This past week, before I left on vacation, I grabbed the first book I could find on the shelf on my way out the door. In this case, it wound up being the Young Adult classic, Crash Course, by Nicole Davidson.
The set up is fairly standard, 8 high schoolers go out into the woods of for an SAT prep course over the extended Thanksgiving break at Deep Creek Lake with just a teacher keeping track of them. We have Kelly, who's going mainly because Thanksgiving has been awkward since her mother left; Paula, who's boyfriend has already gotten an appointment to the Air Force Academy most of the way across the US from Maryland; Isabel, a new student who's along to make friends; Angel, the goth girl who goes out of her way to be strange an unusual; Jeff, the wrestler who has a crush on Kelly; Chris, the football player trying to get into UCLA who also has anger issues; Nathan, the guy from the wrong side of the tracks who plays foil most of the book; and Brian, Paula's boyfriend. Watching over everyone is Mr. Porter, an unpopular teacher who no one knows why he's doing this.
We focus mainly on Kelly throughout the book, with occasional passages covering another character briefly. (Although to be honest, the prologue lets out more information than we should have, as astute readers will likely figure out half the mystery early on.) Essentially, Deep Creek Lake is cold and has an underground creek that feeds the lake in the middle. Legends tell of young Susquehanna lovers who returned to the lake after finding their tribe slaughtered, and asking Gweemush, the underworld guardian what to do. Needless to say, his answer was to join him, so they drowned themselves.A story that Isabel tells around the fire the first night. The next morning, before dawn, a scream awakens everyone, and we run out to find several characters outside the cabin who shouldn't be, and Paula claiming Brian had been in a boat in the lake with a stranger who pushed him in to the lake.
With no bus coming back until Sunday, and no sign of Brian or his body, Mr. Porter sets off to get help. He never returns. The seven folks left start becoming more and more at odds, as everyone secrets come out. Nathan gets stabbed, but survives, even though he's mostly unconscious.
Eventually, Kelly pieces everything together and like a young Miss Marple, brings all the truth of the weekend to light.
While there are some fairly major plot holes, and a premise that seems largely unlikely in the modern age (one supervisor? no way to contact the outside in case of emergency?), it does provide an amusing distraction that holds up several years after publication.
She actually wrote a sequel a few years later, but I don't remember the name of it, nor did I particularly like it. But that's neither here nor there.
Showing posts with label young adult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label young adult. Show all posts
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Friday, November 16, 2012
SHAZAM!
The Lightning Thief was much better than it had any right to be.
I'll admit, I checked it out on a whim, having been bombarded at work by advertisements for the new book in the series that follows the series this one starts, but I was impressed.
Having avoided the movie, the hype surrounding the books, etc, I wasn't sure what to expect. One of the first things I noticed was the book was published via Hyperion, a Disney company. While that's usually a a good sign, I still remember the cinematic abortion that was Hercules. (For those who can't tell yet, I'm a Greek mythology nut. Disney's retelling of Hercules [or Heracles if one wants to be CORRECT], was so far off the story that I found myself vowing to never watch a Disney film again. Not that I kept that vow... And the funny part is that I had no issues with Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Mind you, trying to make a book with one whole heck of a lot of rapine and a dead heroine at the end into a children's movie must have been one heck of a challenge...)
Then I started reading the book. At first, my mind cynically wrote it off as a Harry Potter knock off. I mean, while Percy's life is not nearly as miserable as Harry's prior to Hogwarts, there is an amount of similarity there. Abusive home life, trouble at school... Things do take a different tack when Percy's math teacher turns out to literally be a harpy and attacks him on a field trip. (I could only wish my field trips were that exciting.)
His Latin teacher throws him a pen that becomes a sword, and all of a sudden, we're off to another world. Sort of. First, we have to go back to Manhattan to meet Percy's loving mother and his horribly abusive step-father. (Unlike Harry, Percy's mother is still alive. His father, however, is notably absent.) His mom ends up taking him out on Long Island to get away from the horrible step father, where in they get attacked by the minotaur. less than 50 pages in and we've already had two fairly major "monsters" from the Greek mythos show up.
