Tag: reading

Posted in Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Reading

Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Part 7

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Today I have a few more books I loved in high school to reminisce about (or “about which to reminisce” if we’re going to be grammar sticklers).

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

This book was one of the books we read as a class in, I believe, AP English my senior year. I might have been one of the few who enjoyed it! I can’t explain why the book connected with me, although looking back, I wonder if it was the start of my love for classic English literature that continued in college with the likes of Jane Austen and the Brontës. (And talk about loving “classic” English literature–I did my honors college thesis on Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, arguing it was the first “true novel.” A 15th century work, entirely in Middle English; it was such a blast to read and analyze.) I was so determined to write a good term paper on this book, I even went to a nearby college library for sources. *gasp* We had the Internet, but it wasn’t as comprehensive as it is today, and books always make for more legitimate resources.

The Mayor of Casterbridge begins with a drunkard named Michael Henchard at a tavern selling his wife and baby daughter for a small amount of money to a lonely sailor who offers to buy them off of him. (She’s sitting right there, by the way!) Obviously, Susan isn’t too happy with her husband, but she’s also sick enough of the man (they were arguing, which is why the sailor thought he’d better appreciate her) that she goes along with it. When Henchard recovers, he finds his wife and child gone.

Years pass, and Henchard has become a new man who’s risen through the ranks in his small town of Casterbridge and is now the mayor. But his drunken actions of eighteen years prior still haunts him, and he’s worried people will find out what kind of man he once was. Lo and behold, who should move into town than a sailor’s widow and her young maiden daughter? The book is not only about keeping secrets–and untangling the truth about whether or not Henchard and Susan are still married, at least on paper–but Henchard’s desire to form a fatherly relationship with his daughter without revealing his past.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams

Unless my memories are muddled (which wouldn’t surprise me after more than a decade), I think the first The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was on the “choose your second summer reading book” list for my senior AP English class. I wound up being an English major in college (after a brief detour), and I’m glad I had a foundation in so many of the classics, but admittedly, I only truly enjoyed maybe one in three of the books I “had to” read. When I chose this book for required reading, it was a welcoming break! This book is so funny. I read it quickly and went out and bought this huge five-book collection of the whole “trilogy” (as far as what Adams penned anyway).

It’s been a while since I read it (although I remember the movie that came out a few years ago), but even if it was fresh in my mind, I’m not sure I could fully explain it. Suffice to say it follows an ordinary man on an intergalactic adventure after his home… and the whole planet… is destroyed for a hyperspace bypass. Anyone who talks a lot about towels or tells you that the answer to life is 42, and that what you actually ought to want to know is the question to life, the universe and everything, has read this book!

During the rest of that school year, we had to continue reading books outside of what was required for class discussion, and they had to be “quality” books approved by the teacher. (Some of my other interests wouldn’t fly!) So for a while I got away with reading the sequels (the first one was on the reading list, after all!) until my teacher told me it was time to branch out and read something else. I don’t think I finished all five books, and I’m not even sure where I left off. But still, the first was definitely worth the ride!

And no, I didn’t realize that today’s the anniversary of the book’s publishing when I sat down to write this.

Posted in Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Geek Out, Reading

Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Part 6

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Sorry I haven’t been posting as often as I’d like; I’ve been busy in the writing cave, working on exciting things! Today I felt like reminiscing about some more of my favorite reads from high school.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

This was another required reading in high school (I think my senior AP English class? I’m not sure…) that I took to. (I have an honors degree in English literature and I was still bored by half the books I had to read for school, bad me! But I read them, analyzed them and all those good things.) It’s about a young American man, David, who spends time in Europe as sort of a last hurrah before getting married to his girlfriend. While he’s there, he’s pretty unsure he even wants to get married… It turns out, we eventually discover, it’s because he’s gay but isn’t fully ready to admit it.

After quite a while abroad failing to find himself, David meets Giovanni, a bartender in a gay bar. They fall in love, and David moves into “Giovanni’s room.” However, David has still not come to terms with himself and broken it off with his fiancee… And a dark act soon threatens their relationship.

