best lines - Patrick Ness edition

here it is! proof i have not abandoned Best Lines, the way i abandoned this feature, or this one, or this one. (what can i say? short attention span.)

for the second time, i'm featuring lines by author Patrick Ness - this time from The Knife of Never Letting Go. this book is relentless with its action and pace, so i know i raced by many great lines without marking them, but here are the few i absolutely had to stop and note.

The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.
~ 

Then the girl speaks up and says that thing that suddenly makes me think of her as Viola and not the girl anymore. 
"He saved my life."
I saved her life.
Says Viola.
Funny how that works.
~

His face and his Noise are as blank as I remember but the lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man's mind ain't knowing the man.
~

this book is full of more like those. i can't believe i waited so long to read it.

resolutions in review

i don't really do resolutions, but i did start this year with some loose goals in mind, and i blogged about those goals in this post.
and because i'm masochistic, i thought i'd review those goals and share how i failed or succeeded.

Reading:

*i will read more adult books this year.
-- okay, i didn't exactly rock this goal, but i DID just finish the adult book, World War Z, so i'm giving myself a pass on this one.

*i will read outside my favorite genres.
-- score! i read a lot more contemporary YA this year and took a dive into the world of zombies (currently reading my 3rd zombie tale of 2011 right now) and also picked up a few contemp books with magical realism or paranormal twists.

*i will read more ...period.
-- it was not looking good for this resolution for the first 3/4 of the year, but thanks to some NaNo-Fail, i cleared out an entire month to go on a reading spree, and i definitely made a dent in the TBR pile.

Writing:

*i will try writing something outside of my comfort zone.
-- well... i tried. i guess i'm still trying, but i haven't gotten very far. the NaNo project is definitely outside of my comfort zone, and it's not totally abandoned... yet. we'll see what comes in the new year.

*i will write something without curse words...
-- again, i point to the manuscript in limbo. it's F-bomb free. also, i spent a decent amount of time editing curse words out of BUTTER while working with my editor.

*i will edit edit edit! ...without sacrificing writing.
-- hmm. 50% success on this one. i certainly finished all of my edits, but i did not spend as much time writing something new as i had hoped. however, it did take months and months to basically REWRITE all of Billy D, so i suppose that counts.

i thought of writing a new blog with new resolutions, but looking at this list, i see the goals would be exactly the same. read more. write more. try to break out of my own box.

what about you? did your resolutions stick?

books to read before you die

one of the reasons i still love paper books over e-readers is this:


bookmarks! i got this pile of beauties for christmas, and i particularly love the one in the middle.
it's engraved with a list of 50 books to read before you die.

here they are, with the ones i've read in bold:

The Lord of the Rings trilogy - J.R.R. Tolkien
1984 - George Orwell
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
The Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
Don Quixote - Miquel de Cervantes
The Bible - various authors
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Quiet American - Graham Greene
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Money - Martin Amis
Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
One the Road - Jack Kerouac
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope
The Outsider - Albert Camus
The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
Men Without Women - Ernest Hemingway
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Divine Comedy - Alighieri Dante
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

only 17 out of 50 for me. a pretty sorry showing.
some of the books, like To Kill a Mockingbird, have been on my bookshelf for years and just never make it into the to-be-read pile.
others, like The Lord of the Flies, i gave up on reading after seeing the movie. (shame on me.)
several, like The Bell Jar, i read for class in high school or college and can't remember very well.
i'm ashamed to admit there are a few i've never even heard of, like A Bend in the River.
but more than a handful of these are among my all-time favorites, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

personally, I would add a few titles to this list:
The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

how many have you read? and which titles do you think are missing?

Shel

"I cannot go to school today" Said little Peggy Ann McKay. "I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps.....

i can still, to this day, recite that entire poem from memory. in fact, i startled myself driving to work yesterday by trying it out loud, sure i would have forgotten some of it, but suddenly i was at the end. it had stuck with me all these years.

Shel Silverstein's poems have a way of doing that - of sticking with you.

that's why i snatched up his new collection, Every Thing On It, even though i sometimes have reservations about books published posthumously. i am going to read it piece by piece, to make it last, but i am already impressed by the arrangement. it feels 100% Shel.

it eases you in with a reminder that, while he's gone, these words are still his.