Percy manages to defeat the minotaur, barely. In the process, he loses his mother and consciousness. Which is when we enter Camp Half-Blood, sort of a summer camp for demigods. The camp is run by Chiron (who passes for human by sitting in a wheel chair) and Dionysus (on punishment detail for chasing too many nymphs. And very glossed over, since this is Young Adult.)
As the book continues, we find out Poseidon is Percy's father, and that Zeus's Thunderbolt has been stolen. Zeus blames Poseidon, Poseidon thinks it was probably Hades, and Percy ends up going on a quest with Annabelle (daughter of Athena) and Grover (a satyr) to Los Angeles to enter the underworld to get the thunderbolt back.
Along the way, the meet several more monsters, a few gods, and generally try to become heroes who survive their legend.
I've really enjoyed it. About the time they started the quest is about the time I stopped comparing it to Rowling. I did have a few quibbles with the book though.
Chief among them: Athena was chaste, so I can't see her having half-breed children. (Seriously, the book mentions that most of the Olympian females were chaste; I realize having Athena be Annabelle's mother helps the plot along, but still...)
Another part that had me quibbling involves a fight with the Chimera on the St. Louis Arch's observation deck. Percy finds up falling out of the arch and landing in the Mississippi. For anyone who's ever been to the Arch, you understand this goes well beyond improbable in the manner in which the fall is described. Because there's still a lot of park, embankment, road, and levee before you hit water. Also, given Poseidon has dominion over the sea, I can't see him having much influence over polluted fresh water.
I also had a minor umbrage with how Hades was presented at the outset. Riordan made up for this when Percy and his entourage actually hit the underworld. (Mind you, I had similar issues with Hercules on this as well. Yeah, Hades has issues. but he's generally not quite the horrible god he gets portrayed as in modern takes on the mythology. I honestly think modern Western thought hates him because of what he represents.)
Yeah, I'm late getting on the bandwagon. But if The Lightning Thief is any indication, the series should be fun reading and an interesting take on ancient civilization.
I'll admit, I checked it out on a whim, having been bombarded at work by advertisements for the new book in the series that follows the series this one starts, but I was impressed.
Having avoided the movie, the hype surrounding the books, etc, I wasn't sure what to expect. One of the first things I noticed was the book was published via Hyperion, a Disney company. While that's usually a a good sign, I still remember the cinematic abortion that was Hercules. (For those who can't tell yet, I'm a Greek mythology nut. Disney's retelling of Hercules [or Heracles if one wants to be CORRECT], was so far off the story that I found myself vowing to never watch a Disney film again. Not that I kept that vow... And the funny part is that I had no issues with Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Mind you, trying to make a book with one whole heck of a lot of rapine and a dead heroine at the end into a children's movie must have been one heck of a challenge...)
Then I started reading the book. At first, my mind cynically wrote it off as a Harry Potter knock off. I mean, while Percy's life is not nearly as miserable as Harry's prior to Hogwarts, there is an amount of similarity there. Abusive home life, trouble at school... Things do take a different tack when Percy's math teacher turns out to literally be a harpy and attacks him on a field trip. (I could only wish my field trips were that exciting.)
His Latin teacher throws him a pen that becomes a sword, and all of a sudden, we're off to another world. Sort of. First, we have to go back to Manhattan to meet Percy's loving mother and his horribly abusive step-father. (Unlike Harry, Percy's mother is still alive. His father, however, is notably absent.) His mom ends up taking him out on Long Island to get away from the horrible step father, where in they get attacked by the minotaur. less than 50 pages in and we've already had two fairly major "monsters" from the Greek mythos show up.
Percy manages to defeat the minotaur, barely. In the process, he loses his mother and consciousness. Which is when we enter Camp Half-Blood, sort of a summer camp for demigods. The camp is run by Chiron (who passes for human by sitting in a wheel chair) and Dionysus (on punishment detail for chasing too many nymphs. And very glossed over, since this is Young Adult.)
