Lara Zielin

STATUS: One time? I met James Earl Jones (see pic, where I’m so clearly freaking out on the inside), and NOW, I’m going to be able to meet Top Chef Stephanie Izard, which makes me freak out even more. She’s coming to Ann Arbor to do a cooking demo, and I have a friend on the inside who’s going to let me attend the night-before dinner they’re having for her at a local restaurant. What is up. I’m so freaking pumped.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: The subtitles in this link from Japan that Colleen sent are worth it alone, but the premise is genius too. Downright hilarious, this.

I had a really good time reading about and participating in the “Top 25 Things About Me” fad that swept Facebook a few weeks back. I learned so much about both people I knew well and folks I didn’t know that well at all. But in each case I got to know them a bit better.

I also decided lists aren’t so bad.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. I decided create another list, this time of three YA books that I lurve, that changed my life, that made me want to write YA and read YA and eat and breathe and sleep YA, because they showed me YA totally rules so hard. Whew — what a run-on!

Originally, I was going to do ten books. Then I pared it down to five. When I finally got started, I settled on three because this is pretty time-consuming stuff. I may continue this in a future blog, though.

And so, without further ado, here are the books:

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot — Before it was a movie (well, two movies, actually) and a series spanning, I don’t know, ten books or something, the Princess Diaries was a sweet story by an author who asked a publisher friend what kind of book for young girls would get picked up by a publishing house. The answer was that the story either had to have a princess, or a talking animal. Meg obviously chose the former and the result was a book that, I think, changed the course of YA forever. If I were still in college, I’d write a thesis about how the Princess Diaries made it okay for YA heroines to be spastic, funny, foot-in-mouth-all-the-time girls that could point out the hilarious in the mundane and at same time be totally honest about how freaking hard things like, oh, high school are. This book gave YA a new voice and a fresh perspective. I will always, always adore it.

Goy Crazy by Melissa Schorr — I am not Jewish. Shocker. But still I found myself in total, relatable like with the Jewish heroine, Rachel, in Schorr’s delicious novel, who struggles with liking, and dating, a Christian boy. The thing I love is that Schorr showcases the ways that religious insensitivities are everywhere, not just in one religious community or another. She manages to do it in a smart, funny way that makes the book weighty, but yet there are still cute boys and kissing. This book was an inspiration for Donut Days because it showed that girls’ struggles with faith and relationships don’t have to be dry or dour. They can be hilarious. And have cute boys in them.

Good Girls by Laura Ruby — Um, okay. This is the kind of book I want to be able to write one day. Really. Ruby took a timely issue — intimate photos being passed around on cell phones — and made it up close and personal with her heroine, Audrey. When the whole school is mocking you, when your parents find out about the real life you live outside the house, what do you do? What is a good girl, anyway? The ways in which Audrey takes the power back in her life are poignant and powerful. The writing is sharp and funny and real. This book walloped me in the face with its holy-crap-this-is-amazing force, and I’ve never, ever lost sight of it. When I dream about growing up and becoming a writer, I aspire to write like this.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 10:07 pm and is filed under other writers, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.