A new generation of icky, angsty, inspirational books for teens. (Part 1) http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/swerve/story.html?id=0982c085-420c-4b1d-a095-2f284714da1c
Roberta McDonald, Calgary Herald Published: Friday, October 10, 2008 Sure, they text and they Twitter and they play way too much Wii. But all those twitchy, tormented adolescent souls are still able to lose--and then find--themselves in the current wave of good reads. - - - "Sophisticated, witty, and urbane." These are adjectives usually applied to novels about high-powered women on the prowl or tell-all tomes about Washington's elite. Surprisingly, these words were lifted instead from gushy reviews about the new breed of books aimed at youth readers. Life can be treacherous and turbulent during adolescence. Raging hormones, mingled with intense social and educational pressures, are enough to make any teenager crawl under the covers and wait for the storm to pass. It takes stones and sensitivity to tackle stories about these often awkward and baffling years, and the new breed of writers has risen to the challenge in a way that is pleasing not only their audiences, but parents, librarians and school administrators alike. Here in Calgary, the folks at WordFest are gearing up for another banner year, as they anticipate more than 6,000 junior-high and high-school kids to descend on various events from Oct. 14th to 19th (see Page 16 for more information). Organizers have clued in to the tastes of their younger audience and have booked authors, bloggers, and slam poets who not only engage reluctant readers, but bring unique celebrity panache to the various stages. Yellowknife poetry slammer Shane Koyczan is a burly yet magnetic performer who stuns his audiences with mind-blowing performances. Tish Cohen, the mind behind the Zoë Lama series about a zen-like tween, will be reading from her second book, The World of Zoë Lama. Also on this year's guest list: Cecil Castellucci, whose graphic novels approach the murky world of adolescence with barbed wit and a punk-rock attitude (she's played in bands Nerdy Girl, Bite, and under her pseudonym Cecil Seaskull). She explores complex themes and her Plain Janes series, illustrated by Jim Rugg, has attained cult status. Castellucci is promoting her new creation, Beige, at this year's event. The swashbuckling fiction of Chris Humphreys has roots in his former career as a fencing champ. His latest book, Possession, has been described as Viking time travel. Ojibwa author Drew Hayden Taylor is bringing his darkly hopeful native/vampire/coming-of-age graphic novel, The Night Wanderer, to the fest. Sarah Jones, the librarian in charge of the teen section at the downtown library, says there's a boom going on in teen lit, and the staff is struggling to keep big-name writers such as Stephenie Meyer on the shelves. Her girl-meets-vegetarian-vampire Twilight series is widely read, and not just by those too young to drive. Meyer's work is so successful, manuscript leaks sprouted up online in advance of the fourth instalment of the series, Midnight Sun, causing the author to shelve the book. There have been comparisons aplenty to J.K. Rowling's spectacularly popular Harry Potter books, as eager followers throw midnight parties and line up for hours to snap up copies of Meyer's books. Sales like these have encouraged publishers to take fresh interest in kid-lit authors, and editors are scouring online blogs looking for the next literary star. Jones is optimistic about the number of teens she sees checking out books, but she's eager to bring in even more. Like her American counterparts, she's spearheading a new approach to bringing even more potential readers into the library: Guitar Hero and Rock Band competitions. Her hope is to draw them in with the interactive music games, then engage them in the shelves of books. She also notes that books dealing with teen sexuality in a sensitive way are finding their way into the mainstream. "Topics that were under wraps before are being widely published," she says. Back in the '80s, hiding a copy of Endless Love underneath a mathematics textbook was an illicit rush, but that was only part of the thrill. With no parents to scold us, we journeyed vicariously into the adult world before skulking back to the stacks to re-shelve the contraband, finally pulling down a more acceptable copy of Judy Blume's Blubber to take home. Today's kids are much more savvy to the perils of romance, and their taste in books reflects their intelligent and cosmopolitan outlook. From the urban mishaps of Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist--penned by the team of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan and recently turned into a movie starring the gangly yet alluring Michael Cera--to Boy Meets