An interesting discussion on Twitter has blossomed into an interesting post over at Robin Wasserman’s blog about books you read for class in high school that you loved/hated.

Okay, unscientific and super-fast survey time, because now I’m curious:

If you’re in high school now, well, no extra-special additional question, but I’ll be doubly curious to hear your answer. (And maybe if there’s something unanimously loved, I’ll risk taking another look.)

Personally, I loved most of the books I read in high school. I had AMAZING high school English teachers (Mrs. Sayers and Ms. McDuffie) who I credit quite a bit toward teaching me how to write and cultivating in me a love of literature. Because I had nothing against being “assigned” books and they taught literature in such a way that I could learn how to analyze it without losing how to appreciate it (with one glaring exception), I really feel that the books I hated in high school would be books I’d hate now, so I havent actually tried any re-reading.

Loved:

• A Separate Peace
• The Chosen
• Pride & Prejudice
• The Crucible
• all the Shakespeare we read
• The Odyssey
• As I Lay Dying
• Kaffir Boy
• The Picture of Dorian Grey
• The Magus

Hated:

• The Red Pony
• The Grapes of Wrath
• All the Pretty Horses
• Wuthering Heights

At the time, I hated Lord of the Flies. It was the first book we read in high school, and therefore, it was dissected and offered up on the altar of “now we’re going to teach the students how to analyze literature.” I will never forget how one day, we had to answer questions about what the color of the poop the boys were pooping symbolized. I really don’t know why this book was so utterly destroyed, because, as I said before, this teacher was fantastic. Perhaps it was just a classroom conversation that devolved by students who were really resistant to the idea of talking about symbolism or literary analysis. I can’t remember now. But I do remember it wasn’t fun anymore. Things got better after that. (Though I do remember, sophomore year, everyone in my class being so confused by what was going on in The Sun Also Rises only to be told by the students who had a different, less G-rated  teacher what the main character’s big conflict was.)

Over at Robin’s blog, the votes are coming in fast and furious for A Separate Peace. Interesting.

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No, not the band.

There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere recently about the general love of bad boys. I’ve seen a few folks saying that nice guys can work too (and a few more actually claiming “bad boy” status on characters I would certainly categorize as “nice guys”) but it’s pretty much nothing compared to the wave of bad boys taking over books.

My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?

Bad boys never did it for me. I never had a thing for Heathcliff (abusive, horrible puppy-killer!) or Mr. Rochester. I liked Gilbert Blythe and the fine, upstanding, stick-in-the-mud (if jerky) Mr. Darcy. (Actually, I *really* liked Captain Wentworth, who I suppose had the technical bad boy edge of being a privateer.) I thought Angel was a sociopath, and though I liked Spike as a character, I was never attracted to him and found his relationship with Buffy to be utterly laughable (as opposed to his relationship with Drusilla, which I actually found quite effective and moving). Me, I liked Riley — til they ruined him, that is.

(It is important to note that I do not think that angst=bad boy. Edmund Pevensie, upon whom I have a crush I’ve actually been paid to write about in detail, is angsty — but not a bad boy. He had one little lapse in judgment, and proceeds to spend the rest of the books atoning for it. A lot of bad boys are, however, angsty, which is usually our entry into sympathizing with them.)

So the only bad boy I ever fell for was Logan Echolls of Veronica Mars. And I fell hard. Perhaps it helped that Logan was still a child, and it was possible for him to rise above his abusive father and horrific home life that was making him into a psychotic jackass (See above re: angst and sympathy). I watched the end of the first season of VM with my heart in my throat worried/terrified that Logan had murdered his ex-girlfriend Lilly in a fit of jealous rage. And through it all, I loved him. My one bad-boy crush.

Perhaps my love for Logan helped when I found myself crafting my own bad-boy love interest — or what one reviewer (positively, if you can believe it) called “the asshole love interest.” It certainly hadn’t been my intention to write that guy, and it was really challenging too, to make it believable — to me — that a reasonable woman would take that kind of risk with her heart or with her safety. It took the better part of a book to set up a situation where I could even get her to a point where she’d initiate it, and another book entirely to get the relationship off the ground. It had to be believable for me.

And it worked, if the reader responses are anything to go by. People love Poe. I sometimes wonder how much they love him, and how much they love the trope of the bad boy. I worked hard on him, but most folks were on board right from the start. There’s something about bad boys that gives them that capital. Ironically, though bad boys have a population of readers ready to love them from the word go, good boys have to work five times as hard.

Here are the struggles they face:

• If they are sweet and considerate, they are perceived as weak.
• If they are steadfast, loyal, and sure of their feelings for the girl, they are perceived as desperate, lying, or too good to be true.
• If they are fine upstanding citizens, they are perceived as bland and goody-two-shoes.

Even Persnickety Snark, in her attempt at a “defense” of good boys calls them out on these things: “Too often nice comes across as boring.”

And to those naysayers, I present Mr. Lloyd Dobler:

Let’s face it, we all want John Cusack standing outside our house with a boombox.

And the whole point of Say Anything, really, is that Lloyd embodies everything that a bad boy is not. He’s sweet, and considerate, and unassuming, and steadfast, and stand-up, and absolutely, unequivocally in love with a girl that everyone thinks outclasses him.

MIKE: I wanted to ask you: how’d you get Diane Court to go out with you?
LLOYD: I called her up.
MIKE: Yeah, but how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you?
LLOYD: I’m Lloyd Dobler.
MIKE: This is great. This gives me hope. Thanks.

