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My name is Kelly and I’m a re-reader. I read the same books over and over again–some books I read once every year–and I love it.

My husband doesn’t understand this. He is always reading something new. Sometimes he sees me re-reading a book and rolls his eyes a bit. He has so many questions and protests.

But there are so many new books and so little time!

True. And I read plenty of new books, too. I love tumbling head-first into a brand new book. But I believe there’s also a deep magic in reading a book again for the second, or third, or tenth time. Sometimes re-reading is medicinal; it can help heal things in my heart. I reach for old, beloved books that are tried-and-true at those times, and turn to new, unread books when I’m ready to be swept away. And finite time on Earth doesn’t factor into my decision. I already know it is impossible for me to read every book in the world before I die, and I don’t want to try. I want to read books that challenge me, that comfort me, that surprise me, that make me laugh, or cry, that touch some inner part of me. Sometimes I want to read those books twice.

But you already know what’s going to happen!

Yes. But knowing exactly what’s going to happen only amplifies the tension for me. Knowing that Jo is going to refuse Laurie doesn’t make it any less painful when it happens. (Damn you, Louisa!) In a strange way, I sometimes find myself so invested in the story that despite knowing better I’ll begin to believe that something could turn out differently this time. The emotional resonance of a story well-told is sustaining.

I don’t have the patience for that!

Then you’re missing out. Here’s the thing: the book is always the same. The words on the page are the same words, and in some books they are as familiar as my own heartbeat. I call these my comfort books. I reach for them again and again and they fill up all my hollow spots. The books are always the same, and the characters make the same choices, and the stories have the same endings, but I am the one who has changed. The best way to describe it is to quote a passage from Catcher in the Rye in which Holden describes going to the Museum of Natural History over and over:

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they’re pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’s be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. You’d have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you’d have a new partner. Or you’d have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you’d heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you’d just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you’d be different in some way—I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.

—J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

Do you like to re-read books too, or do you always pursue new books? If you like to re-read, which books and why?

I am a romantic. I love the happily ever after of fairy tales. I want the girl to get the guy or vice versa, and I love reading about a good love story, but there’s way too much of it. I don’t mean that there are too many romance novels. I have no beef with that. I don’t even mind that so many of the YA novels being published are romances. What bothers me is that someone seems to have gotten the idea that all YA has to have at minimum a romance, and often a love triangle.

I confess that I am a long time past my teen years, but I refuse to believe that all teen novels must have a romance. When it’s well-written, regardless of the genre it works. The romance fits seamlessly into the story and it works. On the other hand, when the romance is inserted into the book for no reason other than that someone believes it should be there, it feels forced and out of place, and then it pretty much ruins the book for me. In a Huffington Post article called Lovesick and Tired: Unnecessary Romance in YA, Elizabeth Vail suggests that while there is nothing wrong with a good romance, if it’s unnecessary to the plot, don’t include it. If the romance doesn’t fit, readers will be able to tell, and it takes away from the book.

While fiction is to some extent a heightened and exaggerated version of reality, many of these romances go beyond exaggerated to ridiculous. In the Sci-Fi novel I’m reading right now, the heroine is smart, capable, a little bit arrogant, and pretty kick-butt. She makes money by retrieving teens from a virtual reality world if they’ve exceeded their permitted time in the game. In the virtual world, she can outfit herself with whatever kinds of weapons she needs, and she knows how to use them. At the start of the novel, she is contracted by the game’s creator to retrieve his son who is seemingly attempting to remain permanently in the game. They’ve never met. They don’t know anything about one another, and within 24 hours, she’s “seriously making out with him” as she puts it. The book is pretty exciting on its own. The virtual reality world is rich and complex. There is action and danger and tons of suspense to keep me turning the pages, which makes me wonder- why did they hook up? They are in a life-or-death situation. They are trapped in the virtual reality world where somebody or something might be trying to kill their real world selves, and yet they have time to take walks on the virtual beach and fall in love? Despite what we think, teens don’t automatically buy into the “insta-love” trope that has become all too common. Love at first sight is a wonderful and romantic idea, and it’s a device that can make a good romance novel seem even more romantic. But when the world is being taken over by aliens, or you’re in a life-or-death battle against rogue robots for example, how does that insta-love fit?