It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, so I don’t remember the details, but I do remember being swept up in the narrative, particularly the beautiful, desperate romance, and crying toward the end, I felt so bad for the characters. I went on to recommend the book to a few friends at different schools, and they loved it too. This is a very poor analogy for a piece of classic literature written in the 1950s, but I felt at the time it had a very “anime” feel to the story (and my 17-years-and-counting love of anime was certainly strong in high school), which is perhaps why my friends and I enjoyed it. I’d love to see an anime adaption someday, but that’s never going to happen!

Star Wars: Heir to to the Empire trilogy by Timothy Zahn

In high school and late middle school, I was obsessed with Star Wars. I’d seen bits and pieces of it here and there before (I remember having a fondness for Jabba as a kid for some reason), but I didn’t properly sit down to watch them from start to finish until the 20th anniversary theatrical re-release in 1997… And I went nuts. I saw each of the original trilogy three times in theaters over the next few months (so nine visits for SW), I wore SW shirts every day I could to school (when we were allowed to stop wearing uniforms), I so blindly defended anything to do with SW that I saw The Phantom Menace SEVEN TIMES in theaters. (Ha ha, eight if you count this year’s 3D re-relase. Yes, I saw it, despite disliking 3D movies… I still watch the Clone Wars TV series, too, which my boyfriend makes fun of as being one long series of senate meetings, despite being a show for kids… It’s mostly true. But where else would you get the insane, flesh-eating torso of Darth Maul melded onto a robotic spider?) Attack of the Clones kind of finally made me see that the prequels lack what made the originals great (yes, I still dislike II more than I; maybe it’s the crappy romance… Oh, by the way, I still saw it twice in theaters despite that!), although I’m all right with Revenge of the Sith, disappointing that the dialogue and acting may be at times.

But anyway, back in high school, I was still in high SW gear. So that meant getting my hands on SW in any form, and I discovered the rich novel universe, which told what happened to the characters over the next few decades. (I wonder how far they’ve gotten now? Seriously, I was reading through until some of Han and Leia’s kids–yes, they have three, boy and girl twins and another son–had kids of their own, and Leia was dealing with grey hair and menopause…) There were quite a few of the novels I really liked (and some that bored me a bit), but the “Thrawn trilogy” was my favorite.

Set about five years after Return of the Jedi, these books center around the heroes of the New Republic dealing with the last remnants of the Empire. (They didn’t all just die when their leader blew up, after all.) Strangely, the Empire is led by an alien–bizarre considering Palpatine was an alien-cist (? racist against aliens?)–but he was that good at what he did; he made it to Grand Admiral even when Palpatine was alive, and was the highest-ranking leader left. Thrawn. The well-mannered, harsh blue-skinned guy with black hair in a white uniform… After Darth Vader, he’s just the perfect SW villain to me.

The books are also notable for introducing Mara Jade, a secret assassin strong with the Force called “the Emperor’s Hand” (She’s also so good, she got the job–Palpatine was also a misogynist after all–all those white human men in high ranks…) who’s out to fulfill her final mission from her master: kill Luke Skywalker. I loved Mara Jade–a strong, likeable female villain! I tend to like villains in fiction in the first place, though…–and all the fights she had with Luke… And readers did, too. It took quite some time, and she had to move beyond her dark past, Luke had to have another fling or two, but I’ll tell you a huge spoiler: Mara Jade Skywalker. Enough said!

There are some funny things in the books now, too. The details are vague (I read them more than once, but it’s been a while), but since they pre-date the prequels by eight years (I believe they may have been the first official books that took place after RotJ? Later books went back and bridged the five-year gap, though–Leia and Han already have their older two kids in these books for one!), the “Clone Wars” was still misunderstood and I think a crucial part of the book involved them stumbling upon a random cloning facility and there being clones of Jedi Masters… Oops. I’m sure they shoehorn that in there somehow, though.