As the book continues, we find out Poseidon is Percy's father, and that Zeus's Thunderbolt has been stolen. Zeus blames Poseidon, Poseidon thinks it was probably Hades, and Percy ends up going on a quest with Annabelle (daughter of Athena) and Grover (a satyr) to Los Angeles to enter the underworld to get the thunderbolt back.
Along the way, the meet several more monsters, a few gods, and generally try to become heroes who survive their legend.
I've really enjoyed it. About the time they started the quest is about the time I stopped comparing it to Rowling. I did have a few quibbles with the book though.
Chief among them: Athena was chaste, so I can't see her having half-breed children. (Seriously, the book mentions that most of the Olympian females were chaste; I realize having Athena be Annabelle's mother helps the plot along, but still...)
Another part that had me quibbling involves a fight with the Chimera on the St. Louis Arch's observation deck. Percy finds up falling out of the arch and landing in the Mississippi. For anyone who's ever been to the Arch, you understand this goes well beyond improbable in the manner in which the fall is described. Because there's still a lot of park, embankment, road, and levee before you hit water. Also, given Poseidon has dominion over the sea, I can't see him having much influence over polluted fresh water.
I also had a minor umbrage with how Hades was presented at the outset. Riordan made up for this when Percy and his entourage actually hit the underworld. (Mind you, I had similar issues with Hercules on this as well. Yeah, Hades has issues. but he's generally not quite the horrible god he gets portrayed as in modern takes on the mythology. I honestly think modern Western thought hates him because of what he represents.)
Yeah, I'm late getting on the bandwagon. But if The Lightning Thief is any indication, the series should be fun reading and an interesting take on ancient civilization.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Let's dig something out from the grave of the past...
I was going to start my review of the current reading (Broken Blade by Kelly McCullough, which will be fun, since I can tie it to at least two other series), but, given it's Halloween Eve and I had a few discussions today that I thought might make better blog fodder....
A conversation with a coworker today brought back memories of Main News, a store that used to be in my hometown. It was kind of a convenience store that also sold lots and lots of paperbacks, magazines, newspapers and the like. Most of the paperbacks fell into the best seller or pulp categories, but they did have a young adult section, which wound up emptying my very slim wallet most weeks. When new owners bought the business in the mid 1980's, they added pipe tobacco and cigars to the milieu. Such scents as pipe tobacco tend to get in things, namely pulpy paperbacks. So many books of my youth still carry the scent, and to this day, smoke shops tend to bring back fond memories of browsing the wire racks for something of interest and looking at the comic books for something that caught my eye.
Oddly enough, one of my recurring nightmares involves going in to Main News and finding a labyrinth of books that I have to navigate.
Sadly, the building holding Main News fell apart and had to be torn down not long after I moved away for college. Is it odd that my heart holds a special place for a bookstore? (As a side note, the book I most remember buying here was the 3 in 1 novelization of the first 3 Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Which was funny, since the novelization of Dream Warriors was obviously based on an earlier script. The first 2 were fairly synoptic with their respective sources , but the third...Order of death was off, some of the one liners were WAY off, and the plot deviates at several points.)
Speaking of childhood horror, I was also reminded of another story almost no one has ever heard. I'm not sure if it still exists or not, but it used to be Scholastic would send home fliers with books listed appropriate for specific ages groups. Students would fill out the order, bring payment in, and BOOM! A month later, a bunch of books you forgot about arrived.
Well, once upon a time, I dreamed of a book. I recall the dream clearly, the book was glowing in my bedroom drawing down malevolent spirits. A few moths later, the book showed up on the Scholastic list. A book I had dreamed of, there in print waiting for me to invite it into my house. That book was When Midnight Comes... by Carol Beach York. Which didn't end up drawing malevolent spirits into my bedroom, but instead cured my insomnia. Seriously. It was basically a happy middle class family being invaded by an emo cousin, whom they blame for supernatural goings on. They kick the emo cousin out, and BAM! Midnight comes. Seriously. Worst juvenile horror ever.
