“How did you spend your weekend?” Apollonia asked.
“Gambling? Moping?”
“Mostly moping,” I said. “Also reading young-adult fiction.”
She roared with laughter. She, of all people, knows what I
mean. Apollonia is the world’s most tragically obsessed Twihard, and would
happily pluck a leftover egg-salad sandwich out of the garbage and eat it, if
there were any chance it had been gnawed on by Robert Pattinson. It goes
without saying that she knows the Stephenie Meyer books
by heart, the way Islamic clerics know the Koran.
Naturally all of us read the Harry Potter books, though
they were “too young for us.” Why? Because they were well-told stories, and
entertaining, and full of conflict on every level. They ask questions like: why is my family (and
Professor Snape, for that matter) so mean to me? Why won’t Hermione and Ron
realize they love one another? Why is Lord Voldemort trying to kill me? Also,
the books are funny and colorful and full of incident. (There are some dull patches –
the middle third of “Deathly Hallows,” in which Ron and Harry and Hermione
wander in the wilderness and snipe at each other, was pretty deathly
itself – but overall these books move pretty briskly. And who doesn’t like a
six-hundred page book that moves along briskly?)
Also, some years ago, I discovered Diane Duane’s
“So You Want to Be A Wizard” series, which is serious fun. Who doesn’t want
to be a teenage wizard? You get to save the planet, and sometimes the entire
galaxy, over and over again. You get to meet interesting people like the
Archangel Michael and Satan. And Diane Duane can really write; she’s light-years ahead of Meyer, and I think she writes
more fluently than Rowling. Naturally you really ought to read the books in
order, but I didn’t, and I don’t think I missed out too much. I especially like
“A Wizard Abroad,” in which a New York girl (and secret wizard) is sent off to
Ireland to visit relatives, and ends up discovering an entire world of Celtic
folklore, helps to reenact the Battle of Moytura, and (incidentally) saves the
world one more time. (Diane Duane also
maintains a great Tumblr in which she interacts with readers and fans – I don’t
know how she finds the time – and is very obviously a funny and generous
person. This makes me like her writing even more.)
And if you still find yourself with time on your hands, try Rick
Riordan’s Greek-mythology series – the five novels of “Percy Jackson and
the Olympians” and the three novels of “Heroes of Olympus” he’s published for
far. (The fourth, “The House of Hades,” is due out around the time that this
blog is to be published; the series is set to conclude a year from now.) These
are reimaginings of Greek and Roman myths, set in modern America; they’re
goofier than the “Wizard” books, and the humor can be juvenile, but the stories
are gripping (let’s face it, Greek mythology is good source material), and
there are some nice touches. (If you saw the first movie based on the series,
“The Lightning Thief,” rest assured that the books are much better.)
I could go on. Do Tove Jansson’s Moomin books
count as Young Adult? Parts of them skew a little young (even for me!), but I
love them anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment