Ready, Set, Read!

2011 is almost upon us, and that means it's time for me to start my 50 in '11 challenge. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions; I've tried to take as many as possible, and of course my reading list for 2012 and beyond continues to grow thanks to your awesomeness. I'll keep you all updated on my readerly adventures in 2011, and I want to hear about yours as well!

Here's the final list for 2011:

feminism, gender studies and queer theory
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine
The Feminist Promise by Christine Stansell
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman

graphic novels
Blankets by Craig Thompson
From Hell by Alan Moore
The Sandman, Volume 1 by Neil Gaiman
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Maus by Art Spiegelman

classics I haven't read yet
The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

books I would normally scoff at
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Rampant by Diana Peterfreund (I know, I hear it's exactly my cup of tea, but killer unicorns, really?)
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (I don't know why I scoff. Maybe I just hate movie-poster book covers.)
A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell Hamilton

contemporary literary fiction
A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

books I bought but haven't read yet
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson
Darkmans by Nicola Barker
Season of Secrets by Sally Nicholls (okay, I admit, this is a bit of a guilty pleasure, and it's not even out yet... but I worked on it as an intern, so I already know I'll buy it, and I won't be able to wait to read it!)
The Naming by Alison Croggon
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

books with people of color on their covers
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger
Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
Huntress by Malinda Lo
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

literary journals and collections of poetry or short stories
War Dances by Sherman Alexie
What is this Thing Called Love by Kim Addonizio
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
First Lines

genre literature (sci-fi/fantasy)
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacugalupi
Slow River by Nicola Griffith
Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee

trade nonfiction
The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson
The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker
Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy by Jason Eberl
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood by Maria Tatar

The question now is: which book do I read first? And what book are you reading to kick off the new year? Let me know in comments!

WHY WRITE?: Young Adult Fiction

Thanks to everyone who voted on genres for the Why Write?^TM series last week! Voting is still open, so if you haven’t chimed in yet, head on over now to put in your two cents.

As for how the voting played out last week: literary fiction took the lead, followed by a tie between Young Adult fiction, sci-fi and fantasy (or speculative fiction), and historical fiction (who knew I had such history buffs among my readers?!). Romance followed that with just a few votes, and westerns and mysteries received a single vote each. I’m excited to dive in on those top four, and if you guys really like the Why Write?^TM series, let me know and I’ll tackle the extra challenge of dissecting romances as well.

I’m going to jump in at the middle here because today’s post flows pretty naturally from my recent post on why character transformation works so well in YA fiction. So—why write YA?

Because you want a welcoming audience. Teenagers who read do so voraciously. They read in school and out of it. They flock to blogs and message boards, they review the books they read on Amazon and in their own blogs, and they spend hours discussing their favorite books with their friends. From the droves of teens who dress up as characters from The Hunger Games or the Harry Potter series for Halloween, to those who flock to communities of writers and readers like John and Hank Green’s massive posse of Nerdfighters, to those who, hungry for more of their favorite characters, take to reading and writing fan fiction, I don’t know of any audience that more actively interacts with their books. Writers of YA, by and large, love to interact with their audiences—and how could they not, in the face of such devoted readers?

Because your readers need you. Middle school and high school can be nasty, and teens both yearn for connection and desperately fear putting themselves out there. I think that’s a big part of why so many teens become ardent readers. Like everyone, they want to open a book and see someone they recognize come to life on the pages. But even more than the adults who read, they need that character who’s just like them—to know they’re not alone, to know they’re not as strange as they feel, to know that if it’s bad, it can still get better. Affirmation and hope can be hard to find in the bitter wilderness of childhood, but a great YA author can give that to a teen.

Because you want to write something deep… Teens are smart and hungry to critique the world around them, including the books they read. Teens often get a bum rap for being addicted to video games, TV and Facebook, but the majority of teens I know are more tuned into the world than a lot of adults. Unlike so many tired nine-to-fivers, they can spend all day thinking at school and still not be ready to shut their brains off and veg when they get home. They’re not daunted by complex plot structures or layers of meaning, and they’re intelligent enough to understand and expand upon complex themes. If you have something serious to say, you might actually be more likely to be heard by a teenager than by an adult.

…But you also want to have fun with it. At the same time, teens are brutally honest and quick to call bullshit. They love to be blown away by a book’s deeper meaning, but they’re not as likely to put up with unnecessary frills. Books for teens are often more fun to read than adult books, without sacrificing the complex themes you find in literary fiction. Compare The Hunger Games or Feed to A Brave New World or 1984 and you’ve got similar themes being expressed in a more fast-paced, fun format. No one ever said that, just because you have something to say, you can’t have fun saying it.