Posted in Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Reading

Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Part 5

Posted on by Amy McNulty

I apologize for neglecting my blog a bit lately; I’ve been on a roll creatively and am trying to get one of the WIPs’ first draft done within the next few weeks, if possible. But I thought I’d stop by and talk about a few more books I loved in high school.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

This was another required reading, I think for my AP English course. I remember that we strangely got to take TWO WEEKS out of regular class to watch the miniseries during school, too. (And that actually our history teacher of all people was vying to be allowed to show it in her class instead, but the English teacher won out since we could actually read and discuss the book…) It wasn’t this welcome break that made me love it, though, although I loved the Jeremy Irons adaptation for the most part; it was one of my first forays into period fiction (I didn’t grow to love Austen and the Brontes until college and post-college… Granted, those are much earlier periods, but still…), and I loved the characters, and the journey the protagonist goes on, although I remember not really being too happy with the ending for personal reasons. But not all books end the way you want them to.

The story follows Oxford student Charles Ryder first through his close (close, like really close!) relationship with a spoiled, haughty, carefree rich kid, Sebastian Flyte. Sebastian is a jerk, but his laissez-faire attitude is of course masking deeper problems, and Charles begins to see another side of his friend-maybe-lover. The two part, Sebastian off to drink himself into ruin, and Charles entering into an unhappy marriage. The latter half of the book features a middle aged Charles returning to Sebastian’s family home (which is named Brideshead, thus “revisited”…) and becoming closer friends with Sebastian’s sister Julia, who’s also in an unhappy marriage. The two become lovers on the cusp of World War II and hope to one day wed…

That’s just the bare bones of the plot. There’s also an important theme about faith that resonated with me and led to the aforementioned ending I wasn’t sure was what I expected or wanted for the character, but that’s just me. It’s still a great read.

X-Men: Mutant Empire Trilogy by Christopher Golden

Not every book I read and loved in high school could pass for required school reading, of course. When I was 11 or 12, my sister showed me the ’90s Fox X-Men cartoon and I joined in her in her obsession for that soap-opera-with-superpowers that is the X-Men franchise, which opened the gate to my overall love for superhero comics, movies and cartoons that’s still with me today. (An aside: The ’90s animated Batman is THE best version of The Dark Knight, I swear!) Part of the way I got my superhero fix between waiting for the latest issues and episodes was reading a bunch of Marvel superhero books coming out at the time. I loved a number of them, but the X-Men: Mutant Empire trilogy was my favorite, hands-down, and I’ve re-read them a few times since I first read them as a teen.

These books follow the X-Men at what was the height of the series to me, the Blue and Gold Teams in the ’90s. Cyclops’ Blue Team was off in space helping his father space-pirate Corsair deal with some intergalactic problems (meh, my least favorite part of the trilogy, but Cyclops has always bugged me…) and Storm’s Gold Team was dealing with Magneto’s takeover of Manhattan to serve as a home for mutants. Magneto managed to reconfigure Sentinel robots to attack humans instead of mutants, so only mutants could get in on the ground and take him out. This was a much more tangible kind of crisis against Magneto versus what I’d seen in the comics or cartoon, with the made-up island of Genosha or Asteroid M acting as Magneto’s havens.

By the way, I was reading these books when an English teacher asked what I was reading in my free time, to “prove” I was an avid reader… Which didn’t score me too many brownie points! She didn’t know what I was talking about, so I had to explain that I read a lot of franchise books like Star Wars books (at the time–haven’t touched those in over a decade)… At least she’d heard of that! Ah, well, read what you love, I say!

Posted in Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Reading

Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Part 3

Posted on by Amy McNulty

A Wrinkle in Time (and the rest of the Time Quintet) by Madeleine L’Engle

I have to admit that I never read The Chronicles of Narnia books until my twenties. (It was the first The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe movie that finally did it. I’d seen the animated movie and even a community theater production as a child, but I think I was too afraid of the witch to turn to the books.) My trippy but awesome fantasy for kids with apparently Christian themes that I missed at the time was L’Engle’s Time Quintet.

