I participated in three reading challenges in 2013, none of which I completed, but I read some pretty good books last year that I might not have picked up if not for them. That counts as a success in my book!
2013 Goodreads Reading Challenge: I planned for 30 and ended up reading 38. I find it hard to make time to read at school, so I pack what I can (in between doing other things *ahemvideogamesahem*) during my breaks. I'm happy that I was able to make time for 38 books this year, and hopefully in 2014 I'll be able to up that to 40. I lament the fact that I may never return to the overwhelming succcess (in my book) of 52 books in 2012, but who knows! Maybe I'll finally get my butt in gear (and off Tumblr) in 2014.
Debut Author Challenge 2013: This... did not go well for me. The idea was to read books by authors whose first published works were released in 2013 and in that specific month if you wanted to participate in mini-challenges. This is simply too hard for me: my school library has no fiction to be found and the local public libraries are too out of the way to make travelling there convient. I never spend money on books and libraries don't often get books "in time" to make the mini-challenges. When they do, they are often snapped up quickly. They can also be hard to locate: my local public libraries don't have an easy was of looking up debut authors, and sometimes books from the previous year are mixed into the new sections.
Also... not many debut books interested me. I'd find a debut book, but the plot summary sounded too boring to me to attempt. It simply wasn't the challenge for me.
Still, I did get a 3/10, and those three were pretty good, so again I'm impressed that I did as well as I did.
YA/MG Fantasy Challenge: I made it 8/10, though if we would count Fables (whether or not your could consider it young adult is a bit dubious; it deals with pretty adult themes) then I roll in at a perfect 10/10.
I liked this challenge a lot, I really enjoy fantasy, and I finally got around to starting the Harry Potter series! I would participate again, but that isn't looking like it's going to happen. I would love to host it myself, but I think I'll have save for the future when my drive to blog is on more solid footing.
1.09.2014
Review: Crash and Burn by Michael Hassan
Author: Michael Hassan
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Publication Date: February 19, 2013
Page #: 532
ISBN: 0062112902
Goodreads, Author's Twitter
Goodreads Description
On April 21, 2008, Steven "Crash" Crashinsky saved more than a thousand people when he stopped his classmate David Burnett from taking their high school hostage armed with assault weapons and high-powered explosives. You likely already know what came after for Crash: the nationwide notoriety, the college recruitment, and, of course, the book deal. What you might not know is what came before: a story of two teens whose lives have been inextricably linked since grade school, who were destined, some say, to meet that day in the teachers' lounge of Meadows High. And what you definitely don't know are the words that Burn whispered to Crash right as the siege was ending, a secret that Crash has never revealed.Crash and Burn starts right from the beginning and carries you through Steven's/ Crash's life all the way up to the end, combining to become a sort of autobiography-slash- journal. Reader's are given a chapter of life as it is for Crash, showing his day-to-day activities as he moves through life as a normal teenager after his not-so-average heroic break. This contrasts with pages of his book-within-a-book that's he's writing, his tell-all. And wow, does it pay off in the end.
Until now.
Michael Hassan's shattering novel is a tale of first love and first hate, the story of two high school seniors and the morning that changed their lives forever. It's a portrait of the modern American teenage male, in all his brash, disillusioned, oversexed, schizophrenic, drunk, nihilistic, hopeful, ADHD-diagnosed glory. And it's a powerful meditation on how normal it is to be screwed up, and how screwed up it is to be normal.
You don't go into Crash and Burn thinking that it's going to be funny, witty, insightful, telling, truthful, or anything other than bone-crushingly sad. Because that's what books about almost-school-shootings and hostage students is supposed to be, right? Thankfully, for our sake, Hassan has given us something very, very different.
Crash and Burn is bone-crushingly sad, at times. And it's hilarious and sarcastic, at times. It has its mundane and boring parts too. It all works out though, with Crash being one of the most realistic, insightful, interesting characters to come out of young adult fiction for a long time.
It's book like Crash and Burn that pull me back into young adult fiction in a world that trying to hawk "new adult" or sometimes just "adult" books to me. It challenges the idea that we aren't ready for things that are thrown our way, that even though there are people out there who look at us and figure that we're ready for this or not ready for that. It takes every single one of its 532 pages and introduces us to a character who's funny, depressed, sarcastic, loving, unloving, confused, high, drunk, and one of the closest fictional characters I've ever seen to a real, living person.
It was amazing.
 |
| Five stars! |
The Validation of Comics
I've been setting up my Goodreads 2014 Reading Challenge recently, but I've been really stuck on just how low/ high to set my goal.
The reason that I feel so stuck on this is that each year I'm reading more and more comics, collected volumes at least. I have a nice, comfy collection in the bookshelf right next to my bed, Chew and Saga included, and a neat (and by neat I mean jumbled up among all of my other library books) pile of books that I got from the public library to read over break, Fables and Unwritten included.