Because you want to change the world. Teens are passionate, political and idealistic. Just as they’re eager to think critically about the world around them, they’re hungry for a cause to believe in—and, as Robyn pointed out a few weeks ago, they're quick to act on their ideals. If you’ve got a message, you might be better off imparting it on the young than on the old. Adults can be jaded or may have already decided exactly where they stand on an issue, but teenagers are still learning all they can, deciding what they think, and committing themselves to ideals. What’s more, teens are just a few years away from inheriting power. Given the right ideals, the next generation might be able to live better than we ever have.

Because you want to change a person. The books we read as teens are often the ones we remember best and love most fiercely, and for good reason. They determine the people we become, the ideals we adhere to, and the way we view the world. There’s a reason that the fight for people of color on book covers and for diversity of gender, sexuality and race in literature has been fought so much more loudly in the kid-lit community than in the world of adult fiction—we recognize that readers of YA are still forming their worldviews, and that books play a powerful role in that growth. The worlds teens experience when they read will help them, whether they are conscious of it or not, to decide what’s right or wrong and what’s normal or abnormal in the world around them. In some ways, picking up a pen to write for teens is (as one of the programmers in my office would say) your Spiderman moment: with great power comes great responsibility. When you write a book that hits home for a teenager, you help to form the belief system he or she will take into adulthood. You can literally have a hand in making that teen the person he or she is becoming.

Do you agree? Disagree? Maybe there are other genres that do some of these things better. Maybe I missed a few good reasons. Let me know in comments!

Step Right Up and Get Your New Year's Resolution Here! That, Or Tell Me What to Read.

As The Rejectionist reminded me, tis the season to get those New Year's resolutions ready! My resolutions are as follows:

1. Rock the knee-high argyle socks off my job, and rock 'em good.

2. Complete my version of the 10-10-10 reading challenge, to which I linked at the end of Amanda's awesome guest post from last week. The challenge is to read ten books from each of ten different, self-selected categories by October 10th.

100 books in ten months is an ambitious goal, but what I like even more about the challenge is its focus on diverse reading. The challenge pushes readers to tackle writing styles which challenge them, explore new categories of books with an open mind, and discover new reading interests.

I'm not sure I'll make it to ten books in each category, so I'm striving for a modest five instead. And that's where you come in! My categories are below, but I need suggestions.

feminism, gender studies and queer theory
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

---> I could use more suggestions, particularly of a well-researched history of feminism in the U.S., definitive texts in these fields or good overviews of contemporary thinking in these areas.

graphic novels
In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe by Jonathan Scott Fuqua
From Hell by Alan Moore
The Sandman, Volume 1 by Neil Gaiman
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
Maus by Art Spiegelman

classics I haven't read yet
The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

---> What else should I have read by now?

books I would normally scoff at
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

---> Okay, this is the category for anyone who wants to torture me, or force me to change my mind about a book. What do you think -- should I read the autobiography of Justin Bieber? Some crazy conspiracy theory? Lay it on me!

contemporary literary fiction
A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

---> Did I make the right choices? What books have changed you or made you think recently?

books I bought but haven't read yet
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson
Darkmans by Nicola Barker
Season of Secrets by Sally Nicholls (okay, I admit, this is a bit of a guilty pleasure, and it's not even out yet... but I worked on it as an intern, so I already know I'll buy it, and I won't be able to wait to read it!)
The Naming by Alison Croggon
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

books with people of color on their covers
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger
Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
Huntress by Malinda Lo

---> What are your favorites? I'm looking for fiction here, but that can be adult, children's, genre -- whatever!

literary journals and collections of poetry or short stories
War Dances by Sherman Alexie
Things You Should Know by A.M. Homes
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

---> I really need to add some poetry or a literary journal to this list. What are your favorites?

genre literature (sci-fi/fantasy)
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
The Scar by China Mieville

---> Okay, genre mavens -- what are your favorites? Bonus points for subversive themes like gender-bending and addressing issues of discrimination.

trade nonfiction
The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson
The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood by Maria Tatar

Hit me up in comments with your suggestions!

Better yet, I hope some of you will join me for this challenge. Feel free to post your categories in comments. I'll be happy to send some suggestions right back at you -- and hopefully so will my other readers!