On the other hand, some insomnia was caused by juvenile horror titled The House on Hackman's Hill by Joan Lowery Nixon. Which is funny, since the first half of the book is an elderly neighbor telling a story about Mr. Hackman and his stolen mummy and how a statue of Anubis pretty much came to life and made Mr. Hackman vanish; the second half is pretty much Jeff and Debbie breaking into the house and experiencing the same damn thing. Scared me to death as a child. It was a few years before I could read any Egyptian mythology, because I was convinced that Anubis was going to come chase me down over missing mummy eyes. Mind you, I read it again in my 20's and it wasn't nearly as nightmare inducing as it was when I was younger. It's still a good read, well constructed, and honestly, the Anubis Statue is more or less doing its job. But I count this book as the gateway I found to get me sucked into horror fictions.
So, what books from childhood do you remember that shaped what you read today? And any bookstores you remember fondly?
A conversation with a coworker today brought back memories of Main News, a store that used to be in my hometown. It was kind of a convenience store that also sold lots and lots of paperbacks, magazines, newspapers and the like. Most of the paperbacks fell into the best seller or pulp categories, but they did have a young adult section, which wound up emptying my very slim wallet most weeks. When new owners bought the business in the mid 1980's, they added pipe tobacco and cigars to the milieu. Such scents as pipe tobacco tend to get in things, namely pulpy paperbacks. So many books of my youth still carry the scent, and to this day, smoke shops tend to bring back fond memories of browsing the wire racks for something of interest and looking at the comic books for something that caught my eye.
Oddly enough, one of my recurring nightmares involves going in to Main News and finding a labyrinth of books that I have to navigate.
Sadly, the building holding Main News fell apart and had to be torn down not long after I moved away for college. Is it odd that my heart holds a special place for a bookstore? (As a side note, the book I most remember buying here was the 3 in 1 novelization of the first 3 Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Which was funny, since the novelization of Dream Warriors was obviously based on an earlier script. The first 2 were fairly synoptic with their respective sources , but the third...Order of death was off, some of the one liners were WAY off, and the plot deviates at several points.)
Speaking of childhood horror, I was also reminded of another story almost no one has ever heard. I'm not sure if it still exists or not, but it used to be Scholastic would send home fliers with books listed appropriate for specific ages groups. Students would fill out the order, bring payment in, and BOOM! A month later, a bunch of books you forgot about arrived.
Well, once upon a time, I dreamed of a book. I recall the dream clearly, the book was glowing in my bedroom drawing down malevolent spirits. A few moths later, the book showed up on the Scholastic list. A book I had dreamed of, there in print waiting for me to invite it into my house. That book was When Midnight Comes... by Carol Beach York. Which didn't end up drawing malevolent spirits into my bedroom, but instead cured my insomnia. Seriously. It was basically a happy middle class family being invaded by an emo cousin, whom they blame for supernatural goings on. They kick the emo cousin out, and BAM! Midnight comes. Seriously. Worst juvenile horror ever.
On the other hand, some insomnia was caused by juvenile horror titled The House on Hackman's Hill by Joan Lowery Nixon. Which is funny, since the first half of the book is an elderly neighbor telling a story about Mr. Hackman and his stolen mummy and how a statue of Anubis pretty much came to life and made Mr. Hackman vanish; the second half is pretty much Jeff and Debbie breaking into the house and experiencing the same damn thing. Scared me to death as a child. It was a few years before I could read any Egyptian mythology, because I was convinced that Anubis was going to come chase me down over missing mummy eyes. Mind you, I read it again in my 20's and it wasn't nearly as nightmare inducing as it was when I was younger. It's still a good read, well constructed, and honestly, the Anubis Statue is more or less doing its job. But I count this book as the gateway I found to get me sucked into horror fictions.
So, what books from childhood do you remember that shaped what you read today? And any bookstores you remember fondly?