There are a lot of them, not gonna lie. Chew has seven volumes out, so far, and the first five made their way onto last year's Goodreads Reading Challenge. Each one took me somewhere around an hour, maybe an hour and a half depending on how long I linger to look at the artwork.
When I did Goodreads Reading Challenges in the past, adding them to the list always felt like cheating to me. I read a lot of manga in middle school and early high school, which is where my comics kick really got started, and they were never really treated like "real" books, at least not by the people surrounding my me and my friends.
-Our little anime club was treated like a joke by the librarians (which, granted, we were, but there's no need to be rude about a bunch of middle school girls just having fun.)
-Public library manga collections always seem to be poorly taken care of and missing volumes (all too often number one? Really?)
-My friend was allowed to choose manga for an English project, but she had to read the entire series (at least 10+ volumes at the time) while all of the other students just had to pick one novel.
I've read dozens of volumes of manga in my life, but not one has made it's way onto my Goodreads account.
Why is that? Why is there this notion that comics don't count as "real" books, or that the time invested in reading them isn't the same as the time invested in reading a "real" book? How come they all need to be reclassified in school libraries and on recommended reading lists as "graphic novels" in order to be taken seriously by teachers, librarians, school officials, and parents?
The reason I'm stuck is because there's still that nagging feeling in the back of my head that I'm cheating on my Goodreads list by adding comics. I could spend days holed up in my room, pouring over volume after volume, and a part of me would still feel guilty, like those books "don't count" or "shouldn't count" towards my final goal because they're typically shorted, are full of pictures (duh), and manage to pack their plot into fewer words than other forms of storytelling.
I'm finally starting to come into my own about what books I want to read. I turned 20 late last year, and I'm moving away from the young adult genre not because I think that I'm "too old" for it (lies), but because many of the new stories coming have stopped capturing my interest. Comics are now filling that gap, and I know that to neglect them on my Goodreads simply because other people would think that I was taking the easy way out (people who have obviously never picked up a comic book in their life if they believe that) wouldn't be right on any level.
I've spent too long reading, and blogging, for other people, and both are hobbies that I need to reclaim for myself. This is how a start: a 40-book goal and an understanding that I have to start doing things for myself.
The reason that I feel so stuck on this is that each year I'm reading more and more comics, collected volumes at least. I have a nice, comfy collection in the bookshelf right next to my bed, Chew and Saga included, and a neat (and by neat I mean jumbled up among all of my other library books) pile of books that I got from the public library to read over break, Fables and Unwritten included.
There are a lot of them, not gonna lie. Chew has seven volumes out, so far, and the first five made their way onto last year's Goodreads Reading Challenge. Each one took me somewhere around an hour, maybe an hour and a half depending on how long I linger to look at the artwork.
When I did Goodreads Reading Challenges in the past, adding them to the list always felt like cheating to me. I read a lot of manga in middle school and early high school, which is where my comics kick really got started, and they were never really treated like "real" books, at least not by the people surrounding my me and my friends.
-Our little anime club was treated like a joke by the librarians (which, granted, we were, but there's no need to be rude about a bunch of middle school girls just having fun.)
-Public library manga collections always seem to be poorly taken care of and missing volumes (all too often number one? Really?)
-My friend was allowed to choose manga for an English project, but she had to read the entire series (at least 10+ volumes at the time) while all of the other students just had to pick one novel.
I've read dozens of volumes of manga in my life, but not one has made it's way onto my Goodreads account.
Why is that? Why is there this notion that comics don't count as "real" books, or that the time invested in reading them isn't the same as the time invested in reading a "real" book? How come they all need to be reclassified in school libraries and on recommended reading lists as "graphic novels" in order to be taken seriously by teachers, librarians, school officials, and parents?
The reason I'm stuck is because there's still that nagging feeling in the back of my head that I'm cheating on my Goodreads list by adding comics. I could spend days holed up in my room, pouring over volume after volume, and a part of me would still feel guilty, like those books "don't count" or "shouldn't count" towards my final goal because they're typically shorted, are full of pictures (duh), and manage to pack their plot into fewer words than other forms of storytelling.
I'm finally starting to come into my own about what books I want to read. I turned 20 late last year, and I'm moving away from the young adult genre not because I think that I'm "too old" for it (lies), but because many of the new stories coming have stopped capturing my interest. Comics are now filling that gap, and I know that to neglect them on my Goodreads simply because other people would think that I was taking the easy way out (people who have obviously never picked up a comic book in their life if they believe that) wouldn't be right on any level.
I've spent too long reading, and blogging, for other people, and both are hobbies that I need to reclaim for myself. This is how a start: a 40-book goal and an understanding that I have to start doing things for myself.
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