The YA Conundrum

An interesting article on CBC Arts talks about the idea of adult-to-YA crossover with some popular fiction, books like The Girls, Life of Pi, Curious Incident. The article sort of gives me a bit of hope in terms of a book I’m working on right now. The story of four young women in Banff, Alberta, I’m finding the more I write it, the more it comes out YA fiction. And I can’t really tell if that’s a bad thing or not?

Yet, the books that impacted me most when I was a child were definitely not kids books. Or maybe that’s because I’m thinking of my YA reading days as being in high school, past my Sweet Valley High stage, past the only ever writing stories about twin sisters stage, past Little House on the Prairie (well, well past) and Little Women, past SE Hinton (oh, Ponyboy, I still have you in my scrapbook), and past the beloved Judy Blume, where I devoured Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Margaret Atwood and Salinger.

But there’s one fact that the article seems to overlook, it’s not that YA crossover books are a new phenom, it’s just that now publishers are actively marketing them as such. For years, girls that I knew, voracious readers all, were dipping into their mother’s libraries and reading well above their age level. All the boys I knew read like mad and recommended much of what made my everyday bus ride bearable. Give the kids some credit, they’re finding The Girls et al because they’re great books, great books that deserve a chance regardless of your age group. Having it now somewhat defined as ‘trend’ seems to demean the entire idea of kids coming into their own when it comes to literature. Something they’ve been doing for generations, well, at least since my generation.

I Want To Fight On TV

We got a Faux-Tivo, forever known as our Faux-Vo, from Rogers about two weeks ago. It’s a little revolution in a box. And there’s no going back now. We had to agree to the damn thing for two years just to bring the price down to something remotely reasonable.

So in my absolute fit of Faux-Vo-ing everything, I’ve been watching Related, a cheese-ass WB drama about four sisters living in Manhattan. You may have read Scarbie talking about the same show. As it’s a show my RRHB would never, ever in a million years let me watch while he was in the country let alone in the house, Faux-Vo and sick leave make for perfect Related bed partners.

I have just one question: why is it that a fight about cheating (one sister kissed an old boyfriend before leaving and confessing everything to her new boyfriend, who (BTW) only became her lover after they both cheated on their boss) can take a nano-second to complete? The entire fight, from beginning to end, took about two minutes. That’s fighting, pouting and making up all in a flash of one hundred and twenty seconds. It’s a bloody record.

Annnnywaaay. If that same fight happened in my house, and mind you, it hasn’t, no illicit kissing, but a lot of other stupid fights, it would go ten rounds starting at midnight, last well into the next day and then charge again just when the dust settled. Ah, the magic and power of television, er, or the WB.

Oh, and can you tell I’m addicted to the Faux-Vo already?

Decisions, Decisions

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Those few days without the internet to waste my time and being home from work because we’re still trying to find my blood, means I’m not racing around like a maniac living my life.

On March 21st, I see the super-fancy disease doctor. At that point, I’m sure he’ll put me on yet another medicine for the disease, which will inevitably have serious side effects. The prednisone I’ve been taking for the last two weeks has started to kick in. My cravings for extremely bad food have started (I won’t give in! I won’t give in!) and I’m a bit puffy. The really fun stuff like the acne (face, chest, back) hasn’t started yet and neither has a lot of the water weight, so those are positive things.

But what’s weighing my mind down isn’t whether or not I’m dying from the disease (because I’m not) but more how I need to change my life in order to deal with its presence. Change is hard regardless of how it comes about. Whether it’s forced or whether you force it upon yourself, it always involves pain, pressure and release (metaphorically, of course).

So now I’m kind of at a crossroads. I have a good job that I’m not necessarily well enough to do but I don’t know if I’m sick enough to stay home. And then there’s the guilt: the guilt about taking care of myself, the guilt about getting paid but not working, the guilt about just staying home if I really need to. In the end, much depends on what the super-disease doctor says next week. I guess maybe he’ll force my hand, and change is on the horizon.

Self-Indulgence: The Editor’s Bag

Now, I’m not an editor, but I do work at a publishing company. Does that make this purchase any less self-indulgent? Perhaps not, but I bought the damn bag anyway.

I consider it the evolution of Ragdoll. Up until now, I’d been using knapsack for just about everything: purse, carry-on, carry all. And with my impending “scary” birthday, I thought that maybe it was time to grow up and buy a serious bag. It was way, way too much money though, and I’m suffering a bit with the guilt. Oh, but only until I look at my gorgeous bag and then all the bad feelings just sort of go away.

Hey! My Books Are On The Shelf…There

I’ve been off sick from work the past week trying to find my blood. Er, well, finding the energy to try and find my blood might be a more adequate way of putting it. I spent most of the mornings at home puttering because we didn’t have a computer until today (yay!). The prednisone, in addition to making my cheeks puffy, is now keeping me awake. So, I get up around 6 AM and can’t get back to sleep. There’s only so much television you can watch, only so long you can sit on the couch before you think, “a walk might be good.” Or “maybe I can handle a matinee today.”