Friday, October 19, 2012
The joys of trying to better organize the at home library
So, I started sifting through my book collection, which remains mostly still boxed from the last move. As it is I keep finding things that need to take priority over buying a bookshelf, most of my personal collection remains boxed up, with me occasionally sifting through it to find something that's bothering me. (In today's instance, I was looking for Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett's fabulous Good Omens.) Well, while looking through my over large collection of paperback Mercedes Lackey and Sharon R. Green novels, I found a lone hardcover I got through Paperback Swap a few years back.
And, oh Cthulhu, did it bring back memories.
When Jeff Comes Home by Catherine Atkins is packaged as Young Adult fiction, but wow, there's more triggers in there than on a fanfic website. The plot centers around Jeff, kidnapped on the way home from a baseball game, returning to his parents about 3 years after the kidnapping. We deal with his re-integration to high school life, what really is Stockholm Syndrome in relation to his kidnapper, and about halfway through the book, the arrest of the kidnapper.
It's a very hard book to read. Jeff goes out of his way to not talk about the variety of abuses the kidnapper put him through, which makes it worse when after the arrest, said kidnapper is telling everyone that the sex between them was consensual and instigated by Jeff. Which, given Jeff is in High School, causes abuse and bullying by his new peers. Because, hey, it's ok that he was getting raped by his 40 some odd year old kidnapper, because obviously Jeff was some kind of faggot who deserved it.
I think it was Hero girl who posted something a while back about the idea of things we fantasize about being a hell of a lot nastier in the reality. (I delved through her archives looking for the post, but I either misremembered it or it was posted in another on-line forum). I know I myself, standing on my own borders of kink vs vanilla, used to contemplate such things if they would have happened to me. But really, this book is an illustration of what even a virtual reality can be like. Because in reality, Jeff probably would have been killed. Even in this virtual reality his life is hell. I spent half the narrative wanting to hug him or smack the crap out of him. Neither of which would have been the correct response to where he was emotionally during the narrative. And in a fantasy setting, you can say "no" and leave. Which doesn't work in a real situation.
Also, having started the actual coming out process in high school (I'll present it thusly. One of the first openly gay people I ever really talked to divided coming out into 4 parts. 1. Coming out to yourself. 2. Coming out to your friends. 3. Coming out to your family. 4. Coming out to the world. I had started part 1 prior to high school, but I found out that starting part 2 in high school social setting more or less got the ball rolling on part 4. I survived, but oh lord, it was hard on occasion.), the interaction with his less supportive classmates started bring up a lot of old hurts I thought I'd moved beyond.
It also is a striking illustration of a dysfunctional family. Not only the fucked up relationship between Jeff and his kidnapper, but the re-integration with his real family. Mind you, there's one whole hell of a lot of stress on the relationships here, what with 2 younger siblings mostly ignored while the parents are trying to keep hope alive that their golden oldest son is alive and well somewhere, a wife and husband being torn apart by grief... And the fact no one want sto really talk about any of it. Dad keeps trying to get Jeff to talk about his experience, yet ignores the pain elsewhere in his family.
It's about 250 pages of ugly and trigger situations. It's also exceptionally well written and hard to put down. I know it's YA, but it's also not one I'd recommend to folks under 15ish.
And, oh Cthulhu, did it bring back memories.
When Jeff Comes Home by Catherine Atkins is packaged as Young Adult fiction, but wow, there's more triggers in there than on a fanfic website. The plot centers around Jeff, kidnapped on the way home from a baseball game, returning to his parents about 3 years after the kidnapping. We deal with his re-integration to high school life, what really is Stockholm Syndrome in relation to his kidnapper, and about halfway through the book, the arrest of the kidnapper.
It's a very hard book to read. Jeff goes out of his way to not talk about the variety of abuses the kidnapper put him through, which makes it worse when after the arrest, said kidnapper is telling everyone that the sex between them was consensual and instigated by Jeff. Which, given Jeff is in High School, causes abuse and bullying by his new peers. Because, hey, it's ok that he was getting raped by his 40 some odd year old kidnapper, because obviously Jeff was some kind of faggot who deserved it.
