ok, so we all know dystopia’s the new vampire, right? and the new black, and the new harry potter, and the new … oh, screw it. y’all, we also all know dystopia is an awesome genre that’s been around for-like-ever and it’ll really REALLY suck if it gets screwed up now thanks to publishers jumping on the hunger-games bandwagon (not that it’s a terrible place to be. i mean, for a dystopia) because we here LOVE dystopia. i’d like to suggest a few badass dystopian classics  everyone should get their grabby hands on before the publishers ruin the genre by flooding the market and/or finding the stephenie meyer of dystopia out there.

my highly scientific selection criteria included books that were at least kinda old (like, i did/coulda/shoulda read them as a YA) and were books i’ve read. so that’s why i might not have mentioned some truly badass dystopian novels like the chaos walking series, or some book you’ll be dying to recommend/wonder why i left it out (i can’t read everything, you know). see something missing? add it in the comments! bonus points for constructing yr concept of what the stephenie-meyer-of-dystopias book would be like (yeah, yeah, i know she did it already with the host – read it, gagged about the “it’s the woman’s fault she gets the shit beaten out of her by her boyfriend” message in it, over it).

now, in no particular order (other than the random one my scrambled brain spit out, and the order they were listed on goodreads when i searched for “dystopia” to find anything i’d missed), here ya go:

a wrinkle in time by madeline l’engle, published 1962

the whole book’s not a dystopia, but kamazotz was my very first intro to the wonderful world of total mind control and the loss of individuality, where i learned that “Alike and Equal are not the same thing at all.” plus, it introduces the totally swoonworthy couple of meg and calvin, and the crushworthy twins (although they’re not crushworthy until later on, in many waters). AND bonus — math and science are awesome, and awesome for girls!

shade’s children by garth nix, published 1997

i’ve already reviewed this book, but it’s a composite of the dystopian classics “harvest humans for parts/all the adults disappear leaving only children/artificial intelligence a la HAL9000″. and garth nix is just awesome (y’all, for some seriously badass zombie/fantasy shizz, check out the abhorsen trilogy). this is one of those books that’s the one that got away for me — i really REALLY wish i’d read it as a teenager, before the matrix came out and before i read a bunch of other similar, more recently published books. because i’d love to have this one as my reference point, not the other way around.

the handmaid’s tale by margaret atwood, published 1985

not a YA book, but since it’s often studied in school and is just generally awesome, i have to include it. my favorite thing about atwood’s dystopias is they’re so grounded in reality. she takes one crazy thing about our society — here it’s the rise of fundamentalist christian anti-feminist neo-cons (particularly the brainwashed female variety) — and tweaks and twists it to push it to its farthest believable limit, then builds a whole potential future around it. scary? you bet your ass. but whatever you do, don’t let the bastards get you down.

parable of the sower by octavia butler, published 1993

the u.s. is a complete disaster — overrun by disease and major cray cray — and people huddle together in walled neighborhoods, venturing out only in well-armed groups. lauren olamina suffers from “hyperempathy syndrome” and feels the pain of anyone she’s around (for reals, though — this is no bill clinton bullshit). when things go from as awful as you can imagine to even worse, she takes off with a backpack and survival guide (and mad girl scout skills) and ends up starting a new religion. it’s an awesome book (and series), and EVEN AWESOMER? lauren’s black. attention YA publishers: we like reading about non-white heroines. and seeing them on the covers of the books, kthx.

lord of the flies by william golding, published 1954

this one’s a no-brainer, just like the next one on the list, but who can leave out the island of feral boys? and poor piggy? and jack and simon? HEY ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME? I HAVE THE CONCH. thank you.

