Okay, four things happened in the last week that are causing me to pseudo-cheat on my 52 books in a year goal. Here they are, in order…
1. I found an amazing blog called The Dairi Burger, which brilliantly ridicules books I used to read as pre-teen called Sweet Valley High books (you can read more about that here). This caused me to think about what books I really did love as a teen and what it was about them that was so great…the kind of books that in my mind still manage to seem good and that I suspect will at least hold up partially over time (note: this would NOT include the SVH books).
2. I wrote a book…a while ago. It’s not a bad little book, but it’s not the great American novel that I (and everyone else it seems) so desperately wants to write. I’ve had to accept that maybe this book (and the two parts that go with it – yes, it’s a trilogy, *sigh*) just is what it is,. And maybe that it is just a middle ground between the young adult books that were a bit above the norm and and quite a bit below the great American novel that I’d like to write someday. Maybe I’m just not ready to write the great American novel…maybe I never will be. But perhaps I should go back and re-read some of this YA material and see if I’m nuts, or if it really does hold up pretty well?
3. I read I Am Legend this past weekend and really enjoyed it. I would consider it the middle ground of which I speak above. It is certainly more intelligent than a young adult novel and has more ramifications and themes behind it, but it is certainly too “pop” by today’s standards to be considered a “Great American Novel” whatever the hell that even means. Although written in 1954 it was certainly pretty revolutionary for its time and would probably not have been called ‘pop’, but we live now, so I’ll deal with now. So this is maybe the vague middle ground that I am looking for. I read it in a few hours, which makes me feel like it cannot be so important, but I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy in a few hours and I not only thought that was brilliant but it won the damn Pulitzer Prize! Perhaps the real problem here is that I need to redefine my definition of “Great American Novel”. More on that later, back to the point at hand…
4. I found (and by found I mean located on the internet and purchased very deliberately) a few of my long lost favorite young adult novels. I plan to re-read them as “research & development” and if it helps me toward my 52 book goal because they each only take two hours to read then so be it! Yea me! Anyone want to argue with my well documented justification here? Go ahead, give it a shot…
As a compromise, I promise not to count any more than 6 of these books, as that is officially how many books I am behind in my book a week goals…deal? Here’s a little teaser preview…