YEARS FROM NOW
Although I cannot see your face
As you flip these poems awhile,
Somewhere from some far-off place
I hear you laughing--and I smile.

and it ends with a note that will soften even the hardest-hearted writer. if you don't want the final poem spoiled, stop here. but if you want to read the four lines that gave this writer goose bumps, scroll down...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
WHEN I AM GONE
When I am gone what will you do?
Who will write and draw for you?
Someone smarter--someone new?
Someone better--maybe YOU!

best lines, A.S. King edition

last night i attended the west coast launch party for A.S. King's "Everybody Sees the Ants."
and since i am currently reading her Printz Honor Book "Please Ignore Vera Dietz," i thought it would be a good time for another episode of... BEST LINES.

first, though i haven't read it yet, i have to share a line from Ants. this showed up in King's reading last night and really struck me:

Mom told me once she thinks she's a reincarnated squid. Maybe she thinks being a squid means she won't be swallowed by the hole in our family.

and here are some of my favorite lines so far from Vera Dietz:

"Ew," I said. "I think we should tell my parents." I knew his wouldn't believe us or care. There was a reason Charlie was such a bright blazing sun. He came from endless cold, black space.

There are still children starving in Africa, right? There are still children starving right here in this shitty little town.

this line comes after an encounter with the mean kids:

Seeing it makes me feel delayed embarrassment. I wonder did I handle it okay? Did I look like an asshole?

normally, i don't like to comment too much on "best lines," because i don't want to detour into review territory. but i have to say something about this last quote.
if nothing else of interest were to happen in the rest of the book, i would still like it for that one quote and the entire passage in which it sits. that moment would have spoken to me as a teen more than anything i've ever read.

here are these kids who are mean to you, whose opinions you shouldn't give a damn about, but you can't help hoping you still looked - i don't know, cool maybe? - while they were torturing you. because maybe if you handled it well, they won't torture you again. or at least they won't know they got to you. and the feeling that accompanies all that is an inexplicable shame. it's a very hard - very uniquely teenage - emotion that is hard to capture. and King did it in a few spare lines.

Best! Lines!

i am kicking myself right now, because i wanted to do a "best lines" post with all of the golden nuggets i read in the ARC of the upcoming ASHES, by Ilsa J. Bick.

unfortunately, i had to send that ARC along to another reader, and i forgot to jot down my favorite lines.
do yourself a favor and buy ASHES to discover those nuggets for yourself - just be sure to read it with the lights on!

fortunately, i just finished another book packed with great one-liners, so we still have a blog post today. :D

here are a few of my favorite lines from CRACKED UP TO BE, by Courtney Summers:

I take a deep breath. It smells suspiciously like bullshit in here.

(Jake questioning Parker about drinking)
"Do you have, like ...a problem?"
"Yeah, and that was my solution."

Next time Chris tells me to loosen the fuck up, I'm going to tell him to fuck the fuck off.

(there's another set of lines i LOVE but won't share here to avoid spoilers, but if you have this book, flip to chapter 16 and read the very last lines. most powerful moment in the story for me.)

see you at the end of the week with a new entry in the Revision Diaries!

what makes you put a book down?

so that whole thing i said last week about making time/sacrifices for your writing?
yeah, i forgot to mention - i also sacrifice internet time for writing. that's just my little way of saying, between BILLY D revisions and BUTTER edits (and hopefully writing GRIM or something new), i'm probably going to be down to 1 or 2 blog posts per week throughout the summer. but i'll be around on twitter, so say hi! :)

on to today's post:

i want to know: What Makes You Put a Book Down?

i was asked that question the first (and only) time i ever attended a book club. i embarrassed myself by misunderstanding the question and said something like, "oh, you know, when i have to go to work and go to sleep and stuff..." o.o
LOL.
what they meant was, of course, when do you put a book down FOREVER and decide not to finish it?

this question shocked me at the time. i was very much a "finish what you start" kind of gal, and it seemed wrong somehow to not see a book through to the end, even if you were reading it for pleasure and not enjoying it.
but that's the whole point, isn't it? pleasure? enjoyment?

i've since learned it's okay to not finish a book. or at least, i've gotten better about setting aside stories i'm not enjoying.. for now. some of the books in my "to be read" pile could easily be added to a "try try again" pile. i always tell myself i'll pick up the book again later and give it another shot. however, i rarely do this.
that's probably part of the reason i badgered my beta reader, K, to tell me any and all points in the current WIP where it could be put down - put down for now or put down forever - because we all want to write a page-turner, right?

