Books feed my brain. I absolutely adore reading. I even like reading for my classes--mostly because when I was in AP English in high school, I skipped reading all the classics and just bullshitted my way through the quizzes. Terrible, huh? But now, with my literature classes, I'm reading all the stuff I missed and even though they're sometimes tedious, use antiquated language, or not as edge-of-my-seat cliffhanger-y as I'd like, I still enjoy them.
When I read anything, I am transported to the time and place of the story. My imagination allows me to become fully immersed in the words until I am seeing everything the characters are. My favorite genre is paranormal romance--I like vampires and werewolves and faeries, oh my! But I do enjoy reading anything, as long as it is a good story, one I can get into, and when that happens, the genre doesn't matter so much.
Yesterday, I read The History of Mary Prince, written by Mary Prince, who was a slave in Bermuda, Antigua and England (even though slavery was outlawed there, she was still treated as a slave by her owners [how I detest that word]) in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The story is written in her own words as told to a lawyer who knew it was important enough to publish. It broke my heart. I don't know how one human being can think that they could own another human being, like a cow or a chicken. Mary's story made my angry. It made me sad. It made me think.
As I was reading, I was transported to the steamy West Indies, to the saltwater ponds where Mary and the other slaves worked to get the salt out of the muck in the heat. She said they would rise at dawn, toil until noon, eat a smattering of corn soup, and go back to work until dark, and they would get to eat another bit of flavorless corn soup. And if it rained, they had to do their best to keep the salt coming and keep it dry, and if they weren't successful, they would be beaten or whipped or both. She said the heat from the sun would blister their uncovered skin, and the stagnant water would breed sores that became boils, and if they got sick from the boils, which inevitably happened, the people were still expected to work. I cannot fathom the deaths she saw.
Mary's story brought tears to my eyes, harsh words to my lips--and shame to my heart.
That is how books feed my mind. They make me think, and react, and wonder, and learn.
I follow some of my favorite authors' blogs, like Lilith Saintcrow (I was just introduced to her a few months ago) and Jen Lancaster. Lilith Saintcrow writes about a future world of demons and psionics--humans that are trained to be more by working with magic and their innate parapsychological talents (the Dante Valentine series); and another slightly less future world where the paranormal creatures (including vampires, werewolves and demons) have been recognized and live alongside humans (the Jill Kismet series). As different from Lilith as can be, Jen Lancaster is a humor writer who first gained fame writing about how she fell from making huge bank as a dot-commer to living in the 'hood and asking her parents for rent money (Bitter is the New Black was the first memoir). Her books make me laugh out loud. I don't mean just a single "ha!" but full on guffawing-until-I'm-crying. Her blog is hilarious, too--her latest entry has a YouTube video that made me giggle so much the dogs were trying to figure out who else was in the room with me because I usually only laugh that much with my husband.
As much as I need the fantasy worlds of writers like Lilith Saintcrow and J.R. Ward, I also need the humor of Jen Lancaster, the sometimes-funny but always sexy world of Kresley Cole, and the morality challenges of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake. Recently, I've discovered Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series of faeries living in Pennsylvania, Amanda Hocking's Trylle trilogy about beautiful trolls, and Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (which was so good that we've watched all 3 of the Swedish-made movies). Of course, there are the dependable mysteries combined with well-written storytelling of Nora Roberts, that are like coming home--you know what to expect and the same people are always going to be there. I read Nora Roberts when I need a break from the paranormal worlds I usually inhabit.
In the last few years, I've also come to realize that the genre of Young Adult fiction is not only for young adults--take the Twilight series, the one that started it all. My friend Holley and I always marvel that when we were both working in separate bookstores in the late 90s and early 2000s, we noticed these books with red apples on the covers, but never really looked at them because they were shelved in the YA section. I mean, come on, who reads books meant for kids? We're grown-ups, right? Wrong! Stephanie Meyers wrote those books with a flair for the dramatic and cliffhanger-y that has captured the world's imaginations. I will say this: as much as I'd like a bunch of my favorite stories to come to life via television or movies, the Twlight movies are merely...okay. The f/x are average and the actors portraying the characters are mediocre. But this criticism is not because the stories are bad; it's a reflection on the movie industry wanting to capitalize on the hotness of the books as quickly as they can. If you've heard about or seen the movies, forget them and read the books--you won't regret it.
Along with Twilight, a couple of the book series I mentioned above--Wicked Lovely and Trylle--are technically YA. But both deal with universal themes usually reserved for adult books: making decisions that affect not just oneself; romance (come on, teenagers have sex, but it doesn't have to be graphic to be good); horror; death of loved ones...in fact, how does a book get the moniker of "Young Adult"? Do the characters have to be teenagers? They are in the two series I've been talking about. But there are plenty of books written about teens that are not YA. Looks like some research is in order. What I'm saying is, don't do what I did--discount a story because it's in the YA section--you'll be missing out on some good reads.
Like food I ingest, books provide nourishment for my brain. My imagination stretches much as my stomach does to accommodate the knowledge I feed it through reading. I'm always on the lookout for new stories, new characters, and new worlds. I will read anything (but I may not finish it if I don't like it). Reading helps me in my writing, just as looking at a painting would help an artist, or watching tv would help a screenwriter. The fact that I can lose myself in my reading and forget the sometimes harsh reality--all the better for my sanity.
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