Boy, Levithan's touchingly optimistic gay love story, there's no shortage of sympathetic, smart teen lit making the bestseller lists. Graphic novels are also ragingly popular, and modern adaptations of literary giant Shakespeare have been crafted into Japanese manga books. Just as old-schoolers leafed through Archie comics and Teen Beat, identifying with Betty and Veronica's divergent personalities and drooling over Leif Garrett photos, today's youth are demanding their own gratifying comics that reflect their complex lives. Classics such as the Nancy Drew detective books are now offered in a visually appealing, modernized form. There are even historical non-fiction versions on shelves, such as Fax From Sarajevo by Joe Kubert and Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe. "Publishers are reinventing the genre," Jones explains. The popularity of Gossip Girl has spawned a heavily watched television series, and echoes the new teen-communications universe of texting and instant messages. At a time when social-networking sites are heavily used by evolving teens, it's paramount to reach them in a way that speaks their cyber-hip language. Publishers have picked up on the discerning and curious minds of emerging readers and are fiercely marketing their wares via Facebook and MySpace. Emerging authors can also be found Twittering away, keeping their fingers on the web-pulse of their readers. Hence the new presence of WordFest on Facebook. Festival producer Anne Green says she's embraced the heavily used site to promote the event and it's been key as a means of engagement. "We use whatever means we have available to us," Green says. WordFest plays a major role in the reading patterns of Calgary's young folks, and organizers toil to keep current. Green says asking students and teachers what's hot has been instrumental in their programming selections. She cites Deborah Ellis, Marty Chan and Hazel Hutchins as authors who tackle tough subject matter in a way that engages and educates. Jodi Guttman heads up the teen-readers portion of the festival and raves about the quality of writers sprouting up across a variety of genres. When she sees a kid embrace reading for the first time, she bursts with excitement and irrepressible pride. "It's not just eye-opening; it's world-opening," she says. Despite the thousands of young readers expected at this year's event, Guttman is concerned books may one day exist solely on our computer screens." Outside class, most of the reading they do is online." Nevertheless, she says, there's no replacement for curling up with a novel. Guttman also makes a point of pairing chick-lit and dude-lit, not just to balance the genders but also to expose young readers to authors they might have pigeonholed as being too macho or girly. On a recent Sunday, the teen section of the downtown library was nearly empty. No surprise, really. With the unusually toasty start to October and easy home Internet access, most kids would be steering clear of the library. Today's teens have galaxies of information at their fingertips that not only speaks their language, but does so in a way that is accessible and sensitive, illuminating and distilling their complex worlds, all from the comfort of their wireless devices and computers. Sara Derrick, manager and kids' book buyer for Pages, says the same rules apply to the young readers of today as those of the past. At an age when the approval of friends is key, most kids just want to feel dialed in. "Kids want to read what their friends are reading," she says. You both lose and find yourself in the process. And that's why discovering a gem of a book, no matter when it was written or what age you are when you're engrossed in it, remains a universally uplifting experience. Dana Hagg, an International Baccalaureate student in Grade 11 at Western Canada High School, has taken an interest in the classics, devouring Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations over the summer. The 16-year-old is keen to broaden her literary horizons, and bolsters her book collection (which includes Meyer's Twilight trilogy) with enduring tales of woe and intrigue. "It doesn't have to be modern to be interesting," she says. "Plot twists have been around a lot longer than daytime soaps." Or, thank god, The Hills. -- Celebrating the Books That Saved Us From Our Adolescent Selves How they transformed eight crazy teens into the sane, sensible grown-ups they are today. The Edible Woman: Metaphors for Life by Margaret Atwood At 17, when my intimidating and sophisticated older brother handed me a copy of Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman, I was thrilled. My big brother was finally seeing me as someone who was worthy of sharing his literary pursuits. I hadn't a clue what I was getting into, but I dove