Monday, April 5, 2010

Sometimes I feel like I'm writing to myself...

I never ever thought that I would say this, not in a million years. Thank you Stephenie Meyer.

That’s right I said it. On my constant theme of reading, writing, and all things geeky I thought I would discuss my love of reading. One of my best friends still lives back in my tiny hometown and we probably talk every day. She recently just finished up reading the Twilight books and it’s sparked a lot of conversation between the two of us about what is appropriate and inappropriate for young adults and of course what we read when we were in middle school.

Here’s the biggest kicker: I think Kelly and I were just about one of maybe ten kids in our class of 120 that actually read for pleasure. I know you think that sounds crazy, but it’s completely true. Harry Potter did come out when I was in about 6th or 7th grade, which a few kids did read, but mostly reading still was reserved for the B-list and below. Why Kelly and I were discussing the latest VC Andrews books we had read the other kids were talking about the latest episode of something mundane on MTV or whatever else the popular kids talked about. Don’t ask me what they actually did talk about because I was never cool enough to get within ear shot.

In high school you would think more kids would read, but no they didn’t even read the assigned readings in class they just spark noted them. My interest was sparked even more by reading in high school. I took a creative writing class and my teacher had said, “All good writers must read,” so at the beginning of every class we would have to read, and it had to be a book for fun no required class reading. Now if you go back to the previous paragraph you would see that I was the girl in middle school reading VC Andrews, so you can only imagine how much my reading progressed into high school. Let’s just say it wasn’t until the past few years that I actually read young adult books and enjoyed them. In middle school it was VC Andrews and in high school it was a lot of Nicholas Sparks and other romance novels. The first book that could be considered young adult that I read was “Sloppy Firsts,” By Megan Mccaferty. Now sometimes this is labeled as Young Adult and sometimes it’s in the fiction section, but either way it’s a great book and you should check it out.

The point of all of this is the fact that I don’t think I ever saw as many people reading until “Twilight” came out. Then all of a sudden it was cool. Every girl I’ve met whether she is a fourteen year old cheerleader or a fifty year old mom has read and enjoyed the books. These books were also the ones that sparked my joy for reading again. Being in college I didn’t get a big chance to read a lot for fun, so on my final spring break I finally read the Twilight books and about 100 books later I can say that my love of reading has been re-kindled. Within a year’s time I had also wrote my own Young Adult book (which I will classify as Contemporary Teen Fiction because if VC Andrews and Gossip Girl is on the Young Adult book shelf then I think mine qualifies).

So Thank You Stephenie Meyer for making vampires and reading cool again. I still am a bit mad that now teenage girls think that vampires sparkle, but hey at least now less girls will get mad

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