Favourite Genres

A couple of years ago, I decided to be a little more open minded with my reading and stop avoiding certain genres. The biggest step I've taken is towards reading more fiction that wasn't a Fantasy or Young Adult novel.

For me, that was pretty important.

See, Young Adult is my favourite genre to read in. Up until John Green, this meant Young Adult Fantasy, but I've since opened up my reading list. In the end, it's led to me placing Michael Grant, David Levithan and Cassandra Clare all on the same bookshelf.

Why is that important?

Well, Grant is - more typically, anyway - for male readers. At least, by sheer observation. (The real reason it's noticeable - the female readers where I work read lots of other books, as well!) The Gone books are Science Fiction-Horrors, gruesome and violent and scary at times.

Clare is generally considered to be writing for a female audience. There's obvious romance. The male characters are described in terms of beauty, not by their masculinity. The lead protagonists are always female. And yet, I've read the entire Mortal Instruments series. And I loved it. It was heartbreaking, and exciting, and it's easy to look beyond the elements of it that are designed to make a teenage girl swoon with delight.

Levithan, then, is a mixed bag. He's funny, his characters can be male or female, straight or gay, but he doesn't include something that Grant and Clare do: magic. (Okay, yes, the powers in Gone aren't necessarily magic, but think of it as an inclusive term, for now.) Levithan, with the exception of A in Everyday, writes about normal people, living normal lives, who fall in love or go through tragedy, and most likely both. Love is the Higher Law deals with the consequences of 9/11, from the fear of the parents, the responsibilities of the teenagers, and the consequences of being a homosexual person in post-tragedy America.

None of them are alike, and of the three, only Grant would have appealed to me a few years ago. In fact, before my adoration of John Green as a person, I would never have considered fiction without a Fantasy element to it. Except, I had already. I just wasn't willing to accept that there were other authors out there like Roddy Doyle or Harper Lee or Mark Haddon, authors whose books I'd read in school, and loved.

The consequence of this, for me as a writer, is that most of what I've written has had a Fantasy element to it, or has attempted to emulate the feelings I had when reading "standard" fiction. (Contemporary Fiction?) I wrote about superheroes, or girls with magical powers, or gods and fairies.

Then, this month began, and I began writing something more like Levithan and Green. And you know what, it's more fun than I would have thought two, three years ago.

The point of all of this, of course, is that readers should always be willing to try something new. Read something new. If you need a suggestion, and your friends and family are proving useless on that front, ask your local bookshop. In my workplace, we all have different interests in reading, and even with a small staff we're still able to address most customers' needs.

So give it a shot, and then see how it affects your writing. It might surprise you.

Review - Will Grayson Will Grayson

What happens when you take two New York Times bestselling authors, throw in some homosexuality, some musical references, two characters with the same name and a big ball of irony? The answer is simple: Will Grayson Will Grayson, the fantastic novel from John Green and David Levithan. Set in Illinois, in two parts of it, the book follows the adventures of two teenage boys by the name of Will Grayson. One has a gigantic gay best friend, the other is a closet homosexual, and the book isn't technically about either of them.

What do you mean it's not about them? They're the title characters!

While this facet of information is true, the book revolves around the character of Tiny Cooper - our big ball of irony, and Will 1's gay bezzie. (I can't believe I just wrote that, honestly.) To quote Will 1, 

 "Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large." 

Tiny's social gravity captures everyone into an orbit they cannot seem to escape. From the Wills to the girls they're friends with, and spreading outwards into Illinois in general - mainly the school - Tiny Cooper brings the whole ensemble of characters together.

So why didn't they call the book Tiny Cooper?
Because then we can't see the wonderful device they use to illustrate that names aren't always appropriate. Two Will Graysons almost expect to be the same. They have an imaginary club - One Will Grayson to another. If the book was called Tiny Cooper, we'd never get to see what Tiny has to offer, because we'd be looking too hard. Really, when you read this book you need to just read it and let it take you by surprise. It's handy, of course, that the authors are brilliant and witty, and so we get distracted from the universe in their comedies and tragedies and before we know it we're halfway through the book and finally used to how Levithan writes his chapters - he writes Will 2's parts; you'll understand what's so difficult about the reading of his chapters when you read them.

You keep saying "when"...
This is true - you will read this book. Rude not to. It's perhaps one of the greatest books I've ever read, because in its imperfections we are exposed to the humanity of the situation. This is a character based book. Characters have imperfections. They are, aside from the physical, human. Everything that's wrong with this book - things I can't even think of, because the good shines out over the good - is completely right as being part of the whole. So yes, I say "when" because you really ought to read this book to see the importance of names and how we can see people in different ways. And the ending is just fantastic!

So what now?
Now..? Now I have to hunt down some of David Levithan's books. I've read all of John Green's published novels. I have to wait for the next one. This has not happened to me before. I have not been in a situation of having read all of John Green's books and having to wait for the next one. So I have to read David Levithan's books and hope they're a wonderful substitute! From the impression I get of him from John Green, I will be suitably pleased.

Now, buy the book, read it, love it!