuff very much. I don't usually like books where a male author writes as a female or vice versa, but in this case, it works.

9. How To Keep a Boy as a Pet- Diane Messidoro

 This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. It's about a girl living in a small English town and her plots to get a boyfriend. It reads authentically and you can't help but root for her (on one occasion she learns that the boy she crushes on likes horses... so she tries to subtly dress like one). It may not actually help you to keep a boy as a pet, but it will help you feel less alone in the world, and happy that Diane Messidoro and her lovely brain exist.

8. Gingerbread- Rachel Cohn

This was my favourite book when I was fourteen and I've never really stopped liking it. It's about an angry goth girl who carries a doll with her everywhere. She moves to San Francisco to live with her Dad and is completely herself even though he doesn't enjoy her personality very much.

7. Rookie Yearbook One- Tavi Gevinson

A bunch of teenage girls writing about what it's like to be alive and female. It's like a magazine only a lot less stupid, because it's full of long essays and beautiful art and it isn't trying to sell you anything. It takes hours and hours to read the whole thing, but they are hours well spent and you will come out the other end feeling smarter and better informed. There's also a rookie mag website, which is great, but I prefer reading the long, long articles in print format.

6. Looking for Alaska- John Green

This book is written from the perspective of a completely geeky guy who doesn't really have any friends, until he goes to boarding school. His roommate is one of my favourite characters in literature and the best thing about it is, the main character doesn't really undergo a major personality transplant halfway through: he's still a completely geeky guy who doesn't really understand people.

5. Stargirl- Jerry Spinelli

My favourite book when I was sixteen: a new girl moves to town and shes not like anyone else in the world. It's almost like she exists on a different plane: she's so weird, but she doesn't even seem to notice. She tries to make the world better and then she's gone. If this book was written in the sixties I'd say she was an alien, but she's not: she's a strange unworldly girl and the boy narrator gets sucked into her world.

4. The Lover's Dictionary- David Levithan

I used to be obsessed with the concept of shuffle novels: I sort of wrote one, although the last few chapters are all in their proper place. The Lover's Dictionary reads like a novel which has been written, chopped up, and put back into an arbitrary order based around the alphabet. It's about a relationship, from start to finish. What's clever about this book is that it reads almost universally: it could be about any relationship. It could almost be a relationship dictionary.

3. Rose of No Man's Land- Michelle Tea

Rose of No Man's Land is about a girl who is doomed in an almost Shakespearean way. Not many novels write about poor white people: most novelists are middle class. Rose lives under depressing circumstances: her mother doesn't leave the house, her mother's boyfriend steals stuff. They are super poor. Her sister, the 'normal' one, gets her a job at the mall. Within a few hours it becomes hopelessly apparent that Rose cannot fit in. She goes on this whirlwind adventure, where things get worse and worse as the night progresses. And then she goes back home.

2. Love Lessons- Jacqueline Wilson

It continues to surprise me that Americans don't read Jacqueline Wilson. In Love Lessons, her least popular book with parents since 'Waiting for the Sky to Fall' (1983), the main character (a fourteen year old girl attending school for the first time) falls in love with her art teacher, who happens to be married with children, and they have a relationship, of sorts. She's lonely and self-centered and not very happy, and sort of reads like she was born in the 1950's. But I like her anyway, and it's perhaps Wilson's bravest book.
 
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower- Stephen Chbosky

If you read this book, it will change you. You will come out at the end of it as a different person than the one you went in as. So full of love it almost hurts.

Poetry Reading

On Friday night I read some poems at Alliance Francais in aid of Women's Day. Since we don't have a printer I just brought some poems that had been printed inside magazines. I didn't know that the poems were supposed to be on the theme of 'The Strength of Women', so mine were slightly off topic. There were some cool poets doing different things. This guy did spoken word in Swahili:

 This woman showed her paintings behind her and then read the poems that had inspired her:

Sitawa Wafula, who's releasing her spoken word album soon, read poems on the theme of violence against women:

All the other poets did a great job. I think I was pretty terrible because I was so nervous! The spotlights shone in my eyes and I couldn't see the audience.

I hope everyone had a happy Women's Day and celebrated being women/ knowing women!

Reading Buddies

Did you ever have a reading buddy when you were in school? I didn't, but my class now have them. It's so nice to work together with the bigger kids and learn from each other!