Lloyd isn’t boring or weak (he can manhandle drunks at a party pretty handily), but he’s also pretty accepting of the fact that his general lack of ambition and his vague idea of being a “professional kickboxer” doesn’t hold a candle to Diane’s future and destiny. So why do we like him so much?

A friend of mine told me it’s because Say Anything is, ultimately, Lloyd’s story. It’s not the story of a high-powered ambitious girl who accepts the gentle love and devotion of a nice guy like Lloyd Dobler. It’s about Lloyd, everyone’s favorite everyman, who through true love and devotion wins his prize of the beautiful girl. We’re with Lloyd. We really want him to get his heart’s desire, and when he does, we cheer.

But what if this was Diane’s story? Would we then perceive Say Anything as being about a very successful girl who takes pity on the class slacker, has a little summer romance, and when her life goes all topsy-turvy, settles, knowing this guy is willing to be her house-husband and general shoulder to lean on in England? Comforting, sure, but not exactly the stuff of high passion.

Heck, even Lloyd’s cadre of girlfriends (a delicate balancing act, from a writer’s perspective, to present Lloyd as being platonically beloved by women without coding him as someone who is not boyfriend material) have to have a discussion about his catch-factor:

REBECCA: Hey, I know this is a strange thing to say, but maybe Diane Court really likes Lloyd.
COREY: If you were Diane Court, would you honestly fall for Lloyd? (long pause) Yeah.
DC: Yeah!
REBECCA: Yeah.

And maybe it also helps that Lloyd is so in love with Diane — standing-outside-the-window-with-a-boombox kind of love. But of course, that kind of thing can backfire on a nice guy. In high school, my friends and I used to say that a romantic gesture had nothing to do with the gesture — it was the guy doing it. If you liked the guy sending you secret notes and flowers, it was romantic. If you didn’t, it was lame and stalkery. If it wasn’t cutie-pie John Cusack — Lloyd Dobler who we were all rooting for — standing out there with the boom box, we’d probably recommend that Diane call the cops.

I ran into that problem myself with Brandon. The sweeter and more romantic Brandon was to Amy (and, most importantly, the less that Amy responded to it) the more his actions were viewed by the readership as lame and desperate. So maybe it’s that Amy actually likes the equally lame (from an objective standpoint) stuff that Poe pulls. I mean, a half-eaten pack of LifeSavers as a present? Not exactly diamonds and chocolates.

As the reactions to the boys in the SSG series came in, I was fascinated by what readers chose to believe of Amy’s narration and what they discarded. All first person narrators are to some extent, unreliable, in that the reader only sees what they see. Even if they are telling the absolute truth to the reader, they are not omniscient, and they bring their own biases into the situation. Take, for example, Amy’s initial reaction in SSG to Clarissa’s overtures in the library. Because Amy hates Clarissa, she thinks Clarissa is trying to be bitchy to her and to question Amy’s right to be tapped by Rose & Grave. Later, of course, we discover that Clarissa was honestly curious. Readers assume Amy’s version of events, and are corrected only when Amy is.

(Of course, some of them are never corrected. I am always surprised by the number of letters I get from people who hate Clarissa, even though Amy grows to love her.)

So perhaps readers’ disdain for Brandon’s romantic efforts is a result of Amy’s disdain. And yet, Amy is plenty disdainful of Poe through both SSG and UTR, and I got lots of letters at the end of UTR that were pro-Poe. (Which, honestly, was a relief, given what I was about to do with the storyline.) It’s hard for me to say, since I’m the writer. Were there subtle manipulations coding the reader to root for Poe over Brandon? Sure, why not? Are my skills as a writer, then, not up to snuff if I haven’t succeeded in making you root for the romantic coupling of my choice?

Now there’s a question to get neurotic over.

It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.

(I found the most lovelorn pic of Spike I could for this part, and, sidebar, do you know if you just google the word “Spike” this is most of what comes up? No actual, you know, spikes.)

There are some old screenwriting tricks writers sometimes use to create sympathy for an otherwise unlikeable character. If he’s mean, show that other people — people we’re inclined to like — like him. Have him be sweet to children or small animals.This is called “save the cat.”

When we see Logan going to get the belt his father will beat him with, we understand there’s a reason behind his jackass nature. When Spike risks death to protect Dawn, we see that he really does care about both Summers girls. Personal sacrifice, vulnerability, unshakeable interest in the heroine (who can’t help but be at least flattered, though returning the interest is the brass ring)… these are all games that you get to play with the bad boy. But the good guy? He’s not otherwise unlikeable. The readers already know his vulnerabilities. They like him.

They just don’t lurrvvve him.

Except when they do? Why do we swoon over Lloyd Dobler when he’s nothing like Logan Echols?Or are they different populations entirely that do the swooning? Are some of always going to be Team Bad Boy and some of us always going to be Team Nice Guy? And what does that make of me, Team Nice Guy, except for that one little dalliance with Logan?

Stay tuned to find out!

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While I was out at my RAMPANT signing in Tyson’s Corner, VA this weekend, a few more reviews of RAMPANT popped up ’round these here internets.

The Book Lover (quite adorably) gives it “four alicorns out of five” though spoiler warnings are in FULL EFFECT if you click through to the full review. Here’s a spoiler-free snippet: “It was an engaging novel with an easy-flowing story and I had it finished the day after I bought it. I was unable to find it at local libraries so I took a chance on it by buying my own copy. Sometimes a book that seems so good can not live up to expectations, but I’m happy to report that this one did not disappoint.”