I think it was Hero girl who posted something a while back about the idea of things we fantasize about being a hell of a lot nastier in the reality. (I delved through her archives looking for the post, but I either misremembered it or it was posted in another on-line forum). I know I myself, standing on my own borders of kink vs vanilla, used to contemplate such things if they would have happened to me. But really, this book is an illustration of what even a virtual reality can be like. Because in reality, Jeff probably would have been killed. Even in this virtual reality his life is hell. I spent half the narrative wanting to hug him or smack the crap out of him. Neither of which would have been the correct response to where he was emotionally during the narrative. And in a fantasy setting, you can say "no" and leave. Which doesn't work in a real situation.
Also, having started the actual coming out process in high school (I'll present it thusly. One of the first openly gay people I ever really talked to divided coming out into 4 parts. 1. Coming out to yourself. 2. Coming out to your friends. 3. Coming out to your family. 4. Coming out to the world. I had started part 1 prior to high school, but I found out that starting part 2 in high school social setting more or less got the ball rolling on part 4. I survived, but oh lord, it was hard on occasion.), the interaction with his less supportive classmates started bring up a lot of old hurts I thought I'd moved beyond.
It also is a striking illustration of a dysfunctional family. Not only the fucked up relationship between Jeff and his kidnapper, but the re-integration with his real family. Mind you, there's one whole hell of a lot of stress on the relationships here, what with 2 younger siblings mostly ignored while the parents are trying to keep hope alive that their golden oldest son is alive and well somewhere, a wife and husband being torn apart by grief... And the fact no one want sto really talk about any of it. Dad keeps trying to get Jeff to talk about his experience, yet ignores the pain elsewhere in his family.
It's about 250 pages of ugly and trigger situations. It's also exceptionally well written and hard to put down. I know it's YA, but it's also not one I'd recommend to folks under 15ish.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Ah, the notorious Young Adult novel...
Since for a few of you, this is the first blog of mine you've ever read, this is going to be a wonderful illustration of how my thought process works.
Today was day 3 of a 4 day off weekend. As such, I wound up driving north to one of the outlet malls that actually has store I want to shop at and has prices that make me feel like it was worth driving up there. On the way home, I stopped in Ashland, Ohio, to hit one of the Amish markets that has really good cheese and pickles. And fudge. Pumpkin Pie fudge.
Anyway, I was hungry, so I drove into town and hit the McDonald's (Hey, Monopoly started and I want to WIN!) south of the Ashland University campus. And then I walked around campus for a while, remembering my time there.
See, I actually applied to Ashland and was accepted back in 1994, mainly because of the experience I had in 1992 there at the Governor's Institute for Creativity. Where in my particular group wrote, directed and performed an original one act musical. (I wrote 1.5 verses of a song and most of the scoring for the song. I also contributed most of the humor to the script, since adolescents and hormones usually equates with emo.)
So, what the hell does any of this have to do with a book blog?
We had two "talent shows" during the 2 week camp. A few folks read excerpts from novels they were writing. I read a story I had written that was based on a 2 sentence synopsis in a Christopher Pike book.
Yes, Christopher Pike. Some of you of a certain age may remember his rather large catalog. And R. L Stein.
Back in my high school days, I was known for reading tomes. Usually Steven King's back catalog, Anne Rice's Vampires, Clive Barker's stuff...Stuff that was very adult and huge time sinks. Thankfully, there's a wonderful world of Young Adult novels that are also horror themed. Christopher Pike (Showing my lack of Silver Age geekdom, I found out later that pseudonym refers to the original Star Trek) had a bunch of these. Of course, I also noticed that he tended to slip in New Age philosophy into many of the later novels, which made them more fun for me to read.
Mind you, he also wrote a few that went a bit on the preachy side. The Road to Nowhere is a good example of this. Not only does it center around a time loop (which is one of the sci-fi conventions that never ceases to annoy me), it also gets into the abortion debate. When I reached the last page, I gave the book a razzberry.
