I have to say, I am LOVING all the energy coming from the book community right now. Folks are tweeting like mad about the TFiOS movie, Amazon's negotiations with Hachette, and the Slate article telling YA-reading adults that they should be embarrassed by their book choices, and I love it! Because, despite their quiet reputation, books are LOUD and CONTROVERSIAL and WE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT THEM!
I have been known to get pretty fired up about my books from time to time. Here are my top 5 book-related freakouts (good and bad).
1996: I was in third grade and, at my elementary school, you weren't allowed to check out Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret until fourth grade, because it talked about *gasp* PERIODS. I was not pleased. There was information in that book I needed to know. Like, what exactly WAS a period?
1998: Two years later, I became so enamored with Harriet the Spy that I stole the only copy out of my fifth grade classroom's library (and I still have it today). Sorry, Mrs. Schatzman. You were the best 5th grade teacher ever... but I really needed that book.
2002: I read Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine for school and realized 1) Not all books that you have to read for school are totally bogus and 2) Well-written books are some of the most wondrous man-made objects in existence. Then I started speaking up when my friends or classmates would say that books are "boring" or that were "too busy to read."
2009: I spent three months of my life inside David Foster Wallace's head via Infinite Jest and deliberately read the last 100 pages in a public place because I suspected the world might end when I finished the book, and I wanted to watch it happen. NOTHING has ever altered my mental state the way that book did, and afterwards I told everyone I knew about it.
2012: I got hired as an editorial assistant at Sourcebooks and suddenly was paid to do book-related things all day and hang out with other people who would take issue if you gave their favorite book a two-star rating on Goodreads. MY PEOPLE.
What are your book rage/love moments? Did you name all of your Barbies after the characters in the Babysitter's Club series? (Not that I did that...) Or ever-so-casually cut in line at the midnight release of the fifth Harry Potter book? (Not that I did that I did that either).
Books are powerful and we should be talking about them! So--go out and share! The good, the bad, the ugly, the YA, whatever! I am feeling mighty proud of our community tonight and I hope you are, too.