The Book Scout rated it 48 out of 50 in an utterly spoiler-free review (yay!) and says:

“This was such an amazing book, it’s really hard to describe how I felt about it. To begin with, I thought the topic sounded so far fetched- I mean killer unicorns, come on! From the first page I was hooked. There was already a lot of action and I was learning things about unicorns I never in my wildest dreams would have believed. Peterfreund presents the idea of killer unicorns in a way that makes you believe in them. Her writing style has a nice flow, and the historical facts were great. I learned more about Alexander the Great and the Goddess Diana then I ever have in history class! Unicorns have always been something I would love to read about and this book just made me want to find out all I could about unicorns. Fast paced, exciting… this book had it all.

“Rampant took me longer to read then normal, because I was so caught up in school work and everything, but every free chance I had I was reading it. The ending left me wondering if there’s going to be a sequel! I really hope so. As I was reading I would shout out in surprise, stand up in shock (yes spilling my somewhat surprised cat onto the floor), and cheer with joy. I love books that draw emotions from me, and this book definitely did. I’ve been reading a jumble of book genres lately, but fantasy is one of my favorites, and this book was a refreshing look at how great fantasy can be. I would highly recommend this to anyone- even people who haven’t liked fantasy before.”

Gosh, I really loved this review. I mean, the fact that the reader (a high school freshman) liked the book and all is fantastic, but it really makes my day to learn that she liked it for the reasons I wrote it. I wrote this book for the teenage girl that I was — the one who was totally obsessed with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, not just because of how it made me thrill and shout and cry and shudder, but also because it had all that interesting stuff in there about what it was like to live in medieval Britain and the religions of the time and all that stuff. I was taking Latin classes, I was a big mythology nut, and I liked books that addressed all kinds of interesting stuff — Druids, unicorns, whatever! — while telling a fun story. (Actually, that’s still what I like, so go figure.)

This one definitely goes in the rainy day pile.

And, since I am now the recipient of every unicorn-based link on the web, I share with you these rather cool and scary Arts & Crafts-style unicorn stickers. (via a librarian friend on Twitter — btw, I think librarians must know all the cool blogs to follow, it’s how I discovered Awful Library Books, too).

But I digress. In other YA news, great article here on reading YA novels by YA author Mary Pearson, who is somewhat unsurprisingly astonished to hear how many people bash them a priori. (Srsly, I just read a blog comment by none other than Laura Kinsale saying she assumed something was a YA novel because of its — faulty, in her eyes — simplicity. Grrrrrr...)

[UPDATED TO ADD: Laura has clarified her statement in the comments and apparently they were two different thoughts: she thought the book in question was simplisitic and, separately and due to other factors, thought it read more like a YA novel. Sorry, Laura! Also, everyone go buy Laura's new book when it comes out from Sourcebooks next February! (or, y'know, FLOWERS FROM THE STORM or any of her other awesome backlist titles right now!)]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — teenagers read far more complex books in school than the average adult reads on their commute. They are spending hours every day analyzing Shakespeare and Hemingway and Faulkner. They are in TRAINING to look deeply into books. That’s the whole reason that adults invented bookclubs, to try to get some of that back. YA books are not dumbed down. Go read FEED or SKIN HUNGER and then come back and talk to me about that one.

Of course, maybe these teen readers aren’t necessarily reading the classics. And why? because they get more “points” for reading Gossip Girl. I’m totally serious. here’s a sobering article from the New York Times about a system implemented in over 75,000 schools in which students are encouraged to choose reading materials not based on literary merit, or even what interests them, but instead upon some mystical “points” system (for an article so focused on the vagaries of the system, it is never explained WHO assigns said “points”):

“You have to read the Harry Potter books” [the writer's daughter] said, exasperated. “They have all the points.”

She was right. “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” topped out at 44 points, while “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” were worth 34 and 32.

Comparatively, Hamlet is 7 and Frankenstein 14. I guess it’s a word count thing? Must be, since Gossip Girl is 8.

I love Harry Potter as much as the next girl, and I’m not a fan of genre snobbery, either, but I can see why if you can get twice as many points for reading OOP, you might skip over the 22-point Sense & Sensibility. Is no quarter given to the fact that reading Hamlet might be, I don’t know — HARDER than reading Gossip Girl? And I know this system is usually in place for the students to choose extracurricular reading, and why shouldn’t that be fun, but it’s not just classics that are getting the low scores. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray, and The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, both recent YA fantasy novels– just like Harry Potter –are listed as 14 pts. each. (My novels aren’t listed. Zero points, I guess, or maybe Rampant is just too recent to make it in there.)

As much as I loved reading, I would have analyzed that list and read the books that were the most bang for my buck, even if I wasn’t necessarily interested in them. What a flawed system.

Anyone know more about this and want to shed some light on the subject?

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I’m headed down to my local bookstore today to pick up copies of my new book:

Mind Rain:

Your Favorite Authors on Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES Series

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So as most of you know, a few months back, I went to Ireland to stay in a castle with a bunch of other YA authors. While I was there, I got to know the inimitable Sarah Cross, who is the only ninja I know who wears pink. Though it makes sense. In today’s colorful world, pink actually blends in better. Like, say her target is shopping at the GAP. No one would ever see her coming.