He also wrote a few which I still have copies of and still occasionally pick up and read. The best of them is The Midnight Club. It centers on 5 teens in a hospice (and believe me, I wish more hospices were converted mansions on the Pacific coast) who meet at midnight every night and tell stories. (If I tell you World's End is my favorite Sandman collection, will you see a pattern emerge?) One of the major plot points revolves around past lives and shared karma. But the real reason I loved it so much as a kid? One of the supporting characters turns out to be gay. Which is a major rarity in Young Adult (or maybe not anymore, it's been a while since I've had any reason to read it. That, and YA seems to be expanding a bit. See Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, etc. Now that Dumbledore came out [after he's dead, of course]...). But there it was. A gay character I could semi-relate with in a book. Something that was largely missing in my teen years.
He did write some Adult fiction as well, but the only one of his adult novels that I ever read centered around using K to bump people out of their bodies so dead Nazis could possess them. It was kind of stupid.
But still, Young Adult got a largely undeserved bad reputation. Much like "Adult" fiction, there's often hidden gems among the dross, which makes me suspect the ones I liked best had the same ghostwriters.
Today was day 3 of a 4 day off weekend. As such, I wound up driving north to one of the outlet malls that actually has store I want to shop at and has prices that make me feel like it was worth driving up there. On the way home, I stopped in Ashland, Ohio, to hit one of the Amish markets that has really good cheese and pickles. And fudge. Pumpkin Pie fudge.
Anyway, I was hungry, so I drove into town and hit the McDonald's (Hey, Monopoly started and I want to WIN!) south of the Ashland University campus. And then I walked around campus for a while, remembering my time there.
See, I actually applied to Ashland and was accepted back in 1994, mainly because of the experience I had in 1992 there at the Governor's Institute for Creativity. Where in my particular group wrote, directed and performed an original one act musical. (I wrote 1.5 verses of a song and most of the scoring for the song. I also contributed most of the humor to the script, since adolescents and hormones usually equates with emo.)
So, what the hell does any of this have to do with a book blog?
We had two "talent shows" during the 2 week camp. A few folks read excerpts from novels they were writing. I read a story I had written that was based on a 2 sentence synopsis in a Christopher Pike book.
Yes, Christopher Pike. Some of you of a certain age may remember his rather large catalog. And R. L Stein.
Back in my high school days, I was known for reading tomes. Usually Steven King's back catalog, Anne Rice's Vampires, Clive Barker's stuff...Stuff that was very adult and huge time sinks. Thankfully, there's a wonderful world of Young Adult novels that are also horror themed. Christopher Pike (Showing my lack of Silver Age geekdom, I found out later that pseudonym refers to the original Star Trek) had a bunch of these. Of course, I also noticed that he tended to slip in New Age philosophy into many of the later novels, which made them more fun for me to read.
Mind you, he also wrote a few that went a bit on the preachy side. The Road to Nowhere is a good example of this. Not only does it center around a time loop (which is one of the sci-fi conventions that never ceases to annoy me), it also gets into the abortion debate. When I reached the last page, I gave the book a razzberry.
He also wrote a few which I still have copies of and still occasionally pick up and read. The best of them is The Midnight Club. It centers on 5 teens in a hospice (and believe me, I wish more hospices were converted mansions on the Pacific coast) who meet at midnight every night and tell stories. (If I tell you World's End is my favorite Sandman collection, will you see a pattern emerge?) One of the major plot points revolves around past lives and shared karma. But the real reason I loved it so much as a kid? One of the supporting characters turns out to be gay. Which is a major rarity in Young Adult (or maybe not anymore, it's been a while since I've had any reason to read it. That, and YA seems to be expanding a bit. See Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, etc. Now that Dumbledore came out [after he's dead, of course]...). But there it was. A gay character I could semi-relate with in a book. Something that was largely missing in my teen years.
He did write some Adult fiction as well, but the only one of his adult novels that I ever read centered around using K to bump people out of their bodies so dead Nazis could possess them. It was kind of stupid.
But still, Young Adult got a largely undeserved bad reputation. Much like "Adult" fiction, there's often hidden gems among the dross, which makes me suspect the ones I liked best had the same ghostwriters.
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