1984 by george orwell, published 1949

again on the list of school assigned reading, but who hasn’t looked around and thought about big brother when getting yet another fucking privacy settings update from facebook? also awesome — secksin’ saves the day and is the key to freeing yr mind. and no damn talking pigs and horses.

the giver by lois lowry, published 1993

this one’s right up there with a wrinkle in time as one of the first truly mind-blowing books i ever read. i mean, yes, i was probably 10 yrs old so it didn’t take much (oooh, nope, it was published in 1993, so i had to be at least 12!), but still. a world where yr future is decided for you at age 12? *cough* magnet schools *cough*? it’s a classic false utopia rather than a dystopia — seems perfect, but evil lurks under the surface. extra fun fact: cover image came from this crazypants website.

day of the triffids by john wyndham, published 1951

i haven’t actually read this book, and i’m not sure it qualifies as a dystopia, but my husband insisted i include it. apparently it’s the MOST AWESOME BOOK EVER if you’re a 12-yo british boarding school boy (which he’s not anymore, don’t worry). and it’s about an alien invasion that makes everyone blind or insane or something, except for a few people, like john masen, who then has to save the world. bonus factor: audrey II.

what do y’all think? what are your recommendations for rescuing dystopia from the likes of stephenie meyer? what books totally rocked yr 12-yo world (actual or inner 12-yo, of course)?

and for bonus points, watch my favorite dystopian movie of all time — brazil. a world where bureaucracy and totalitarianism and an insane addiction to technology for technology’s sake are all melded together by terry gilliam to create the best nightmare ever, including the most creepy dolls you’ll ever see.

Okay folks, y’all may know our mission here at FYA (besides eating tasty business and drinking cocktails) is YAngelism.  That’s right.  It’s our duty to spread the gospel that it’s not only cool to read YA, but it may just save the world. How is that? (You may ask).

While it’s true that reading YA might not clean up millions of gallons of oil in the gulf, or bring about peace in the middle east (or might it?), read on after the break to hear my thoughts on the importance of YA in our culture, and then share your opinions with us!

In this age of reality tv and trashed-out pop stars, I often wonder what the world is coming to, and who can we, as people, find as a standard to emulate?

Snooki? Dear God, I hope not.

But that got me to thinking.  Really?  Who would you want your kids, or in my case, other people’s kids looking up to?  I mean, what’s out there? Pop Stars who can’t sing without autotune? Mumbling, shoulder slumping actresses? Talented musicians who just can’t get out of their own crazy way? Scandalous athletes? Complete and utter toads?

I don’t want to name names, but for the sake of this very un-biased report, I thought I’d do a little casting call, just so you’d get a good mental picture:

Casting Call:

Taylor Swift as the talentless pop star

Kristen Stewart as the mumbling actress with bad posture

Kanye as the talented but cray-cray

Miley Cyrus as the Toad. Also known as the worst celebrity influence of all time.

(And yes, that is apparently a photo she took of herself and posted on myspace.)  But again, I’m not naming names or anything.  You get the picture, right?

Editor’s note: I don’t know any sports stars names, so I didn’t post a picture of one of them, thinking that even without, I had enough evidence to prove my point.

And my point is this! With YA novels, we get an in depth view of a character’s soul.  We can identify with them.  They are attainable on the page.  We can feel for them on a deeper level than a movie star, because we spend more time with them while reading. We can learn from their mistakes, and we can cheer them through their triumphs.  We will never follow their careers until they burn out in some spectacularly horrendous way (i.e. shaving their heads in public, getting on that wild and wacky drug train, or joining the Church of Scientology).

When I was a youngster, my three heroes were Anne Shirley, Elinor Dashwood and Abigail Adams, and although the latter was a real person in history, she was my hero because I READ ABOUT HER IN A BOOK.  The very nature of reading is such a personal experience; it stimulates the senses and the mind, as opposed to the bombastic nature of most television these days (I’m not knocking tv, I love it, too, but look around you.  Do you see Snookis or Anne Shirleys?).

As a culture, we become what we consume, and all signs point to us becoming a trash-culture.

That is why it is more important than ever to spread the word about YAngelism to your friends, neighbors and postmen!!!!