Here is a very rare photo of Sarah Cross:

Here is one, in her “civilian” gear, no doubt plotting something dastardly and secretive with known Gallagher Girl spy and art thief Ally Carter:

So anyway, after I escaped their nefarious clutches and came home, I got my hands on an ARC of Sarah Cross’s debut novel, DULL BOY:

And it BLEW MY MIND. It’s funny, imaginative, fast-paced, colorful, action-packed, heartbreaking, and filled with all kinds of asides and in-jokes for folks who like superheroes. It’s about a boy named Avery who discovers he has superpowers… and that’s just the beginning.

And it came out last Thursday! Go! Run! Get your copy now!

I’m also going to be giving away THREE copies of DULL BOY right here on the blog. And here’s what you have to do to win one:

• 1 entry: for leaving a comment here telling me what your superhero name would be, if you were a superhero.
• 2 entries: for going to The Hero Factory, making yourself a superhero, and sending me/posting the picture. (It’s great fun and takes about thirty seconds).
• 3 entries: for doing one of the above AND posting it to your own blog with a link back to this contest (make sure to leave a comment here telling me you did so).

Contest lasts through the weekend. Winners will be announced on Monday.

UPDATES: I’m loving all the entries, guys! A short note, if you link us to the page you designed your superhero on at the factory, it does NOT save, and merely takes us to the generic “creation” page. You have to press the little download tab, save the file (it will be called “MyHero.jpg” then post it on a blog, website, or photo-storage site like flickr, photobucket. Twitpic, etc.

ALSO, Command Decision: If your “blog” merely consists of posts of you pointing to other contests/giveaways on the web and possesses NO OTHER CONTENT WHATSOEVER, it’s not a real blog, and will not qualify for an extra entry to the contest. I’m not saying you have to be dooce or Felicia Day, here, and I’m not saying that you have to have a review blog (though I’m amazed bby how many of you do! Wow!) just that you have an actual blog. You can talk about your pet mouse, or the weird stuff you found in your locker at the end of term, or your undying love for Edward Cullen, or your undying love for Tally Youngblood, or your undying love for Severus Snape. I don’t judge. Blogs consist of content, not scraping, and not solely of “entries” into contests. That’s this blogger’s decision.

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Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger the last few days. I’m working on a theory that Twitter actually hurts my blogging. Now when I see an interesting post, etc., I don’t save it up to blog about it, I just log onto Twitter and 140 characters later, there you have it.

I need to get better at that.

For instance, here is this very cool blog post on Publisher’s Weekly about the strange ways people go about looking for books in bookstores. While the post itself is great, it’s really the comments section that follows that is truly priceless. Check it out for gems like these:

“One of my favorites was a phone call from a college student who said she needed ‘a copy of ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Jane Eyre. Would you like me to spell that for you?’ I had to put her on hold for a minute. I guess universities aren’t what they used to be.”

“One of my co-workers was helping a woman who wanted a book for her grandson. ‘He wants a book about a boy and his dog. I think it’s called Boy and his dog or boy and his wolf, maybe boy wolf.’ Until my co-worker said, ‘Beowulf?’ ‘Yes!’ said the woman. ‘That’s it, Beowulf.’”

“We had “Onion in the Closet” in lieu of “Indian in the Cupboard.” Also, a request for “a children’s book about European trains” turned out to be Thomas the Tank Engine.”

Makes one wonder how people have requested one of my books over the years.

Also, those of you who have read/are about to read TAP & GOWN will note a similar joke within its pages.

Yes, I’m a tease.

Speaking of Tap & Gown, there’s some upcoming release fun to be had, including, but not limited to:

• Giveaways! Giveaways! Giveaways! (the book lover’s equivalent of Girls! Girls! Girls!)
• An Interview with yours truly.
• More dossiers.
• The posting of the last of the Secret Stories
• Possibly another Tap & Gown Show. It depends upon my schedule.

And finally, I leave you with Random House’s WHICH TORTALL HEROINE ARE YOU? quiz. I was Alianne, which is probably closest, I agree.

Alianne

You are most like Alianne. You are rebellious and cunning. Like her mother, Alanna, you risk your own life to protect those around you, but you would rather they did not know it. Your passion for justice is just as strong as your compassion for others and they often conflict with one another.

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I was in a pretty strange mood yesterday (anyone who follows my Twitter feed can back me up on that one). And I was chatting with Justine about yesterday’s post, and specifically about our literary crushes. She mentioned she never really crushed on GIlbert, though she found him perfect for Anne. I found that interesting, because as far as I was concerned, Anne — whom I love, don’t get me wrong — barely lucked out not screwing that relationship up completely at every turn. (Which turned into a whole conversation about how Anne, having been raised in her formative years by folks who cared not at all for her, probably had deep-seated psychological issues about being worthy of love, etc.)

Anyway, Justine mentioned that she hadn’t read the books in years. I then gave her a quick rundown of the Anne and Gilbert arc throughout the series. Here goes:

[NOTE: I couldn't find *my* Anne of Green Gables, which was a blue illustrated hardcover with Anne pressing her face against the blossoms of The Great White Way of Delight, so just enjoy this still from the movie, which illustrates my point quite well, I think.]

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

Gilbert: I think you’re adorable, but I’m young and cannot properly flirt.

Anne: I hate you! I hate you! You have humiliated me in the worst way possible! I shall not speak to you for years!

[Years pass]

Gilbert: Gosh. I really made you mad. Here, let me save your life when you quite recklessly choose to drown yourself in a leaky boat.. I’m really sorry about that whole “carrots” incident, can we be friends?

Anne: No, I hate you! I shall never forgive you, Go Away!

[More years pass]

Gilbert: Gosh Anne, I’m so sorry to hear about your foster father. Here, have my teaching job. I’ll trek all the way across the island every day instead.