and it got me thinking about what makes ME put down a book for good.
#1 - sloooooow pacing. maybe it's because i read so much YA these days, but i have little patience for a turtle's pace. if one page doesn't pull right into the next, i'm likely to fall asleep or get distracted and, ultimately, put the book down.
#2 - boring. not in pace, but in storyline. if it's not something new and unpredictable, or if the characters are just ordinary with ordinary things happening to them, i tend to walk away. i mean, if i want ordinary, i'll just look at my own life. why read about someone else's?
#3 - lack of plot/tension. i may love the characters, but if i'm not on the edge of my seat yearning for them to get what they want, then why would i keep reading? i have cool "characters" to hang out with in the real world. i need a story too.
***disclaimer: i may or may not personally struggle with one or all of the above issues in my own writing. (hence the badgering of my beta.)

other things that could lead to me skimming or altogether skipping the rest of a book i've started:
- unlikeable characters
- poor writing, small vocabulary
- elements or scenes i find personally disturbing (everyone's got their thing they'd rather not read about.)

and there are exceptions to my own rules, naturally. Vonnegut, Kerouac and Thompson have all sucked me straight through stories despite a lack of plot (#3), thanks to amazing writing.

so, as those book clubbers once asked me, What makes YOU put a book down?

why YA?

a fellow writer and friend of mine recently asked me about the boom in young adult literature.
now, i haven't been around these parts long enough to know if we're seeing a boom or just a trend in media attention or what. but i do think the reason he asked is interesting.

he writes adult historical fiction. one agent flat-out asked him if he'd consider making one of his stories YA. another agent encouraged him to read an author with a similar writing style, and at the end of that author's book, there was an ad letting the reader know said author was about to debut a new YA novel, after years of writing adult fiction.

so this writer friend of mine asked me, in so many words, why YA is so hot.

here's my two cents:

1) Harry Potter.
i really think that series did something that transcends other popular children's book series. instead of being the kind of story that adults remember fondly and pass down to future generations... it was the kind of story that made adults feel like kids again themselves. it had us waiting in line at midnight release parties and staying up late to read just-one-more-page, even though we had to get up early the next day. and there was no stigma. no one blinked at an adult reading a children's book in a coffee shop or on the subway, because it was Harry Potter, and everyone - even the non-bookish - knew Harry Potter was an exception.

i think what HP did was give people permission to read books aimed at younger audiences. (and by people here, i mean the casual reader - not book nerds like us who have always read across all age groups.)

2) Universal Experience/Appeal.
after HP paved the way, adults started opening up a few more young adult and middle grade titles and found something in those pages they could relate to. we're not teens anymore, but FUN FACT: every single adult on this planet was once a teenager. no exceptions.

YA lit taps into memories, fond or not-so-fond, of our own teenage experience. we can relate, even if we no longer walk the halls of high school or stress about who's going to ask us to prom - at one point, most of us did. and we can empathize with young adult characters.

3) Pace.
i have a theory that YA lit is gaining momentum in part because of the fast-pace society we now live in. we want information now, and we want it in 140 characters or less. we can't wait for the reporter to spend a full minute and a half telling us a story on TV. if we see something interesting, we open up our laptops and get the story immediately.

we, as a society, are devouring and processing information faster than ever. and i think books are no exception. the casual reader looking for a little literary enrichment may be turning to the YA section of the bookstore, because there's a good chance any book they pick up will be a fast-paced read they can finish in a few days. (exceptions abound, of course, but i'm speaking generally. i find more "fast" books in the YA section than the adult section.)


those are just a few of my thoughts.
i also think YA books focus on that very small window of time when we transition from childhood to adulthood. it's a time period kids can't wait to get to and many adults wish they could relive. there are only a few precious years when we get to be teens, and those years being so few makes them more valuable.
finally, i believe series like Twilight and Hunger Games have kept the momentum going - kept the media tuned in to YA lit, and kept the publishing spotlight on YA a little longer.

but here's what i DON'T know:
i don't know whether YA will remain a hot commodity. is it just a trend/fad that YA is getting so much main stream attention? or is it a permanent shift? will YA lit go from being thought of as books "for" young adults to books for everyone but "about" young adults?

what do you think?

best lines, vacation edition

there's something about reading a story set on the grim future beaches of the gulf coast... while actually SITTING on a beach and getting sand in the cracks of the book pages.

this was how i read Paolo Bacigalupi's SHIP BREAKER.
there is still sand stuck in all the nooks and crannies, and i hope it never falls out.

so, in case you haven't read this awesome story yet... here are a few of the best lines from the best book i read on vacation:

"Sea foam lapped around his ankles, rust and bits of wire. Shells and insulation. And intermixed with the ocean froth, his blood. Running down his legs in streams, bright and red and steady, staining the waters with the pounding of his heart."

