The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half. - Dostoyevsky
One of the things I love about being an adult is that the pressure to do things that are good for you kind of goes away. You don't have to read boring literature to expand your mind. You don't have to eat your vegetables. There's no more homework or pop quizzes or exam time. Just real life. You make your own decisions, and the world (or maybe just your parents and teachers) have stopped trying to shape and form you because, well, you're pretty much shaped and formed. Your personality is shaped, your habits are formed, and you've pretty much become who you're going to be. So in some ways, your parents have given up. Thank goodness for that.
One thing I've embraced shamelessly as an adult is my absolute love for tween fiction. When I was younger, I used to read ambitious books. Dostoyevsky. Faulkner. Marquez. Rand. No one told me to that I can recall - but something or someone must have placed some idea in my mind that I should read classic works, true literature. I still love a superbly written piece of fiction - I consider Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides a modern day piece of excellent literature, and Marquez is still one of my favorite authors.
But my true love is tween fiction. The Twilight, Divergent and Hunger Game series. Eleanor & Park. The Fault in the Stars. I can't get enough of them. They're the books I'll stay up all night to finish reading in one sitting, the reason I'll bail on social plans and instead stay in my PJs all day in my bed. I think what I love about them is that teen emotions are so raw and innocent and unadulterated. And that 99% of the time, the plot line is utterly predictable and is really the same exact plot (my favorite plot): awkward girl meets boy who sees who she really is and they fall in love (pure, unadulaterated first love love) despite challenges from the outside world. That part is almost always the same. The only difference is that some have happy endings while increasingly, some don't. I don't need a happy ending. In fact most of my favorite tween books don't have a happy ending - Eleanor & Park, The Fault in the Stars. But they have fully developed characters who suck you into their world so deeply that their emotions become your emotions, their lives become your life. And so when there is heartbreak, you feel it so completely.
One of the things I love about being an adult is that the pressure to do things that are good for you kind of goes away. You don't have to read boring literature to expand your mind. You don't have to eat your vegetables. There's no more homework or pop quizzes or exam time. Just real life. You make your own decisions, and the world (or maybe just your parents and teachers) have stopped trying to shape and form you because, well, you're pretty much shaped and formed. Your personality is shaped, your habits are formed, and you've pretty much become who you're going to be. So in some ways, your parents have given up. Thank goodness for that.
One thing I've embraced shamelessly as an adult is my absolute love for tween fiction. When I was younger, I used to read ambitious books. Dostoyevsky. Faulkner. Marquez. Rand. No one told me to that I can recall - but something or someone must have placed some idea in my mind that I should read classic works, true literature. I still love a superbly written piece of fiction - I consider Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides a modern day piece of excellent literature, and Marquez is still one of my favorite authors.
But my true love is tween fiction. The Twilight, Divergent and Hunger Game series. Eleanor & Park. The Fault in the Stars. I can't get enough of them. They're the books I'll stay up all night to finish reading in one sitting, the reason I'll bail on social plans and instead stay in my PJs all day in my bed. I think what I love about them is that teen emotions are so raw and innocent and unadulterated. And that 99% of the time, the plot line is utterly predictable and is really the same exact plot (my favorite plot): awkward girl meets boy who sees who she really is and they fall in love (pure, unadulaterated first love love) despite challenges from the outside world. That part is almost always the same. The only difference is that some have happy endings while increasingly, some don't. I don't need a happy ending. In fact most of my favorite tween books don't have a happy ending - Eleanor & Park, The Fault in the Stars. But they have fully developed characters who suck you into their world so deeply that their emotions become your emotions, their lives become your life. And so when there is heartbreak, you feel it so completely.
No comments:
Post a Comment