Anne: Oh, wow. Guess you aren’t a jerk. Fine. We can be friends.

ANNE OF AVONLEA

Gilbert: I’m so glad we’re friends. I think you’re grand. It’s too bad I don’t see you more often, on account of me trekking all over the island every day to go to that other teaching job I took so you could stay here in Avonlea. Gee, I’m noble. Also, have you noticed all our peers are getting married?

Anne: Huh, how about that.

Marilla and Mrs. Lynde: Gee, that Anne and Gilbert are hanging out a lot together — well, as much as they can considering how far away he works and all. Bet they’ll be getting married soon.

Anne: Oh, you silly old biddies!

Gilbert: Anne, don’t you think they’ve got a point?

Anne: Huh?

ANNE OF THE ISLAND

Random Dude #1’s sister: Anne, will you marry my brother?

Anne: LOL! I mean, huh? I mean, no. I, um, need a real romance.

Random Dude #2: Anne, will you marry me?

Anne: LOL! I mean, huh? Oh, come now. Don’t be silly. I need a real romance.

Gilbert: Okay, Anne. Enough is enough. I think I’m in love with you.

Anne: What? No! We’re friends! And haven’t you been listening about all that real romance stuff?

Gilbert: But that’s the best kind of marriage! We’re so alike, and we get along so well, and why are you being so strangely obstinate about all this?

Anne: Hell no! Go away! Never speak to me again!

Gilbert: Fine, you’re an idiot. I’m going to date this rich beautiful girl over here.

Anne: Hmmm, whenever I see Gilbert with that rich beautiful girl, I feel odd. Wonder why that is?

[Years pass]

Philippa: Hi, I have nothing to do with this, really, I just wanted to pop in and point out that I’m totally awesome, and I’m in this book, too. And I also have a pretty rocking love story in this book, which one sould not ignore for the sake of Anne and Gilbert’s little drama. (Oh, and I lent my name to a character in Rampant.) As you were.

Romantic Dude: Why, hello there, Anne. I’m dashing and rich.

Anne: Now this is what I’m talking about. Swoon!

Everyone Else Anne Knows: Sure. Fine. Whatever.

Anne: I’m so happy with my Romantic Dude. Except his taste in flowers is deplorable. Also, I really wish people would stop telling me that Gilbert is engaged to his rich, beautiful girlfriend. Not that I care. I totally don’t. Still,  feel a strange urge to wear the flowers that Gilbert, to whom I have not spoken in ages, randomly sent me this evening, rather than the flowers my boyfriend sent me. It has nothing to do with anything except for my boyfriend’s aforementioned deplorable taste in flowers, I assure you of that. Everyone says that roses are more becoming to me than orchids.

Everyone Else Anne Knows: Riiiiiiight.

Romantic Dude: Oh, Anne: Thou art more fair and lovely still. Will thoust marry me? (I totally know you’re going to say yes.)

Anne: Wait a second, I can’t marry this stick. I’ve been such a fool.

Everyone Else Anne Knows: {forehead slap}

Gilbert: Oops, I studied too hard and am dying. And Anne is engaged to someone else. Oh, woe is me.

Anne: I love Gilbert! Alas, he is dying! Woe is me!

Gilbert: Wait, psych. I’m totally alive. And you’renot engaged!

Anne: Why, hi there, big boy.

Gilbert: We should get married. LIKE I SAID YEARS AGO.

Anne: Yes. I capitulate to your superior understanding in this matter.

ANNE OF WINDY POPLARS

Anne: While you are in medical school and we are participating in the longest engagement known to mankind, I shall write you endless, chatty love letters that the author will mysteriously cut from the manuscript.

Gilbert: My fiancee is awesome.

Anne: And since I’m all set up, romantically, I will spend the bulk of this book fixing other people’s problems with my clever and winsome ways.

Gilbert: See? Awesome.

ANNE’S HOUSE OF DREAMS

Anne: We’re married and deliriously happy.

Gilbert: Rather.

Leslie: Hi, I’m unutterably miserable and feel a sort of perverse joy that one time that Anne has a miscarriage. But we end up being friends and I get a love story too.

ANNE OF INGLESIDE

Anne: We’ve been married for years and have a house full of rugrats.

Gilbert: You know it, baby.

Anne and Gilbert’s Rugrats: Hi. The book is really all about us and our misadventures. The title is a misnomer.

[At the very end of the book]

Anne: But wait, one evening Gilbert looks kind of distracted about something — coudln’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that he had two patients die last week — it must be that HE NO LONGER LOVES ME!

Gilbert: Huh?

Anne: In fact, when we go to this party that your rich and beautiful ex-girlfriend will be attending ON OUR ANNIVERSARY, I shall make a point to look as awful and dowdy as possible to prove it.

Gilbert: I’m sorry my dear, did you say something?

Anne: See? I was right! You don’t love me!

Gilbert: Hey, Anne, I got us tickets to Europe.

Anne: What? OMG, I was totally WRONG!

THE END

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I saw this over at The Book Smugglers the other day and it looked like great fun!

1. What author do you own the most books by?

Hmmm, a quick glance at my bookshelves reveals quite a bit of: L.M. Montgomery, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling (several copies of each, actually), Julie Leto, and Scott Westerfeld.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?

I collect the old, un-re-edited (no, Aslan does NOT destroy The Island Where Dreams Come True), un-re-ordered (#3, baybee!) copies of THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER. Also, my husband and I have an embarrassingly large number of copies of Aristotle left over from school.

3. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

In high school I had the biggest crush on Finny from A SEPARATE PEACE. I also kinda fall for all the boys in my own books. I also discuss my unrequited love for Edmund Pevensie in Through the Wardrobe. I also swoon over Captain Wentworth in Persuasion. And everyone has heard me talk about my adoration for Logan Echolls (though that’s not books, it’s TV — and lately I was totally into Sokka from Avatar).

Recently, I’ve developed crushes on: Ravus, from Holly Black’s Valiant,  Po, from Kristin Cashore’s Graceling, and Peeta, from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. Oh, and there’s a guy in Carrie Ryan’s Dead-Tossed Waves that I’m totally into, but I can’t tell you about that yet.

4. What book have you read more than any other?

That might also be The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Or possibly Anne of the Island. In college, it was definitely Frankenstein. I studied that baby in three different classes. Judging from the state of the paperback on my shelf (being held together with a rubber band), it’s A Girl of the Limberlost, in which I had zero crush on Philip, but was totally in love with Elnora.

5. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

I think we’re still going to go with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. By the time I was fourteen I was obsessed with The Mists of Avalon, but amusingly, it has not held its charm for me over the years the way Voyage has.

6. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

I actually didn’t finish it, so I don’t know if it counts as “reading.” But it was baaaaaaaad. I’m kinda shocked that it’s published, to tell the truth. But I think that’s how most people feel whenever they read a book which combines such crass lowest-common-denominator attempts at hitting commercial hot buttons with pedantic writing, flat characters, zero interest in realism and completely tone-deaf plotting. No, I will not tell you the name.

7. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

It’s not out yet, but it’s called LIAR, by Justine Larbalestier. Books that are out: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, and Watchmen, by Alan Moore.

8. If you could tell everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?

The unabridged version of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas (the Penguin Classics version, translated by Robin Buss).

9. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

I slogged my way through quite a lot of crap in college, but I found that if it was actually “difficult” I tended not to read it. I found The Brother’s Karamazov unutterably painful and stopped reading it, which is too bad, since I positively loved Crime and Punishment. I have a very low tolerance for this whole “reading books should be like having a root canal” theory of modern literature. I’m fine with “books should be like vegetables” because I love vegetables, but if people tell me that something is difficult to read, I’m like, okay, let’s find something that’s really FUN to read, even if it’s challenging or etc. For instance, I know a lot of people who are intimidated by Clarissa because it’s so massive, but I adored all 1700 pages. That book consumed me. Also, though Borges is a really really “dense” writer and it takes a long time to wrap your brain around the concepts and words and language, I love reading him, too.

10. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

I suppose the French, because of the aforementioned love of Dumas and hatred for The Brothers K, but I don’t think I’m particularly familiar with the panoply of French Literature (the only other French novels I can think of having read right now are Candide and The Red and the Black), whereas I have taken a class called The Russian Novel. So maybe the Russians, just based on familiarity? I don’t know. this question makes me embarrassed of my degree. Oh. Wait. I also read The Princess of Cleves. yeah, French. Unless we’re counting Nabokov as Russian and not American, in which case, I think Russian.

Clear as mud? Oui? Da?

11. Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer?

Shakespeare is better performed than read. I loved Chaucer in high school, but that was 13 years ago. I’ve recently rediscovered Milton, though, and am loving it! Why isn’t Dante on this list? After all that French/Russian stuff in the last question, I’m finding this one very English-centric. Discounting Shakespeare (who was a playwright and not an epic poet, like the others), I’m going to say my favorite epic poet is Homer, and my favorite epic poem is the Odyssey.

I guess, though, if I”m going to be a purist about this question, I’m going with the order they are listed: Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer.

12. Austen or Eliot?

Austen. Weird question — you usually see it written “Austen or the Brontes” — and I must admit, I’ve never read any Eliot. Which book do you suggest I start with? (Persuasion is my favorite Austen, btw.)

13. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

Modern literature. When that 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die book came out, I realized that I’d read almost all the pre-1700s works, most of the pre-1800, and a good segment of the pre 1900 — but almost none of the ones from the 20th century, and zero from the 21st. Though I found that list really unbalanced, and very biased towards Ian McEwan in general.

14. What is your favorite novel?

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. But for sheer comfort reading, I find myself turning time and again to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Anne of the Island, The Girl of the LImberlost, The Phantom Tollbooth, Pride and Prejudice, and (for a good cathartic cry) Persuasion.

15. Play?

I’m a huge musicals fan. I love any musical, but specifically Les Miserables, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls… the list goes on and on. As for straight plays, I’m pretty partial to A Winter’s Tale. My husband tells me I’d love Lear if I saw it.

16. Poem?

I think we already covered The Odyssey, right? Catullus 101 is awesome, too. And 85. And Horace’s “To Chloe” (Most of my poetry study took place in Latin class). English poems, I like Poe. That’s no secret. My favorite of his poems is “The Bells.” I also like Donne.

17. Essay?

I’m sure I’m forgetting some absolutely smashing essays, but the one that comes immediately to mind is David Foster Wallace’s F/X Porn. Seriously, go read it now. Brilliance. I think DFW’s true strength as a writer was his essays. “Consider the Lobster” and “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” are regularly quoted from in my house.

19. Non Fiction

How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman. Though judging from the timing he gives on his roast chicken, it’s not entirely non-fiction.

20. Graphic Novel?

In college, I loved Maus. Does Transmetropolitan count as a novel or a series? I should really read more graphic novels. People tell me Sandman is great.