Perhaps even more overdone than insta-love are love triangles. I know that it’s fun to imagine two different guys fighting over you, and that it’s possible to legitimately have feelings for more than one guy at the same time. In Kiera Kass’ Selection series, the triangle made sense. America already had a guy that she felt something for before she entered the Selection. As she got to know the prince, she developed feelings for him too, but that didn’t mean she automatically stopped feeling something for her childhood love Aspen. Both characters were well-developed and interesting, and it wasn’t a given who she would choose.

On the other hand, in Zodiac by Romina Russell, the love triangle drove me nuts. The world she created was interesting, the story was solid and exciting, and I liked the main character Rhoma. As with the previous Sci-Fi I mentioned, the triangle just didn’t make sense. Rhoma’s world has been destroyed. The rest of the world is under threat, and Rhoma seems to be the only one who can save the entire universe from destruction. It would seem like she has more pressing problems than trying to figure out how to juggle two different guys.

in her article, Elizabeth Vail says that authors shouldn’t write multi-genre novels if they only respect one of the genres, and I highly agree. To quote Gloria Steinem, “If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?” In other words, you shouldn’t try to force a romance into a story where it doesn’t fit. Accept that it doesn’t fit into that particular story and work with what does. There will always be another foot for that shoe.

2015 was the first year I made any real concerted effort to track my reading habits. After having torched my Goodreads account a few years ago, I confess I came crawling back because I simply could not let go of the shelving function, flawed as it was. (Goodreads, I wish I could quit you!)

Kelly and I gave our Recommended Reads in last week’s podcast episode and looking back at my year in reading, I was slightly appalled by how, well, homogeneous my list looked. In the episode, Kelly and I did touch on how our reading tastes have shifted (and possibly calcified) as we have aged, how working in publishing has changed how much of a fair shot we give new books (spoiler: not as much as we used to), what genres and categories we prefer, etc.

Being incredibly specific with what you like to read helps you in a publishing career because it helps you understand niches in an already-incredibly specialized market, but now that I am two years past having worked the editorial desk, I wonder if that mentality hasn’t taken a slight toll on my reading habits. As a young child I was a voracious reader, voracious and indiscriminate. I read anything and everything. Not just books: I read short stories in the Highlights magazine, the Sunday funnies, articles in Time, those slim National Geographic nonfiction paperbacks about whales, etc.

But as I grew older, my reading tastes narrowed. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing; knowing what you like to read and why is an incredibly useful thing in both publishing and writing. However, while my number of books read is incredibly high, the number of genres, authors of color, LGBTQIA+ authors, disabled authors, etc. is not. I have read 1.5 nonfiction books this year (not including a collection of personal essays, which was a reread). The vast majority of the authors on my list are white. While I am a supporter of diverse voices in fiction, I have done a terrible job of putting my money where my mouth is.

Book Riot and the New York Public Library both have a 2016 Read Harder Challenge. I like the idea of challenging myself to read harder, and not just harder—to read broader. Next year I am going to challenge myself to read outside my comfort zone, and to better support marginalized voices. Author and blogger Dahlia Adler has several lists of recommendations that I think are a great place for me to start:

1. #OwnVoices in Neurodiversity and Disability
2. 2016-2017 YAs by Authors of Color
3. Jewish MG/NA/YA Authors
4. LGBTQIAP+ Books By and About People who Identify as LGBTQIAP+

What about you? Do any of you have reading goals? Do you track your reading? If so, what metrics do you track? Let us know in the comments!

A while back, author Malinda Lo tweeted a story where she came across a woman who told her that she deliberately left her character’s race ambiguous so the reader could decide. Malinda’s response was that the woman should define her character’s race clearly.

@malindalo I think what white people don't understand is that whiteness is not a race; it is erasure of ethnicity. It's the absence of race.

— JJ (@sjaejones) September 3, 2015

Bear with me here. I’ll explain my comment to Malinda in a bit.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I’ve actually broached this topic a few times, particularly when it comes to describing a character physically. I’ve been fairly adamant about wanting to know straight away if a character isn’t white, although some people take umbrage with that.