Whenever my family went on road trips when I was growing up, my parents softened my distaste for long car rides and built up excitement for my sister and me with a little “gift basket” of things to keep us entertained. Since I was the voracious reader, I got all of the books. A Wrinkle in Time was given to me on one such occasion, and I remember devouring it quickly over the next few days and asking to be taken to a bookstore while still on vacation, so I could pick up the next book!

Despite this, I have to admit that my memory of what happens in these books is fuzzy. Even though I took time out from studying for my college exams to watch the TV movie adaptation in 2004 (which I think I thought was okay), I still can’t remember much. I do remember this, though: it features a strong, young female protagonist on an epic, science fiction/fantasy adventure. That was pretty rare for me to find at the time. I also think that Many Waters was one of my favorites of the series. Something about the twins being older and traversing a desert land… I really ought to re-read more of my childhood favorites! (Too bad my to-read list is endless at the moment.)

Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voight

Not every book I read in middle or high school was part of a series. (Although you wouldn’t know that from the books I’ve covered in these blog posts so far!) Although I didn’t remember all of the details of this book (that’s what summaries are for!), I remembered I really liked it.

The name of this book is fun to say! However, the book is anything but fun because poor Izzy is “willy-nilly” when her life is turned upside down. Izzy, a popular high school cheerleader, makes a few bad choices and winds up missing a leg after getting into a car with a drunk driver. Not only does she go through a lot of powerful emotions dealing with her disability and physical therapy, but she discovers that everyone treats her differently, too. She can’t go back to being that popular cheerleader. She doesn’t even know if she wants to. So she learns what real friendship is all about.

I remember thinking the book had a lot of powerful images. A scene where Izzy takes a bath after she’s let out of the hospital and just stares at her amputated leg as reality sinks in still sticks with me. And it showed a “popular girl” character with depth! Popular girls aren’t the usual type of character I enjoyed reading (Sweet Valley excepting, but there were geeks in that, too), yet here, she was entirely compelling.

I read this for school and I remember my friends really loved it, too. We had to do a sketch of a scene for class, and I got to play Izzy (sitting on one leg). We borrowed the school nurse’s wheelchair with her permission (glad no one needed it while I was in class!), and my friends pushed me in it all the way back to class. Several people stopped us to ask me if I was okay… Oops!

Posted in Reading, Sweet Valley Confidential

The Sweet Life 1 and 2 Reviews

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Today’s the release of the first two e-book novellas in this summer’s The Sweet Life, the sequel to last year’s Sweet Valley Confidential. Let me point out that I don’t even have an e-reader (yet!) and I was still grateful to get my paws on these novellas for review, which I read on my laptop.

However, I have to first say that I’ve yet to read the first SVC book (I actually couldn’t believe it’s been out for over a year and I still haven’t gotten around to it; I hope to rectify that soon, but my to-read list is never-ending!) and wow, talk about some unexpected surprises that I think I missed out on in that first book. If you’re like me and have yet to read the first SVC book and absolutely don’t want to know any spoilers about it, don’t read on. However, I can attest that jumping straight into the novellas isn’t a problem. I also imagine if you enjoyed the first book, it’s a no-brainer that you’ll enjoy the novellas.

Read excerpts, hear audio and buy the e-books here.

Novella 1: The Sweet Life

Okay, I haven’t touched anything Sweet Valley in about a decade and a half. Admittedly, characters and the who’s-dating-who are fuzzy in my mind. When I started reading, I knew only one thing was wrong: Jessica was married to Todd! Apparently it caused a huge blow-out between the girls in the first SVC book. (Well, Elizabeth was dating Tom when I last read the SVU books, so I’d actually long since thought of her and Todd as being over, but apparently that wasn’t the case, says some Wikis.) Oh, but married life isn’t going so great. They have a two-year-old now, but they’ve been separated five months. There’s no such thing as happy ever in drama-filled Sweet Valley! Still, the romantic tension between the two is palatable, and I’m actually hoping things will work out.

It dawned on me only after I looked up who Bruce was how odd it was for him to be living with Elizabeth. But the idea of the two of them together grew on me, which is why I felt the drama central to the slowly-emerging strain on their relationship intriguing.

