My (New) Obsession with Giving Away Books

In preparation for our move to Seattle, Aaron and I quickly realized that the books we own could almost fill the back of my little car. And since our plan is to go with only my car and what we can fit in it, we had to prioritize. As much as we love books and have prided ourselves on our collections, we are really going to need clothes, bedding, and dishes when we first arrive in Seattle. So we began the task of cleaning out our collections.

To my surprise, this process was mostly easy for me. I developed a hard-line policy (Will I ever read this book again?) and stuck to it. And I found myself enjoying the process.

I'm getting new ideas for books from this picture! 
White Cat sounds like awesome YA fiction.

To start, I pulled the books I wanted to give away off of my shelf and stacked them on the floor. I knew I could only take a minimal amount of books with me, so I decided I had to end up with one shelf of books or less. I found myself tossing out favorites like Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and sequels, Gregory Maguire's Wicked and the rest, even some of my Margaret Atwood books. I let go of my copies of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (though I might have kept these if I had all of them, but I only had physical copies of the middle 3; I have e-books of A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Dance of Dragons). I gave away some of the classics, even ones I loved, like Jane Eyre. As much as I loved reading it, it's available for free (or very cheap) from e-book sellers, and my physical copy doesn't hold much meaning by itself.

The really (unexpectedly) fun part came when a few of our friends came over to take books they wanted. As we went through our books with other people, we were able to talk about which ones we loved and why, which ones we never finished, and why certain authors are our favorites. It was invigorating to see our friends inspired to read some of our most treasured stories.

The books I ended up keeping probably say something about my personality; you may tell me what you think it means. This can also serve as your reading list. If you read my blog and don't hate it, you should probably read some of these books.

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (plus I think her novel Cat's Eye is in Aaron's go-to-Seattle collection--bonus!)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer

Into the Wood, The Likeness, Faithful Place, and Broken Harbor by Tana French

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (DVD of the film adaptation also made the cut for the move)

Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel

Shakespeare collection by William Shakespeare

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti

Feminism and Pop Culture by Andi Zeisler

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow (haven't read yet but it's on the list!)

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem


So there you have it! The books that will stick with me across the country. The books that you should read.


You're welcome.

My Obsession with Young Adult Fiction

I love young adult fiction, I really do. I have always loved Harry Potter. (Does it count as young adult fiction? I mean, did the category even really exist when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published?) I read, and did not love, all 4 Twilight books, and I have a bit of an obsession with The Hunger Games.

Two years ago, when my boss's wife brought us all lunch during a busy day, we were talking about books. I admitted to having stayed up very late the night before finishing Mockingjay. And then I explained that it was a YA book in a series about kids fighting to the death. They all looked at me with blank faces. I couldn't shake the feeling that my boss, a publisher and an author himself, was judging me for reading something so childish.

But lately, YA is getting more recognition as a genre, and it's less of a childish thing we old adults (ha! I called myself an adult) should be embarrassed by. Maybe my boss would still find these books silly, but plenty of people don't.

And thanks to Bitch magazine and its accompanying blogs, I've been discovering so many more YA books! Actually, I think I discovered The Hunger Games thanks to a Bitch article comparing the strong and independent Katniss Everdeen to the whining, lackluster Kristin Stewart, I mean, Bella Swan. Victoria Law has been writing a guest blog series for the Bitch site, Girls of Color in Dystopia, exploring YA books dealing with dystopic visions of the future. More mainstream books, like The Hunger Games, tend to be pretty much whitewashed (except for Rue, and I'm still recovering from her death); Law seeks out the books with a wider range of characters and experiences.

So far, I've read one and a half books that she discussed. I read, and loved, Cinder, a retelling of Cinderella in the future with cyborgs, alien threats, and, of course, handsome young princes. (Princes, apparently, will be sticking around, even as governments rise and fall and go to war and destroy each other. Princes are the cockroaches of fictionalized dystopic worlds.) I'm currently reading, and loving, Ash, another Cinderella re-telling, this one with a lesbian twist.

I was an English major and sometimes I do feel a little embarrassed for reading books with a target audience of 15-year-olds. Shouldn't I be reading literary novels? Shouldn't I be tackling that Gloria Steinem book like there's no tomorrow? Yes and no. I should, and do, read National Book Award-winning novels like Salvage the Bones (which I highly recommend) and I do read feminist nonfiction whenever I can. But since I've been out of college and working every day with no summer break like an old adult, I've started to understand why my mom has been reading trashy romance novels for so long, and why I'm craving YA books more often.

They're easy. They sweep you up in a story that you can move through quickly. They give you the good story and the drama with simpler language. And as YA is becoming more legit, the books are getting better. Recently, I had a very heated (and I do mean heated) debate about the merits of young adult fiction, specifically Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. Some people thought it was ridiculous to count these books as literature, or even as legitimate. Some thought there was no purpose to books with "literary merit". (Some people also never explained how they might define "literary merit".)

The truth is, I don't care if these books qualify as literature. How do you qualify anyway? There are plenty of books, young adult or not, that are terrible, and plenty that are great. The fact that anyone could try to debate the quality of Harry Potter and Twilight in the same conversation is ridiculous: one is a brilliant series with a vast, detailed world, and one is...not. But The Hunger Games brings so many provocative topics to the young reader: government censorship and control, relationships, violence as entertainment. Cinder shows them the problems with discrimination and Ash asks them to think more broadly about sexuality. How is a book that gets more kids and teens to think and form opinions a bad thing? Why don't teens deserve that opportunity?

YA novels allow readers to explore big ideas in language they understand. They can get non-readers interested in reading. They can open the door to higher brow books, or to poetry, or to literary non-fiction. And they provide anyone and everyone with a story to get swept up in after a long day at work.

That's enough for me.

Time (You Ain't No Friend of Mine)

I worry about running out of time.

I am an organized person. I have no problem scheduling my day. My alarm is already set for 6:00 a.m. tomorrow, my second alarm for 6:15. The plan is to work out, shower, eat breakfast. I hope I'll have time for writing before work but I'm not positive. After work, I plan to spend about 2 hours on freelance work. Then I want to read my fantasy novel, play Mario Galaxy 2 on the Wii, catch up on my magazines, watch an episode of The Following, eat dinner, blog, and spend time with Aaron. But I'll never accomplish all that tomorrow, even if I wake up exactly on time (I won't) and don't nap after work (I will).

One of the saddest things I ever read was "I'll never be able to read all the books I want to read." When I read this, I felt like I'd been slapped in the face. This had never even occurred to me! Even if I made it through my entire list of books I want to read, by the time I finished, sooo many more books would have been published. And I would want to read them! And that's not even mentioning the magazines, and the blogs, and the newspapers. It's impossible.

But recently, Aaron said something even more terrifying. He said, "My nightmare: waiting until too late in life to start something, like writing a book, and not being able to finish." Aaahhhh! Another thing to worry about!

I want to have time to live my life the way that I want. But what do I want? I want to live somewhere cool, working any job and not caring about a career, just enjoying my place and time in the world. But I want to have a full career doing something I love and that I'm good at. I want to raise children and love them, but I also want to live a long, childless life, full of travel and free from worries about school systems and the effect of technology on developing brains and rocks stuck inside little noses.

Maybe I'm so afraid of running out of time because I don't know what I want. I don't know if I want to live in one place, or have the opportunity to move around. I don't know if I want children. I don't know if I'd prefer to have a long-time career path or not. I don't know what my life should be, and I don't want to miss out on it while I'm trying to decide.

But I do know that I want enough time to read all the books.