So I saw Match Point, which I found deeply sexist and kind of frustrating. Granted it’s Woody Allen’s best picture in years and I can see why so many critics liked it. I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I’m going to leave it at the fact that despite the overarching comparisons to Crime and Punishment and more than adequate performances the movie still falls flat.

Okay, well, I’m going to say one thing, if you’ve seen Unfaithful, then you can probably guess the part of the film that totally annoyed me. In the end, I crave emotional conflict on the screen, and the film never really gave it to me. It was nuanced and from an interesting perspective, but felt a bit outdated in terms of both the characterization (yawn Scarlett Johansson) and the dialogue.

Yesterday I went to go see Failure to Launch. Oh. Boy. By the end, I was kind of charmed, but all in all, it’s a totally mediocre film too.

Annnywaaay. While I was waiting for my friend before seeing Allen’s film, I browsed through the local bookstore in the mall. To this day, I’d never actually seen any of the Classic Starts in the store, and I have to admit, it was kind of thrilling seeing some copies of my own books up there on the shelves for kids to discover and their parents to (hopefully) buy. In fact, it was more than kind of thrilling, it was pretty damn cool.

#11 – Learning Curves

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I think Gemma Townley is the best living chicklit writer out there. Even better than Jennifer Weiner (and I heart her too). Even better than Marian Keyes (she kicks ass, she does). But it’s the level of sophistication that Townley’s books manage that keeps me coming back and thinking about them in comparison with the rest of the pack.

Learning Curves manages to be absolutely girlie; I mean it contains many, many of cliches known to the chicklit genre. But there’s an extra spark there in Townley’s fresh, invigorating prose that takes the book to a different level. It’s so absolutely well written, well plotted and clips along at a dazzling pace.

Not to mention the fact that Townley is so adept at creating cute, quirky but relevant characters. In this particular book, post-eco-“warrior” Jennifer Bell, whose father left when she was still a wee girl, infiltrates his company at the behest of her mother (wanting more information about possible shady deals). Her parents haven’t seen each other in years and one of the charming sub-plots involves what really happened in their marriage.

Of course, Jen meets a man—the delicious publisher Daniel Peterson and, of course, falls in love with him. And I know it’s the unwritten chicklit rule that the road to said romance must always be rocky, but how Townley makes it all happen remains both bright and refreshing. It’s not knowing that Jen won’t remain undercover for long in the MBA program at her father’s firm that matters, it’s how Townley achieves the emotional high points that take the plot from point A to point B.

All in all, a bright spot in my anemia-addled brain that can’t seem to finish a book to save my life. Despite all the things Zesty keeps telling me to read.

Sunday Afternoon With Balanchine

I took Zesty to the ballet on Sunday afternoon for her birthday. More of the year of the accidental tourist and the commitment to do more things out in the city. We saw the National Ballet of Canada perform three short George Balanchine pieces: The Four Temperaments, Apollo and Theme and Variations.

The first was the most modern of the three, and therefore my favourite. The lines were crisp and clean, there was lots of introverted footwork and the dancers wore very scaled back costumes. The second piece, the story of Apollo’s birth and subsequent relationship with his three muses, was also good. The final piece, the showstopper, Theme and Variation, was the most classical of the three, lots of tutus and plenty of dancers on stage.

So much of what I like in ballet is sort of what I like in literature too. Clean, crisp formations, smart positions, interesting movements, and the language of bodies used to tell a story. The most classical, and I’d hate to say, Victorian, elements of Theme and Variation, the bold statements made with grande battements and overwhelming set pieces, are the aspects that I resisted the most. There are things that I love about the history of the ballet, how every pointe and position harkens back to the court of Louis XIV, but I also like how now in my later life, I can see how the same history remains constrictive too.

I started asking myself how relevant ballet is anymore to anyone who might not be that into the idea of dance. They are the same problems the world of books faces every day too. How do we keep literature relevant in a world where Paris Hilton is ‘news’ and people are reading less and less? How will the National Ballet of Canada reinvent itself in its new venue for a new century? How do you balance the idea of tradition with the inevitable fact that culture is changing so quickly?

All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. And then, I charged over to a friend’s house to watch the Oscars and laughed my ass off in the company of some of the funniest people I know. Talk about a cultural shift…from Apollo to pimps, almost too much for a 24-hour period.

D To The U-P

Holy crap dial up is slow. How do people survive without being able to whip around the internet without the painful loading times and abysmal crashes that seem to happen once every five seconds.

We’re still waiting for our new computer. They said it would come in 7-10 days (today marks day 7). But until then I’m using my work computer and the so early 90s dial up that’s making me feel like I should pull out my grunge wear and don some combat boots while listening to bad indie rock by former Toronto-based “reggae” band One.