I think both Jessica and Elizabeth grown up are exactly how I pictured them: Jessica intensely focused on her glamorous job (a PR job that shows she’s not as dumb as her popular reputation sometimes made her out to be), which she pulls off in style (literally), and Elizabeth as an investigative journalist who knows precisely how to follow every lead to get the story she needs—even when that story proves to be pretty personal.

I felt a little disappointed with Jessica’s relationship with her son on the page. It’s great that she’s the first of the twins to be a mom (especially considering Elizabeth was always the more motherly type), and I agree with her that she should be free to focus on her career as well as motherhood (and I wasn’t too happy to read that Todd sort of condemned her for it), but little Jake is almost like a prop, a cute little thing in the background of crazy relationship drama happening left and right. Even when Jessica is home, he spends a lot of time with his nanny instead. It’s clear the twins are both crazy about the boy when they do interact with him, but he hasn’t seemed to have made much of a dent in Jessica’s lifestyle.

The subplot I liked the least was Lila’s appearance on a reality TV show about rich housewives, but maybe just because I can’t stand that kind of TV show myself. At the same time, I liked the tongue-in-cheek take on each woman on the show assuming a “role” (like “the bitch”)—and I liked how Lila’s focus on her “role” led her to be in hot water. Still, it felt out of place. I was left at the end of the first novella hoping that her subplot would become more important to the plot of the e-series as a whole. Then again, maybe that’s how the SVH subplots always were—their own thing—I honestly don’t remember…

Novella 2: The Sweet Life: Lies & Omissions

Another fast-paced addition to the unraveling story and my favorite of the two. Some of my same concerns with the first e-book apply here (mostly Jessica’s son being a prop), but for the most part, I felt more drawn into the story and didn’t even feel as out of place in Lila’s subplot this time. I loved Elizabeth’s inner conflict, and I’m almost as conflicted as she is.

And I remembered something from my days of reading SVH/SVU: I don’t like Todd! He’s supposed to be goody-goody, but he has some warped points of view, and he’s quick to anger and jealousy. Then again, I still think Jessica is better suited to him than Elizabeth, since she’s more likely to stand up for herself… But she doesn’t this time around. (For sort of a good reason. I’m sure that will change before they can actually be happy together.) It’s all coming back to me… I think I remember hating Todd and Elizabeth together because Todd was such a “nice” jerk. I preferred reading about someone like Bruce, who was at least open about being a jerk back in the day!

One drawback was that in telling the story from a different character’s perspective each chapter, Bruce inevitably gets a turn and the issue of his innocence or guilt when it comes to the accusations he’s facing is pretty clear. We don’t know how or why this situation is occurring, but we do know whether or not Bruce knowingly committed a crime. That’s kind of a shame because, like Elizabeth, I’d been full of doubt, and I’d have loved to have that drawn out some more. The end of the novella ensures that the drama will be drawn out, but the reader will know the entire time whether or not Bruce is innocent, and that sort of kills our empathy with Elizabeth’s confusion.

More to Come

The third novella, The Sweet Life: Too Many Doubts, comes out July 22nd. It’s good that the wait isn’t too long because they definitely feel like parts of a whole, and I’m eager to see where the intertwining stories go from here. They’re fun, really fast reads, and certainly worth $2 a pop, but be aware that to get the full story, you’ll need all six novellas. (And there is a printed version of all six-in-one coming out in October.)

I’m not sure if anyone but the nostalgic fan would be eager to pick them up, but maybe that’s not the case. It is a bit reminiscent of some of the chick lit I’ve read with a more soap opera-like flavor—but I haven’t read much chick lit, to be honest. I think if younger readers are looking for an introduction to the series, they should start where it all began with Sweet Valley High. The characters’ thirty-something problems likely won’t be that appealing to the average teen, unless, like the rest of us, they’re drawn to these e-books simply because they’re curious to know where these characters wind up long after they leave the drama of high school behind them. The answer? The drama of glamorous, and I do mean glamorous, fictional style California adult life. And we wouldn’t dream of it any other way!