Needing to know a character’s race or ethnicity “right up-front” with “irrefutable textual evidence of a character’s not-whiteness” smacks of prejudice. Why would anyone assume that every character is white unless she is told otherwise?

Look. Being identified as non-white is not prejudicial…unless you have a problem with non-whiteness. There is theoretically is no value judgment on being black, Korean, biracial, or gay. Theoretically. Being ethnically non-white is a fact; facts don’t have value judgment. We, as humans, assign value judgments to neutral facts.

Author Linda Sue Park wrote in a comment in a discussion with the Cooperative Children’s Book Center about the concept of a race neutral character.

I am not black, but as a nonwhite I can attest that my race is an everyday issue. For Asians such as myself, it has negative ramifications far less often than for blacks in daily U.S. life, but not a day passes that I do not confront the question in some form. This is perhaps the single most difficult aspect for those of the majority complexion to understand: There may be moments or even hours when my Asianness is not at the surface of my thoughts, but NEVER a whole day, much less weeks or months.

She also very succinctly why people—even and especially non-white readers—read “white as default” in her blog post here.

I want to deconstruct the idea of whiteness a bit.¹ “White” isn’t a race; it’s a cultural construct. Caucasian is given as the racial designation, but not all Caucasians are “white”. For example, the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa are Caucasian…but they are not considered “white”. Neither, for that matter, were the Irish or the Italians at the turn of the early 20th century. Slowly, as these cultures became more assimilated to the “mainstream”, they became white.

This is what I meant when I said to Malinda that “white” is the absence of race. “White” erases all traces of Other. When people talk to me about living in a “post-racial” society, I have to focus all my efforts into not rolling my eyes so hard they fall out of my head. White people might live in a post-racial society; the rest of us do not. We cannot.

My dad is white. My mother is not. Because she is not, I am not. Because my features are more hers than my father’s, the world sees me as Asian. This is not something I ever “forget” or don’t think about.

My partner is also multiracial. His father is Goan-Indian, his mother is white. He is white-passing. Because his features are more his mother’s than his father’s, the world sees him as white. He has to constantly “prove” he is not.²

I describe myself as Asian. But white people don’t generally describe themselves as white; they have the privilege of not having to think about it. That’s why I will always, always read a character as white until told explicitly otherwise, and why I will never be able to see me in a racially “neutral” character.

Because white is the absence of color.

The development of our moral compasses begin when we are children. We are taught to understand the difference between right and wrong, and to make choices that are deemed to be morally acceptable. Tell the truth and do the right thing. But- as much as we know that this is what we “should do”, sometimes the “right” thing isn’t clear, and even when it is, sometimes, for a whole host of reasons, we don’t step up and do it.

This got me thinking about moral ambiguity in YA novels, and whether or not good/bad behaviour should be rewarded/punished. In fiction written for middle grade, there is always a moral lesson. Whether it’s subtle or hit-you-over-the-head clear, the good guy ultimately figures out the morally correct choice and is rewarded and learns a lesson.

In YA, morality is much more ambiguous, and it isn’t as simple as good wins, evil loses. Characters also become much more morally ambiguous. Supposedly good characters do wrong things (and often pay for it) and other characters repeatedly do bad things, but have redeeming qualities, making the line between good and bad much more blurry. (Outright villains such as Voldemort or President Snow aren’t included in this as they are not meant to be forgiven or redeemed)

Take for example Cammie Mcgovern’s upcoming novel A Step Towards Falling, the two main characters witness a mentally disabled female student being attacked, and neither of them acts. Emily is bookish and believes in activism, and Lucas is a football player hoping to earn a scholarship to a good college/university. Both teens have different reasons for not acting, neither of them malicious. They both know what they should have done, and both suffer consequences for failing to do it, but, as wrong as it was, they are easy to forgive because they attempt to make up for their actions. The author paints both teens as essentially good kids who made a bad choice, but is there a difference between deliberately choosing not to do the right thing, and not knowing what it is?

