y’all, i have an important question to ask you today: have you been saved from eternal literary damnation?
i realize this topic may make some of you uncomfortable, but i can’t help myself!!! i am FULL OF THE SPIRIT (the spirit of AAYAL, that is), and it COMPELS ME to preach the message of literary salvation to everyone in this dark, twilight-infested world. now i KNOW some of you are feeling down right now. i KNOW some of you out there are struggling with the weight of your past mistakes, like reading “breaking dawn” or the entirety of the “gossip girl” series. well i am here today to tell you that THERE IS HOPE, my friends. there is a LIGHT beckoning to you, my brothers and sisters, and that light is coming from the pure goodness of our savior, Actually Awesome Young Adult Literature (otherwise known as the High Holiness, AAYAL). CAN I GET AN AMEN?!!!
ok, i’m gonna drop the preacher speak, cos it’s making me feel weird. but seriously, you guys, I AM ON A MISSION. and that mission is to show everyone i know just how amazing YA can be. it’s like my own personal crusades, minus all of the hating and killing. over the past two years, i’ve found myself loaning (ok, more like forcing) books to my friends in the hopes of opening their minds to the power of AAYAL (wow, i STILL sound like a televangelist. YOU CAN’T FIGHT THE SPIRIT, MY FRIENDS!). and, when they finally do accept my recommendation, they ALWAYS, and i mean ALWAYS, see the light and convert into the YA faith.
now, i know i’m not alone in my crusade. in fact, since all of the other FYAers feel the same way, we’ve decided to create a new series of entries (filed under “YAngelism”) where we ask non-YA fans to read a book and then write about their experiences. it is my hope that we will save many, many souls through these posts and bring more readers into the fold.
i realize that makes us kinda sound like a cult, which then led me to fantasize about the FYA version of a commune, which would probably be a super huge loft space in NYC (picture “big”) with a massive library and instead of wearing frumpy dresses we would be, like, the claudia kishis of now. and then everyone would have tasks to do, like piles of books to read and review, and each night we would gather together to worship AAYAL and take communion, which would consist of mac & cheese, french fries and cupcakes. don’t even get me started on what our church camp would be like…
anyway! i thought i would kick off this new series by finding out which YA book y’all tend to recommend the most. every evangelist knows that you can’t convert people without compelling evidence, something that really knocks their socks off (note to the folks on sixth street with the big hellfire signs: NOT COMPELLING). and so i always tend to go with the YA version of the book of revelations, “hunger games”!
here’s a photo of one of my recent converts, sally, who journeyed to argentina and discovered that the AAYAL bible has been translated into spanish!! CAN I GET A HALLELUJAH?!!
my other go-to books (read: tracts) include: “sweethearts” (sara zarr), “the truth about forever” (sarah dessen) and “the disreputable history of frankie landau banks” (e. lockhart).
alright, y’all, now it’s yr turn. what books do YOU use to save souls from eternal literary damnation? PRAISE AAYAL!
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
SO MUCH YES to Frankie Landau-Banks.
I recommend Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist to freaking everyone–not just as awesome YA but as one of the best romances I have ever read. Also, Great Books About Music. God, that book is good.
HALLELUJAH!!!
Unwind,Tunnels,Catching Fire (duh, best book EVER) lockdown,
ZOMG! Well since you asked…Hunger Games is always my fallback, but depending on the person I start with a few John Green recommendations (the older the better), then Rachel Cohn’s Gingerbread series and if I think they can take the awesome that is As Simple As Snow I will put it in their hands. Or Little Brother , but always recommend Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty (that one took my y-card)! And of course the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and yeah I can go on forever…le sign YA, le sigh.
Amen, sister.
Um…some really good ones are The Sky Is Everywhere, Ice, Its Kind of a Funny Story, Twelve…
Oh hallelujah! Yeah, I, uh, pretty much always recommend HG. But I also recommend The Golden Compass. And lately, I’ve been recommending Almost Perfect. But soon, I think, I’m going to recommend The Eternal Ones….
preach it, sistah! i definitely push HG on everyone i know, and the real life stuff like sara zarr and lately john green. but i also really love the princess diaries, and i recommend it to lots of people.
Hunger Games is always my first choice, but closely behind that is Kristin Cashore.
hehe, this is funny to me because you’ve totally loaned me those exact books, Sarah! And I loved all of them! Also King Dork is one of my favorite loaners of yours.
Also, that picture of the evangelist made me laugh so hard. Great google image-ing.