So readers, who are/were your YA heroes? Who in literature would you like to emulate?

just so you guys know, i’m pretty good at doing weekends. i’m usually eating tasty business and drinking cocktails and convo-ing it up with my friends and basically enjoying the pants out of austin.

but last friday night was much wilder than usual. because guess what i did. GUESS GUESS GUESS. that’s right, i went to my local bookstore, bookpeople (which is totes awesome, btw), and hung out with a mass of extremely hyper teenagers to see OMG JOHN GREEN AND DAVID LEVITHAN OMGG!!!! CRAZYTOWN!!!

seriously, though. it was literally crazytown.

like, that day, i told my boyfriend that i was gonna be there about an hour early, and he replied, “an hour? really?” and i said, “um, actually, that might even be cutting it close.” and I WAS NOT WRONG. in fact, right after i bought my copy of “will grayson, will grayson,” the store ran out of the book!!! what?! i know! i heard the manager say, “wow, we really did not expect this event to be so popular,” and i wanted to say, “hmm, maybe that’s because you UNDERESTIMATED THE POWER OF YA?!!! now embrace this enlightenment and be ignorant no more!” but instead i just went upstairs cos i wanted to get a good seat, which by that point meant the floor. an hour early, you guys. fortunately, i snagged a spot with a good view of the stage as well as the added bonus of proximity to these two girls, upon whom i shamelessly eavesdropped:

seriously, teenage book nerds are THE CUTEST THING EVER. like, i heart them so much, but i’m also kind of jealous of them, cos back when i was a teenage book nerd, we didn’t have awesome YA authors doing book tours and even if we did, i would’ve had to walk barefoot through three feet of snow in houston to get there! anyway, these two whippersnappers spent the next 60 minutes squeeing over “will grayson” and showing each other notes in their friendship notebook OMG FRIENDSHIP NOTEBOOK!!!!! i’m seriously considering mailing a college rule notebook to the other FYA girls so we can pass it back and forth and write in sparkly glitter pens and gossip about fictional boys. THE INTERNET IS DEAD TO ME.

in addition to creepily listening to those girls, i watched the crowd grow bigger…

and BIGGER!!!

and look to my left!

there were tons of people behind me too but the one time i tried to take a picture, the mom behind me gave me a weird look so i stopped. oh yeah did i mention all of the unsung hero parents that were there?!! seriously, i cannot remember the last time i attended an event where the majority of the audience had to be driven by their parents. it was awesome. i kind of wanted to ask one of the moms to drive me home just for minivan kicks.

as you can see, the nerdfighters were out in full force, and they completely schooled me in how to be a swimfan. like, some of them had t-shirts with JOHN GREEN’S FACE ON IT. the last time i was surrounded by that many face-on-a-t-shirts, it was at an ‘n sync concert.

speaking of concerts, check out THE CROWD GOING WILD when john and david finally stepped on to the stage:

john kept making jokes about being a rock star (at one point, he mentioned pete townsend and the girl next to me whispered, “who’s that?” ouch! the A in YA just poked me), but it’s true! he and david are TOTALLY ROCK STARS!!! i mean, look how cute they are, posing for pictures:

i want to HUG THEM IMMEDIATELY! and then buy them a beer.

cos, seriously, listening to them talk about writing and YA just made me even more of a swimfan, aka i really do want to be their bff and go on road trips with them and make snarky comments about bad movies and talk about cool bands (btw, in case you’re wondering, john’s fave band is the mountain goats, and david loves the national. i know this cos someone asked about during the Q&A, not cos i read it in bop magazine. although i wish bop still existed and featured YA authors because that would be the greatest development in the history of publishing).

further loosening my stalker inhibitions is the fact that “will grayson, will grayson” is a freaking fantastic book. it’s hands down my favorite novel from BOTH authors, and, when i publish my review later this week, it will immediately be filed under Required Reading.