Posted in Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Reading, Sweet Valley Confidential

Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Part 2

Posted on by Amy McNulty

My Big Sweet Valley News!

Since I started this series just last week, I have some exciting news to announce! I was contacted by the PR team for Sweet Valley Confidential, the re-launch of the Sweet Valley franchise, to see if I’d be interested in reviewing the brand new The Sweet Life novella ebooks coming out this summer. Since I’d been meaning to check out the re-launch for some time now, in a sort of nod to my childhood self, this is the perfect excuse to see what the Wakefield twins are up to now that we’re all about 30. Wow. I feel like I won some sweepstakes I didn’t know I even entered! Who knew nostalgic posts about books I loved as a kid could prove so worthwhile?

Watch for reviews in the upcoming weeks, then! And be sure to check out the books yourself if you were a fan as a kid like me.

And speaking of sweepstakes I didn’t even know I entered, this brings me to the first series I’ll talk about loving in middle school today:

The Baby-sitters Club by Ann M. Martin (and ghostwriters… What, I didn’t even realize a man wrote over 40 of them!)

The Baby-sitters Club was my pre-Sweet Valley obsession, which actually began when I was in elementary school. Unlike with Sweet Valley, I started with the younger reader spin-off books, Baby-Sitters Little Sister. (I’m looking at Wikipedia here for all of the odd grammatical choices in the titles, by the way!) And it was this book series that must have prompted me to enter a fan contest through the publisher, although I don’t remember doing so. I do remember that in autumn of one year, I got a huge box from Scholastic saying I had won the “Birthday of the Month” honors or something of the sort for fans… But my birthday was in April. In the included letter, they explained an oversight had resulted in the delay. My prize, though, was worth the wait: box sets of the entire Baby-Sitters Little Sister series out thus far, in addition to an autographed copy of the first book in the series. (Some of that may have been a bonus for the delay, if I recall.) Wow! The package definitely made my belated-by-half-a-year birthday!

I don’t remember precisely when I “graduated” to The Baby-sitters Club, but I was definitely into it by 5th grade, as I remember reading one of the books for a book marathon after school. I loved every girl in the series—whether because I felt similar to them (Mary Anne’s shyness, Kristy’s tomboyishness, Mallory’s geekiness, Stacey dealing with a medical condition) or because I thought they were radical and fun to read about (Claudia, Dawn and Jessi all had confidence and style). I actually never babysat a day in my life (unless you count helping a grandparent babysit a younger cousin… But on second thought, I was actually being babysat, too!), but I doubt it could have lived up to the adventures these girls had. I loved the (albeit short) TV series so much I could practically quote it. I enjoyed the movie version, too, but maybe not as much. I stopped reading sometime in middle school, but I have to admit I picked up the last book in 2000, despite being a senior in high school by then, because I never really stop loving the things I loved in my childhood!

I love all of that crazy ’80s and ‘90s fashion and lifestyle, too. I specifically remember that the girls met in Claudia’s room because she was the only one with her own phone line. Her own household phone line! It was a big deal. I imagine the updated version (which apparently exists? I did not know this) would have all of the girls with cell phones…

Goosebumps by R.L. Stine

Goosebumps. If you know me, you’d know how odd it is that I was ever into a horror series, however tame it might be. I avoid horror movies because I don’t like being scared or grossed out, thank you very much. I only recently sat down to watch the A Nightmare on Elm Street series and discovered they were pretty awesome (the second movie excepting…) and not terrifyingly scary like I was afraid they’d be. But tell that to my middle school self who couldn’t even look at Freddy Krueger without shuddering or who was haunted by a billboard of Chucky she saw at night while on a trip to New York in the ‘80s, and it’s a wonder I ever gave Goosebumps a chance at all.