"...we get all excited about being like Lucky Strike and we lose our heads. We waste all our money throwing dice, trying to get close to Luck..."

"The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies."

and my favorite... the curse that popped up every few pages:

"Blood and rust!"

now THAT is a beach read. ;)

reading with abandon

i used to read books to escape, to be entertained, to be enlightened. i used to read books with abandon.
and i still do... all except for that "with abandon" part.

ever since i got serious about writing a few years ago and dove into all the online forums and well-meaning blogs loaded with advice for writers, i've developed something of a reader's block. i can barely read a book now without putting on my critical writer's hat.
- this story starts with the MC waking up from a dream? and now she's looking in a mirror to describe what she looks like?? how did this get past the editor?!
- an entire chapter of info-dumping with no dialog? in a YA book?? how did this even get an agent?!
- why does the character "whimper" instead of just "say?" who approved all these fancy dialog tags?? and this sold for six figures?!
- stereotyped high school characters! telling instead of showing! GAH, i can't even remember what this book is about, i'm so busy critiquing it!!

i went through all of those exact thoughts with a book i just finished, in fact. i kept putting it down after a chapter or so, too irritated with the writing to notice the story.
then something happened.
Arizona suffered a tragedy last weekend - a tragedy that, as a journalist, i have to live and breathe every hour i'm at work (and they are long hours this week) - a tragedy that hit me emotionally, so i cannot turn it off when i get home. sad angry thoughts stayed with me while doing chores, while surfing the web, while running errands. i needed to escape these thoughts.

so i picked up that book with all the so-called mistakes and allegedly bad writing... and i got lost.

i let myself get completely swept away in the pure fantasy of the story. i stopped seeing the words and starting seeing only the images in my head. i forgot to analyze the book and remembered how to enjoy it.

i finished the read in a few hours and am thinking of starting the next book in the series... because now i'm a fan - and because now i know how to take off my writer's hat and just escape into a story.
i'm grateful for the lesson.

sometimes we get so caught up in the "rules" that we forget the most important rule of all: just tell a damn good story.

reading, writing and resolutions

well, hello there, 2011!

you know why 2011 is awesome for me? because as of today, when people ask me "hey, when does your book come out?" i can say, "next year!" which sounds a lot sooner than "2012." :D

so i've never been much for resolutions. they're hard to keep, and they usually end up making me feel like i failed in some way. i tend to think of the new year as more of a fresh start in general. it's a good time to look at your life and consider what you might want to change. i, for one, like to start a new year with a clean house and something healthy on the plate for dinner. (not exactly resolutions to stay on top of my chores or go on a diet, but to just be more mindful of those things.)

however, i see no harm in making some writing and reading resolutions! so here they are:

Reading:

*i will read more adult books this year.
with maybe 2 exceptions, adult books got put on hold in 2010. i didn't know how behind i was on my YA reading list until i joined the blogosphere, so i had to do some catching up this past year. i still plan to read plenty of YA, but i will break it up with some good adult reads too.

*i will read outside my favorite genres.
i love me some dystopian YA, but i should really see what's so great about all the contemporary teen romances everyone's excited about right now.

*i will read more ...period.
i always thought i was a voracious reader, but when i look at other bloggers counting up their 2010 reads, i'm stunned. i don't think i can read 100 books in a year, but i can sure read a lot more than i did last year!

Writing:

*i will try writing something outside of my comfort zone.
i sometimes get elaborate ideas for fantasies or post-apocalyptic stories, but i never write them past a few chapters, because i get overwhelmed or distracted. this year, i will stretch those creative muscles, even if it's just for my own reading amusement.

*i will write something without curse words...
...maybe. i'd like to try writing middle grade, and i know the biggest challenge might be removing all the F-bombs from my arsenal of words.

*i will edit edit edit! ...without sacrificing writing.
with my editorial letter for Butter incoming and my beta notes for Billy D likely to follow soon after, i know the next few months will be all about revisions. i will try very hard to find time for fresh writing in there, to keep my creative wheels spinning.

i hope 2011 is full of fabulous ideas, beautiful stories and lots of writing for all of you.
happy new year!