On other side of the coin, take characters who are more ambiguous. Not necessarily an Anti-Hero, but someone who does not necessarily follow a hero’s path. Someone who consistently makes bad choices and have questionable morals, but isn’t an outright villain. In fact, if the author paints them well, they are the most challenging characters to categorize, because their actions don’t tell the whole story. In Chris Lynch’s groundbreaking novel Inexcuseable, told from the perspective of the accused rapist. Keir isn’t a clear-cut bad-guy, nor is he exactly good. He permanently injured another football player on the field, he’s been getting into trouble at school, and he raped his best friend. On the surface, the signs would point to him being terrible, but he’s not. The trouble at school isn’t entirely his fault, and Keifer knows that rape is terrible, but he didn’t understand that he actually committed rape. Part of what makes Inexcusable such a powerful novel is Keifer’s struggle to come to terms with what he did, and figuring out how to redeem himself.

One of my favourite quotes from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events series comes in the third book The Grimm Grotto) where he talks about good and evil. He says: “People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.” In my mind, this is a perfect way to think about the morally ambiguity of not only YA characters, but most people. Does YA lit have a responsibility to teach a moral lesson? Maybe, but perhaps the most important thing is that in reading about these characters, we in the processes think about our own actions, and learn something about ourselves.

by

JJ

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Lately, my partner and I have been making our way through Black Mirror in the evenings as a way to unwind after a long time of work. Only it’s not exactly the most relaxing, mindless sort of television, so we often end up more keyed up afterwards than not.

What is Black Mirror? It’s hard to describe, but I would call it The Twilight Zone for our age. Where The Twilight Zone tackled topics like isolation, deception, witch hunts—topics relevant in the 1950s, still in the midst of a Cold War and dealing with McCarthyism and the Communist blacklists—Black Mirror deals with ideas more relevant to us: our relationship with media and technology. The Black Mirror of the title refers to the black mirrors in our lives: our screens. Our phone screens, our TV screens, our computer screens.

Elsewhere on the internet, I’ve seen Black Mirror described as science fiction, as horror, as suspense, and sometimes, as satire. I never really thought of programs like Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone as satire, but it did get me thinking.

I am a fan of satire. I love when writers and comedians hang lampshades on the ridiculous elements in our society. But if someone were to ask me to define satire, I’m not sure I could come up with a good definition, or even that many good examples, especially if Black Mirror falls under that umbrella.

In literature, of course, the work of Jonathan Swift is largely satirical. His A Modest Proposal is generally the first piece of work that comes to mind when people think of satire. By default I tend to think of satire funny, but Black Mirror, while darkly humorous at times, is not what I call funny. It’s more often what I call unsettling. It makes me think, it makes me uncomfortable, and I like that it makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve always admired satirists. I think the ability to wield your words as metaphorical weapons against the follies and evils of society is both admirable and incredibly difficult. Satire, I think, is hard to sustain in long form, just as I think horror is often difficult to sustain over the length of a novel. (I tend to think the short story format works best for both.) When we read novels, I think a vast majority of people read for story and character and less about A Grand Idea. Satire, by its very nature, is more about the Idea than the Characters, or the Character as Example. Many of the characters in Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone are like that: used to illustrate a point.

I think speculative fiction (specifically a lot science fiction) can also be about Ideas more than Characters. In the past year, I read two science fiction novels that grappled with the notion of gender: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie and Lock In by John Scalzi. Both novels are quite good, and while I found their different uses of gender interesting, I connected emotionally with the former but not as much with the latter. Why is that? Perhaps it’s a failing on my part, but I felt Ancillary Justice was about one character’s journey, whereas Lock In was more about a concept. But does that mean Lock In is a “lesser” novel? I don’t think so. I tend to think of Lock In as an Idea Novel, more concerned with questions than characters. A form of satire, if you like.

That’s it from me! What do y’all think? Do you like Idea Novels? Or not?

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S. Jae-Jones (called JJ) is a writer, artist, and adrenaline junkie. Before moving down to grits country, she was an editor at St. Martin’s Press in New York City, where she read and acquired YA. When not obsessing over books, she can be found rock climbing, skydiving, or taking her dog on ridiculously long hikes. A southern California native, she now lives in North Carolina with her doctor Bear, a stuffed baby harp seal named White-Harp, and a husky-dog called Bentley. Other places to find JJ include Twitter, Tumblr, and her blog.