The first one I picked up was Attack of the Mutant because the premise (it featured a comic book fan and a supervillain who comes to life) was right up my comic book-loving alley. I remember writing in my diary how surprised I was that I read a “scary” book without being too scared, as if this were something to document for perpetuity. (It wasn’t at all scary, now that I think about it. Hardly worth congratulating myself over!) I liked it enough to go back and pick up earlier books, and I spent a year or two reading the books in the series that struck my fancy. I particularly liked the Choose Your Own Adventure-style ones called Give Yourself Goosebumps. (And I admit. I’d “cheat” and go back and choose a better ending!) My love for the series led me to watch Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon back in the day, and yes, I watched some of the Goosebumps series too. (They did Attack of the Mutant! It was so cheesy…) I never really “graduated” to more sophisticated horror books, but the thrills and chills I got from these tame versions were just enough for childhood me.

Were any of you fans of Goosebumps or The Baby-sitters Club?

Posted in Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Reading

Books I Loved in Middle/High School, Part 1

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Since I’m an aspiring YA (and maybe MG) author, I want to cover some of the books I loved when I was in middle school or high school. (We’re looking at the 1990s here for the most part.) The list would be far too long to cover in one post, so how about a couple of books per entry, with updates from time to time?

Perhaps these books won’t be among the most well-known books in the modern genre. I like those, too. But so many of my favorite YA and MG books were books I read when I was a bit out of the intended targeted audience age range. I didn’t give Harry Potter a chance until I was 19. I know A Series of Unfortunate Events is aimed at middle school kids, but I was cracking up over Lemony Snicket’s strange prose and stranger plots while in college.

Please comment with your favorite MG and YA books from when you were actually in middle and high school!

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander


I have school to thank for this one. One of the optional summer reading books in 5th or 6th grade was The Black Cauldron. Yes, that’s the second and not the first book of the series. My guess is the Disney animated version—as virtually unknown as that movie was even by the 1990s—being named The Black Cauldron even despite combining books one and two was the reason the teachers chose that book. It took particularly dedicated readers to opt to read it for their assignment because you really ought to have read The Book of Three first, which meant another book to read. (And yes, at the urging of several of us, the school eventually recommended that one rather than the second book in the series.)

Well, skip having to read one extra book. I was hooked and I read all five books that summer. (In addition to whatever other summer reading book I had to read for school—whatever it was, you can tell it didn’t much impress me.) I can’t remember, but I think these books were responsible for my love of fantasy thereafter. I know one of my dear friends at school also got immersed in them, and we loved dwelling in fantasy worlds, even co-writing a little journal of letters between two medieval maidens. (Which was an assignment for school, but we had a blast!) I wrote a hilarious fantasy story I thought was the shiznit that I entered in some kids’ writing contest. I didn’t win. Perhaps because it’s incredibly hilarious but actually was intended to be taken quite seriously. (I have half a mind to share it here someday. I can’t read it with a straight face.) I have to mention that it involved a wizard named “Googan” (initially named “Hoover”), a hero named “Dwycin” (pronounced with a hard “c,” which no one seemed to know until I told them!) and a wonderfully stereotypical villain who so graciously consented to fight the hero in a “non-magical fight” so things would be fair for the both of them. He lost.

I re-read The Chronicles of Prydain a few years ago, and I still loved them, even if I didn’t have the same passion for them that I did as a child. I loved how the characters evolved over the course of the series, and I was surprised to find that my least favorite in the series as a child (Taran Wanderer) was one of my favorites as an adult. The villains still felt actually scary and threatening. (The Disney adaptation still leads much to be desired, even if I bought the DVD nonetheless. For starters, when a character is known for being “of the red-gold hair,” you don’t make her a total blonde…)

Sweet Valley High/Sweet Valley University by Francine Pascal (/team of ghostwriters)

My best friends in middle and high school were named Jessica and Elizabeth, and both were blondes. And no, this isn’t some snarky comment about how the SVH twins were my best friends, I’m actually serious. I just thought it was a weird coincidence at the time. (That, and they had a friend named Amy—that’s me! I wasn’t blonde, shallow or boy-crazy, though…) My life in high school was nothing like SVH, and my Jess was a million times sweeter than the one in the books. The book Elizabeth was pretty nice and sweet, though, just like the Liz I knew.