Our buddy class is year five, and there are more of them than there are of the year ones. So some lucky kids get two reading buddies.

Review: Wonder by R.J.Palacio

I don't very often write book reviews on here: this is partly because I read so many books that it would mean I'd barely write about anything else. It is also partly because I appreciate that not everyone enjoys reading almost exclusively children's and young adult fiction. But you know how every now and then you read a book which is so wonderful that it changes you? This was one of those books.

Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, is about a boy with severe facial disfigurement. It's told from his perspective and that of other people around him. In the beginning of the book he's never been to school before, but then he starts middle school. I didn't want to read this book for a while, because I didn't like the cover and it sounded kind of depressing. But it's not. It's funny and sad and uplifting.

All of the characters in the book are completely believeable, and there's a strong message running throughout the book to choose kindness. This really resonated with me, because this past year, for the first time in my life, I see kindness as the most important thing. In fact, when I recently came to the 'other achievements' section on an application form, it's what I wanted to write: this year I have learnt to be kind.

It's funny, because it's not something which is ever really valued by society: being kind won't necessarily win you any awards, or other people's respect. But reading this book is the first time I've really seen the message written down (besides in religious texts): cultivate kindness.

After having read this book over the past 24 hours I am left feeling humbled and with a sense of how beautiful life is. I implore you to read it, too.

Today I hid books in my house.

I gathered all the poorly written books I own into one pile and hid them at the back of a wardrobe, behind my father's shirts and work jackets. I feel happier now that they are there. I really didn't like looking at them. I felt they were discouraging me from writing well. But throwing them out would have felt like I was letting them win.

I keep writing poems for my class with John Haynes. Poems with ten syllables per line, and beginning with the phrase 'today i must', and in the style of arthur waley, as per the exercise. I cannot take them to class because they are just not appropriate, even though they are some of the best poems I've written. Every time I sit down to write a new one, I think, right, now I must write something suitable for class. And I just don't. I don't know why.

Embracing 'Ways to Live Forever'.

I spent most of today reading this book. I was astonished by how good it was, by the ease and honesty with which Nicholls wrote about death in a form suitable for children and adults. This is what I am aim for in writing my novel. I like to read debut novels because the style is not too polished and as a new writer I find that inspiring.

Nicholls has a style which is her own and she employs a lot of techniques which I also employ, such as short sentences, dark humour and a loose sort of structure, interspersed between memory and the present.

My favourite thing about this book was that it was written by a twenty-three year old. I read it and I do not feel intimidated; I feel like I can do something similar within the next few years. I like that she studied at MA Creative Writing at Bath Spa, and I like that managed to convince people that reading a book from the perspective of a dying child would not be too depressing. I like that she has a degree in philosophy and this obviously informs what she writes. I like that her influences are Hilary McKay and Frank Cottrell Boyce. I even like her picture. I would like to be her friend. I left a nice comment on her website.

I am very excited by this book, and feel invigorated, and empowered to write more about child death in a way which is not wholly depressing or solely about how everyone heals and forgets.
The format is obviously such that she put it all together at the end. And it works. And it does not drag and nothing in it is boring. What brilliance!

Rock on, Sally Nicholls. I look forward to reading your next book, also about death. I hope one day, you will read mine.


(Note: you can go to the website and download the beginning of the book, and also read more praise which i wrote in the guestbook! http://www.waystoliveforever.co.uk/ )

Lost Girls: A Review

Lost Girls is a three-volume erotic graphic novel depicting the sexual adventures of Dorothy Gale (Wizard of Oz), Wendy Darling (Peter Pan), and Alice (of Wonderland). The three meet in an Austrian hotel before the outbreak of WW1. Many retailers refuse to stock it through fear of being accused of child porn trafficking, despite the fact that it involved no children in its production.

It is not true to the texts it draws from, but has obviously read them closely. It sexualises the texts at the expense of the original stories. It seems an agenda of the book to explore and expose every fantasy. In doing this, it's not very sexy; everything is rendered explicit and nothing is left for imagination.

Peter Pan has sex, though he gains no pleasure from it. For Wendy, Neverland is a place of sexual freedom which she moves through progressively, from desiring the lost boys, to Peter and finally the pirates, thus realising her sexuality.