21. Science Fiction?

Honestly? “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” by Jorge Luis Borges. Though I’m not entirely sure that counts as SF. Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem does, and when I was in college, I wrote one of my favorite papers comparing the two stories. So I suppose you could make the argument. I also really enjoyed Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. And A Stranger in a Strange Land. And Brightness Falls from the Air. And Frankenstein. And the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. Pretty much anything by Susan Squires. Feed by M.T. Anderson. Wow, this list can go on and on…

I’d really love to write a science fiction novel one day. There are some science fiction elements in Rampant, but it’s rooted in fantasy/mythology/magic.

(In passing, I’m kinda obsessed with finding images of “my” copies of these books. I can’t find a picture of “my” Solaris on the internet, so instead, you get “my” Ficciones, which holds “my” copy of Tlon.)

22. Who is your favorite writer?

L.M. Montgomery. I can always sit down with one of her books or short stories and get swept away.

23. Who is the most over rated writer alive today?

Cormac McCarthy. Sorry, but there it is. I think my least favorite book of all time is All the Pretty Horses, and the way he was such a jerk about The Road and insisting that it wasn’t spec fic really pissed me off. That English dude they fawn over who is an admitted plagiarist of a romance novelist but-gosh-it-doesn’t-count-because-he-writes-lit-ur-a-ture-and-she’s-just-a-romance-novelist counts too. Wait, is that Ian McEwan again? Curious.

24. What are you reading right now?

Shadowed Summer, by Saundra Mitchell, The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall, and an ARC of The Teashop Girls, by Laura Schaffer.

25. Best Memoir?

Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane. That was one of the best books I read in high school.

26. Best History?

Gosh, you know? I don’t think I’ve read a history since Thucydides freshman year of college. Sad, huh?

27. Best Mystery or Noir?

I am finding these questions rather odd. They ask about mystery and SF but not fantasy or romance? Also, I realize that I don’t really read mystery. Thrillers, yes, but not mysteries. And though approximately 75% of the television shows are mystery, I don’t watch any of them. I watch no CSI or L&O or Bones or House or Monk anything that can be characterized as a procedural or mystery. Which is weird, since I loved loved loved loved loved Veronica Mars, which was, ostensibly, a mystery show. I mean, it was about a detective. I wonder why I loved that one so much when mystery usually leaves me cold?

Like, right now, I’m trying to watch Psych. I love Dule Hill, and it came highly recommended to me by Cassandra Clare when we were in Ireland. But I am just so bored by the mysteries. Every week, la-di-dah, where’s the dead body? Maybe that’s why I liked Veronica Mars so much — because the mystery-of-the-week was never really the focus. Not like the class struggles and her life falling apart and her relationship with her dead best friend and her father and her mother — and why, after all that was solved, I was never really as drawn to the show as I had been before. (Also, Veronica’s adversaries were usually moderately to very clever, and Sean and Gus’s adversaries are always displayed as being appallingly dumb.)

I am thus always surprised when someone characterizes one of my books as a mystery. To me, “whodunnit” — which is the central focus of any mystery — is never really the point as much as what they are doing, or why, or how knowing doesn’t really prevent the good guys from being able to stop them (again, thriller elements). Sometimes the POV characters know the identity of the bad guy, sometimes they don’t — but it doesn’t mean that they can solve the problem.

For instance, (whited out for Under the Rose spoilers) Amy suspects from very early on that Jenny is behind the problems in Under the Rose. She just can’t get anyone else on her side, because it’s so inconceivable to most of the other Diggers that one of their own might betray them. So the fact that it is, in fact, Jenny, is not supposed to be much of a surprise to the reader. After all, Amy’s been banging that drum for a hundred pages. What I was interested in talking about –alongside Amy’s growth as a person and a Rose & Grave member — is what led Jenny to that point, why she made the decisions she did, and how, underneath it all, she was really kind of a double agent, and actually helped uncover a bigger mystery that she didn’t know how to tell anyone about. What I discovered when the book came out is that the people who were reading for those things enjoyed the book, and the people who were reading it like a mystery novel, like the point of the book was to find out who was behind everything — well, they weren’t satisfied, because it was obvious it was Jenny.

Which is something I’m learning as a writer, that sometimes, people who don’t like a book don’t like it because they expected it to be a different book entirely, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Like, did anyone else notice that by the end of the run of Harry Potter, there were a lot of people who seemed to think that the sole purpose of each book was to kill someone off? And it was all, “Who dies in this one?” And then got all pissed off when the person or persons they expected to die in the last one didn’t die? And there were these roving bands of spoilers who would do drive bys of the lines outside bookshops and shout out the name of the dead person, or would go into chat on World of Warcraft and scream it?

What was up with those guys? Weren’t they reading for the cool fantasy world and the funny candies and the relationship between Harry and his friends and the epic storytelling?

But I digress. All of which is to say, I’m not very familiar with mysteries, and, as a genre, it’s not my cup of tea. I didn’t even read Nancy Drew or similar growing up. I was too busy memorizing The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, apparently.

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Read an interesting article in The New York Times recently, about how modern technological devices jam long-revered literary ones. Missed connections (the letter about Juliet’s faked death that doesn’t reach Romeo in time) doesn’t work if both teens have cell phones.

The author of the article, a thriller writer named Matt Richtel says:

Technology is rendering obsolete some classic narrative plot devices: missed connections, miscommunications, the inability to reach someone. Such gimmicks don’t pass the smell test when even the most remote destinations have wireless coverage. (It’s Odysseus, can someone look up the way to Ithaca? Use the “no Sirens” route.)