I’m not sure why I found these books so compelling in middle school. I think a friend showed me one in the school library that had a “naughty” bit we found so salacious, I had to pick the books up. (I think it was simply a dating couple kissing, but you know, we were 10…) Over the course of a few years, I think I read every SVH and SVU book out there (at the ripe age of 10, I felt so much more mature than those who would read Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley Kids, so I never got into those) and I felt a special attraction to the side books in which really weird things happened. (I was teased when caught with Return of the Evil Twin before class, but I actually managed to grab the girl’s attention when I explained that the book featured the long-lost identical twin of a homicidal maniac teen girl who just happened to be a dead-ringer for Elizabeth and Jessica in the first place—all she needed to do was dye her hair blonde and even the girls’ family was fooled!—who had intended to secretly kill Elizabeth and take over her life and was presumed dead, but actually wasn’t dead, you see, and now wanted her twin sister to help her take over both twins’ lives… Only now they were arguing over who got to be more popular Jessica for some reason.)

I don’t know what it was about these books: a glamorous take on school life (but I’d rather have that crazy drama in my imagination than in real life), a TV show tie-in I enjoyed, or just how they sucked me in from start to end, but I was a SVH addict for a number of years in middle school. I once impressed the whole family by reading a 400-page one in a single day. My mom literally bragged about it to my extended family! (I’ve read books of length in a day since to fewer accolades, of course, but this was the first time.)

Posted in Geek Out, Reading

Reading the Source Material: Too Much for the Mainstream?

Posted on by Amy McNulty

“Most people just don’t care that much, Amy….”

I heard that from my boyfriend the other day. No, we weren’t discussing anything of import at the time (although the quote sadly applies to those topics, too). I was in the middle of another ranting geek fit that my boyfriend puts up with. (He’s a geek, too, but since I’m the one who drags him to conventions, and I have a love for superhero comics that he simply has never shared, perhaps I flatter myself to be slightly more geeky.) The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones season two had aired, and I was telling him about some of the reactions I read online. Many people feared something had happened to a beloved character… And I knew almost as soon as I became a fan of the series what that character’s entire future (thus far) would be. Hadn’t they read the books? Or at least Googled info? It’s been online probably since the days of dial-up. I didn’t even start watching Game of Thrones until this past March, and I didn’t pick up the books until shortly thereafter. I wasn’t one of the fans who knew for years and years, but still, once I was interested enough in the series, I was dying to know more, and I devoured almost anything I could find on the topic.

I had a similar geek fit earlier this year towards the end of the second season of The Walking Dead. My own friends were the culprit this time, shocked and confounded by what happened on the screen! Meanwhile, almost as soon as I liked the TV series (a year later than most), I picked up all of the graphic novels and devoured them in a matter of a week. True, the series differentiates quite a lot from the original source material, but the particular event in question is something I braced for from the start… Seeing as how it happened almost at the start in the comics.

It could simply be a matter of time, and the fact that when you earn some free time, it’s far easier to veg out in front of a screen that does all of the entertaining for you. Sometimes going back to the source material is a pretty big commitment. (I’m now week six-ish into my vow to read all of A Song of Ice and Fire, and I’m only about 3/4 through the second book… By the way, I bet you didn’t know that’s what the Game of Thrones series is actually called, if you’re among those not interested in the source material!) Other people want to be surprised as they watch the movie/series, and they consider the originals sources of “spoilers.” (Me, on the other hand–I’ll look up spoilers before I even get that far in the reading, although I am getting better at fighting that urge…) I get it, I get that I’m probably just too much of a geek, but I can’t imagine loving a movie or a series, finding out it’s based on books, comics or even a video game, and not wanting to immerse myself further!

…And yes, I know, I probably just need to chill.

Do you read the book/comic first or are you inspired to read something after seeing an on-screen adaptation? Do you ever love a movie or TV show, learn that there are source materials and just not have the urge to check out more? (I’m looking at you, millions and millions of Avengers movie fans!)