The ‘shadowy and wild’ time before Wendy is fully grown is the time when she can realise her sexuality, and objections of sexualising children are anticipated and challenged by Moore, when he says, ‘Your child is real. These, however, are only real in this delightful book... They are fictions’. He attempts to legitimise, even encourage, fantasising about them. When Wendy tells Peter to ‘grow up’ it is because her fantasises are no longer compatible with this. But to say that Peter has sexual fantasies at all is a difficult claim to withhold, and one which I find little conviction in. The underlying theme of Lost Girls is not sexuality so much as how un-destructive sexual desire is, and the idea that nothing is that bad compared to war.

Hook is presented as a crippled paedophile, who desires both Peter and Wendy; when he tries to rape Wendy, she becomes aware that she does not have to consent to his desire, and tells him, ‘You can pretend you’re still young, like them... that’s why you fuck children... you’re afraid of women. And you’re afraid of getting old’. There is a clear difference then, in the presentation of the fantasy and the reality of penetrating the child.

Lost Girls contains something for everyone. In this, it is not ideally suited to any individual reader. It set out to do something different and create a better name for porn. But somewhere along the way, it got really repetitive. Perhaps three volumes were a bit much; I challenge anyone to remain aroused by page after page of the same women, same interactions, same bed, same strap-ons. Porn has a fairytale relation to reality, making Alice, Dorothy and Wendy, three fantasy figures, an ideal medium for the exploration of how far porn can go. It is the execution which is problematic. But not very. I expect the next collaboration between Moore and Gebbie’s to produce exciting results.

Storytelling on the London Underground

I'm scared of the underground. But when travelling with a five-year-old, it's best to hide such fears. So to distract us both on the way to the science museum, I read 'Green Eggs and Ham'. 'A' loves it. She joins in on the 'Sam-I-am's. And while we are reading, something amazing happens. Every other person in the carriage turns off their Ipod or folds up their newspaper and leans in to hear the story. The nearby people look at the pictures, also. The busy carriage is transformed from a place of hostility to a place of friendship. The usual isolation was broken by something as simple as a storybook.

Resisting Paris

'I think the biggest misconception about me is that I'm this spoiled brat. But I'm not. I'm the total opposite' - Paris on her motivations to publish the above.

Open any tabloid for proof that the world is yet to see the unspoilt, giving individual that Paris sees in herself. One would hope that reading her book would allow insight into that giving nature of hers. Not so.

In this chunky volume, which is approximately two-thirds pictures, Paris takes us on a two-hour walk through her wardrobe, boy-toys and modelling career. If that weren't enough, she also provides tips on how any discerning reader can become more Heiress-like. Such gems of encouragement include:

'Act Ditzy. Lose things. It throws people off and makes them think you’re ‘adorable’ and less together than you really are’

Never wear the same thing twice’.

‘Always tell everyone what they want to hear’

One can also find tips on fake-tan wearing and cellphone-losing. Useful entertainment, indeed. It seems anti-feminist in a way which I can only describe as regressive; why would a woman, or, indeed, a man, want to come across as unintelligent and repressed? Perhaps she didn't really write it. Perhaps her co-writer put those bits in. But the text made it past the editorial team at Simon & Schuster. Why?

This autobiography contains very little which is autobiographical; in the 'Fashion don'ts' chapter, Paris 'exposes' herself through bad clothing choices, and advises readers to learn from her fashion mistakes. She does provide one memory, which involves swindling her younger sister out of $100 each year as a child. But that is it. The only memory. So much for the 'opposite of spoiled brat' effect. The reader is perhaps expected to learn more about her by looking at the plethora of pictures. With chapter headings such as 'My Best Accessories' and 'Warm and Fuzzy', the reader is left with little of the supposed 'Empowering Message of Inner Confidence for Young Women' that it's publisher promises. Indeed, Paris is so confident, so self assured, that this reader was left feeling lied to. What is human about a person who believes themselves to be perfect?

Today's media reflects our society's openness to celebrate celebrity as saint. This book goes further, expecting readers to accept a lists of accessories and doggy diaries in the place of autobiographical information: from a book marketed as autobiography. Perhaps the publishers feel that by giving this Paris-branded personal sales-pitch a sparkly pink cover they can lure the teen market. Apparently so. I am disappointed. In Paris, for lending her name to this. But more disappointed in society, for allowing this book to become such a success.