As a recently converted, I have in turn been converting others, like my pal Corky in Chi-town who is now fighting the good fight. I was so tempted to buy Juegos del Hambre, but I can’t reread HG until I read Catching Fire…I know, I can’t believe I haven’t read it right after reading HG, but I am reading some way old school YA…The Three Musketeers. I’ve actually read a lot of olde tymie YA, so I hope that with HG being my only contemporary, you’ll all still accept me.
haha by “olde tymie YA” i thought you meant something like “if this is love, i’ll take spaghetti” by ellen conford (p1983 — no joke, still on my former library’s YA shelves). three musketeers is WAY awesomer!
manders, you know i’m gonna totally steal the “y-card” thing, right? right. and dubs true on “sloppy firsts” cos MARCUS FLUTIE MARRY ME PLEASE.
meghan, i totally read ellen conford! back in ye olden times, when YA consisted of richard peck and s.e. hinton novels, ellen conford was a breath of… well, maybe not fresh, but funny air.
You’ve hit all my favs. Of course HG. Cashore. Love.
But have you kids tried Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer? Made me start stocking things for a while. I’ve loaned that out to many non ya readers that have converted.
I’ve also tried Nancy Werlin, and Rules of Survival as well as The Killer’s Cousin and they are big hits with non YAers. (Not Impossible – nononononono)
It’s kind of hard to pick the first book to give someone. I’m so scared I’ll turn them off for good. Totally happened with a girl at work that I tried to get to read Twilight. Now she won’t touch YA.
I love all you guys’ suggestions and can’t wait to read them myself.
Sally, I LOVE The Three Muskateers! They took part in forming my adolescent mind. I mostly read stuff like that when I was a YA. That and The Scarlet Pimpernel books. They totally formed my unrealistic romantic ideals! Yay! No one could ever measure up to Sir Percy Blakeney. Example:
When he thinks his wife is a traitor, so he hides his true identity from her, even though it kills him, because he loves her SO much, and she begs him not to shut her out, because, hello, she’s innocent, and she loves him too, he’s all cold and acts the fool, and she leaves in tears, and he’s so overcome with his passion for her that he drops to the ground and kisses where she just stood, and then proceeds to kiss the stair railing where her hand just rested….
yeah. anyway….
love the classics!
Oh, also–as I was reminded of today–Hilary Frank. Hilary “Awesome, Dry, Sexy, Truthful, Hardly Known, Deserves-A-Cult-Following” Frank.
Dear world: read Better Than Running At Night. (I Can’t Tell You is good, too. She’s the best writer of college that I know, and I love the college setting like mad. Favorite.)
ellen conford was great! it was just sad to see the crumbling, yellow scholastic book-club edition on the shelves (remember book order day? getting the newsprint sheet and choosing all the books you wanted to order? it was my favorite day ever, except for the day when the books came in).
jenny, have you read lauren willig’s pink carnation series? a great, if light, not-really-sequel to the scarlet pimpernel books (god, i love those books!). it’s kind of like a.s.-byatt’s-possession-lite. very fun.
I was also a HUGE fan of book order day. Clearly.
My go-to recommendations are HG (duh), Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, The Book Thief (for the historical fiction types) by Zukas, and So Yesterday by my personal fave Scott Westerfeld.
Guess I’ll pipe in now with my faves that I pass along to friends…
Hunger Games/Catching Fire obviously. Graceling, though Fire didn’t really cut it for me. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. Unwind and Everlost by Neil Shusterman. And The Book Thief for anyone who would like histrorical and/or WWII stories.
oh, uglies, yes! i could NOT get into so yesterday, lawral. maybe i didn’t give it enough of a chance. jill, glad to hear i’m not alone on fire. i was starting to feel like a total grinch (i liked it, just not as much as i’d hoped to).
You are NOT a grinch Meghan. Or if you are, so am I!
I liked Fire, but thought it was just okay. I didn’t get that breathless exhilarated feeling when I finished it like I do with books that I love. It was just a flat “ok, now I’m done” kind of feeling. I will still read her next one before I even consider giving up on her though. What author doesn’t have 1 or 2 lame books?? (So Yesterday is an example. lol)
the adult version of “book order forms,” i.e. my amazon wish list has now grown by a full page thanks to all of these comments.
crezia, i can’t believe i’ve never read anything by hilary frank. this will be rectified IMMEDIATELY.
The Book Thief, for me. And Hunger Games/CF OBVS. And I like to recommend The Princess Diaries to anyone who’s having a bad day.
Meghan, I’ve never HEARD of these ‘not-sequels’ to the Scarlet Pimpernel! Oh, dear, now I have to look them up…
I think everyone here has mentioned my go to YA books: Hunger Games, Unwind, Graceling, and Life as We Knew It.
Other books that I tend to recommend but don’t have the same universal hooked appeal as the above mentioned are The House of the Scorpion, the Gone series, Before We Were Free, Thirteen Reasons Why, and Fat Kid Rules the World.
If/when I can I recommend My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger. It’s so HAPPY it’s ridiculous and that is why I love it.
candice, anything that is “so happy it’s ridiculous” is something i want to read (not to mention a state of mind i’d like to achieve). just added that book to my list!
Ohhh, My Most Excellent Year was one of my favorite books I read from last year. Such a fun over the top read!