check out john and david reading a few scenes from it (along with a local YA author whose name i can’t remember, sorry lady!):

you may not realize this yet, but tiny cooper is about to be yr favorite YA character EVER. and also, the gayest.

here’s a shorter scene involving david’s will grayson and his online boyfriend, issac, where they discuss their clever take on internet sexy chat:

i will never think of my clavicle in the same way again.

in addition to highly entertaining readings from the book, john and david took a lot of questions from the audience, some of which were ULTRA swimfan-y (example: “did you realize that margo roth spiegelman‘s initials spell ‘mrs’ and was this a deliberate choice on yr part to be ironic since she fears marriage?” at this point, even i, a total book nerd, wanted to go into full on jock mode and yell, “SHUT UP DORKFACE!”). thankfully, there were some excellent questions as well, and my favorite was about david’s generous use of profanity and his motives behind it. basically, he said that yes, part of it is due to the fact that teenagers actually DO cuss (what? you can’t be serious!), but the other part is that profanity obvs changes the emotion in a statement, i.e. the difference between, “you are so wrong” and “you are so fucking wrong.” he then got on his soapbox (his words, not mine) and launched into an AWESOME mini-lesson on the history of bad words and the loaded meaning, often sexist and/or homophobic, behind them. i totally wanted to pump my fist like, a thousand times, esp. when he threw out the c-word and the parents behind me like GASPED OUT LOUD. it was absolutely brilliant, not to mention the perfect example of how good YA can truly broaden the horizons of its reader. DAVID I LOVE YOU AND YR POTTY MOUTH!!!!

i also squeed when someone asked him why he wrote his will grayson with no capitalization and he replied, “it just fit the way the character felt. like, i think a lot of us feel very lower case inside.” awww dubs true!!!

anyway, the hour simply flew by on the wings of amazingess, and then it was time to line up for the book signing! which immediately turned into a clustercuss! we’re talking justin bieber at the mall, minus personal injuries. eventually, the bookpeople staff herded us into a semblance of a line, which wound around the entire second floor. i had to document it with video so i could prove how unsane it was:

i know, RIGHT?!!! i didn’t even see lines this long at sxsw this year! gah! and even though i was STARVING, i decided to wait it out, because that’s how much of a swimfan i had become (and when something is more of a priority than my hunger, that’s like, basically a declaration of eternal love). fortunately, the line moved pretty quickly, so i ended up only waiting about 45 minutes. HA HA ONLY 45 MINUTES. WTF.

for part of the time, i had a good view of the signing table, so i got to enjoy the Acts of Swimfandom that occurred. my favorite was a guy with a video camera who got john to ask his gf to go to prom with him (the video camera holder, not actually john green. duh he’s married!). HOW CUTE IS THAT?!!!!!!

it also helped that i made friends with maggie, the girl behind me. we gushed about sarah dessen and you guys it was SO NICE to just geek out with a random stranger about YA! that never happens! at least, in person!

her mom took that picture for us. because she is awesome. even awesomer? they drove in from DALLAS! and even AWESOMER-ER?! maggie’s mom took my picture when i was meeting john and david!! omg!!! MILESTONE MOMENT!!! and look at how entertaining and charming john finds me to be!

at that exact moment, i was telling them about FYA and how we make drinks based on our fave books/characters and how the will grayson drink is going to be called… well, maybe i’ll save that little tidbit for my review. but trust me, you will make that face as well when you read the name.

so yeah, basically david and john are totally my bffs now. hello THEY SIGNED MY BOOK. AND INCLUDED MY NAME. if that’s not a sign of bosom buddies, i don’t know what is.

oh wait, i do know. it’s… A BOTTLE OF BOONE’S FARM!

yeah, that’s a picture of all of the presents that fans brought for john, and my inner FYAer was SO PROUD of whoever bought him strawberry fields because GREATEST GIFT EVER. also, it’s a reference to “looking for alaska.” i mean, in case you aren’t enough of a fan to know that.

oh SNAP! i think i just made aced my swimfan exam.

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!