Of what significance is the loss to storytelling if characters from Sherwood Forest to the Gates of Hell can be instantly, if not constantly, connected?

Plenty, and at least part of it is personal. I recently finished my second thriller, or so I thought. When I sent it to several fine writer friends, I received this feedback: the protagonist and his girlfriend can’t spend the whole book unable to get in touch with each other. Not in the cellphone era.

Then I started talking to fellow writers and discovered a brewing antagonism toward today’s communication gadgets.

(Ironically, RIchtel’s debut novel is about how “hooked” we are on digital technology. I guess he became a luddite sometime in between the two?)

He’s got a point. I was chatting with some author friends recently about the modern trend of rewriting fairy tales or other old stories, and how sometimes, getting them to work in a modern setting is very difficult.The other day, I was watching one of my favorite old movies, A LETTER TO THREE WIVES. In the film, three young wives are headed out to an island campground with a group of children when a telegram is delivered to them stating that a fourth “friend” of theirs has run away with one of their husbands. Which one? Their friend deigns to say. There’s an excellent shot of the three of them looking at the dock’s one lone pay phone before the boat pulls away. The women spend the rest of the day wondering, discussing, and fretting over whether or not each of their husbands will be there when they get home. If they had cell phones, there’d be no movie.

Of course, there are advantages to modern technology as well. I get a lot of dramatic mileage out of cell phones and emails in Under the Rose. Indeed, much of the plot hinges around the way that emails can be manipulated — a plot that woulnd’t have been able to exist if it were about, say, secret letters, instead. And in Rites of Spring (Break), when it was important that people not be able to communicate by cell phone every second*, I just made sure that their island was out of range of any convenient towers. (It happens. I was camping last summer and I coudln’t find the campground where I was supposed ot meet my friends, and the only place that got cell phone reception was a precarious roadside pull out on the top of a mountain. That was…not fun.)

All of which is to say that though there are some dramatic devices you lose with the advent of technology, there are some that you gain as well. Indeed, I think the tension is even raised in situations where you know that help *is* only a phone call away — if you can just get reception on your cell phone! And when you’ve got a girl like Amy, who is used to whipping out her cell phone at the first sign of trouble — and you take that away from her…

In Rampant, Astrid has no cell phone once she gets overseas. This was a conscious decision on my part and one that makes sense in the context of the story. Given her isolation in the nunnery and her mother’s finances, I saw no reason why either her mother or the people at the Cloisters would give her one. Her cousin, on the other hand, has a cell phone. Having just returned from overseas with nine other Americans, I noted that only one actually had a usuable cell phone. (Actually, maybe Maureen did, too.)

However, in KU2, which I’m writing now, she does have a cell phone. Things have changed with her situation and she’s got a greater degree of agency. With that, comes control of her own telecommunication. It’s a subtle shift, but an important one, as it definitely has an impact on the plot.

And now, changing gears to a land with no cell phones. This weekend, I’m doing a giveaway of the marvelous Beka Cooper series by Tamora Pierce! Since I know some of you have not read the first book yet, how this works is, if you win and have read Terrier, I’ll send you Bloodhound. If not, I’ll send you Terrier.

And all you have to do to enter is leave a comment here about your take on modern technology in stories. Does it make things too “easy” or can it gum up the works as much as any Renaissance Italian waylaid messenger can? In what books/films/TV shows do you think that modern technology (or the convenient lack thereof– hello, LOST!) is portrayed most effectively?

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I took part in several conversations yesterday about crying while reading. Do you do it?

I do. I cry every single time I read Persuasion. I weep buckets reading epic fantasy (anything from C.L. Wilson to the Chronicles of Narnia — and I actually won’t read The Last Battle anymore because I have such a visceral reaction to my memory of sobbing all the way through that horrible travesty tragedy). I cry whenever they kill animals in fiction (do not get me started on George Orwell, the bastard, or John Steinbeck, may he rot). My high school English teacher probably remembers to this day the girl who came into her classroom during lunch period, and cried on her shoulder over A Separate Peace. I love a good cathartic cry over a piece of fiction.

Now, for the second part of the question, for you writers out there: do you cry over anything you’ve written?

I haven’t done so until recently, and, prior to Secret Society Girl, I wrote some dark books. I admit I felt a bit sniffly a few times near the end of Rites of Spring (Break), but, much like Amy, I bucked up and soldiered on. But there is one part of Rampant that I have never, in the more than a year since I’ve written it, been able to read without turning on the waterworks, and there’s a scene in Tap & Gown that made me cry as well. (It’s not one you’d think, though).

The crying has continued apace, especially with my current manuscript, though given the protagonist’s state of mind (daaaaaaaarrrrrrrrkkkkkk) it should probably be expected. She’s in a bad, bad place, and it seems I have at last figured out how to torture my characters. Um, yippee?

Seriously, protagonist. It’s spring. There are tulips coming up in my yard. My dog is adorable. I did not sign up to be Method!

I read something once that said that, as a writer, if you expect your reader to chuckle, you should be in hysterics, and if you expect them to shed a tear, you should weep buckets. I suppose this is a way of saying you have to feel things strongly if you expect the reader to feel anything at all. Because some folks just aren’t the crying type.

Though two readers (and there haven’t been that many readers yet) have already told me that Tap & Gown made them cry. Um, yay? And here I thought I was writing a comedy!

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