in and was instantly bathed in the crisp waters of Atwood's unique prose. Looking back, I may have been too young for the complex themes. Nevertheless, the book had a profound impact on me and I was an instant fan of the wiry- haired author. Even though it was originally published in 1969, two years after my birth, I felt like Atwood was taking me by the hand and sagely pointing out the perils that lay ahead. Set in Toronto (a city I still struggle to like), the novel enabled me to sink effortlessly into Atwood's detailed descriptions of neighbourhoods where I lived as a teen, slacking off from school and learning the art of smoking and the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven. Toggling between the first, second and third person, Atwood sucked me into the mind of a woman flailing around, trying to reconcile her need for independence with mounting social pressures. Using food as a metaphor, she made me see how deceptively easy it could be to follow the traditional path, winding up as a pretty decoration on a layered wedding cake. Not only did I identify with the protagonist Marian McAlpin, I devoured the witticisms strewn around during her conversations. Her co-workers, collectively referred to as the Office Virgins, typify the mediocre world of corporate husband hunting and I recoiled at the notion of joining their ranks. Aside from one temp job from which I was fired, I was spared that tedium and ennui. I still bandy the term about in casual conversation. In many ways, it cast a pall over my relationships with men and I still flee in horror at the first sign of a man who has consumptive impulses. It also made me think of eggs in an entirely new way and, for a while, I couldn't stomach them unless they were scrambled to bits. Years later, during her promo tour of 1993's The Robber Bride, I asked Atwood when she knew writing was the right path. She quipped back in her sharp manner: "It was either that or a career in home economics." Lucky for me. Unlucky for possessive boyfriends and soft-boiled eggs. --Roberta McDonald Claudine at St. Clare's by Enid Blyton There are three perfect books that will change a young reader's life forever: Charlotte's Web, Watership Down and To Kill a Mockingbird. Read them. Then read Enid Blyton's St. Clare's series. I guarantee you will crave ginger beer, play pranks on deserving people and strive to be an all-around better person. Sadly, it took me years to learn the author's real name (her stylized signature on the covers looked like "Gnid"-and no, I don't know anyone named that either), but her books convinced me there was nothing more thrilling and exotic than an English girls' school. After devouring all six books in the series in my school library, my sister and I created our own boarding school at home. We'd act out countless stories featuring the imaginary inhabitants of our fantasy school. In our attempts to replicate Blyton's world of mischievous mayhem and true independence, no book was more inspiring than Claudine at St. Clare's. The fifth in the series, it introduced French student Claudine. I knew and loved series regulars Pat and Isobel, prankster Bobby and wild circus girl Carlotta, but Claudine stood apart and above every other student at the school. She was bold, daring and rebellious. As the teachers lamented, "You never knew what Claudine wanted until she had got it, and then it was too late to do anything about it." I'd never met a girl--real or imaginary--who could bend the will of everyone around her with such charm and ease. She hated sports (a student after my own heart), so she devised creative ways of missing games. She distracted Matron so the girls could enjoy a secret midnight feast (seriously, these feasts were amazing: tins of fruit, entire cakes and sweet, sweet ginger beer). She confronted gossip girls about their backstabbing ways, and punished cruel mothers for making their children's lives miserable. Simply put, Claudine called people on their "stuff," a trait I've admired in people, fictional or otherwise, my entire life. She proved you could do or say what was right, even if you were a 15-year-old outsider. Some writers love all their characters equally. Blyton doesn't even refrain from judging them. In Claudine, for example, we also meet the fabulously named Angela Favorleigh. She was as gorgeous as an angel, but a "disgusting little snob." Blyton's not saying it's bad to be beautiful. I think society's been clear that winning the genetic lottery has its perks. It's just bad--and boring--if that's all you've got. That's a radical departure from today's culture, where girls are told they're princesses until they're 12, and sex objects after that. Claudine and her friends weren't a bunch of "mean girls" you felt you should envy. They were cool chicks who knew how ridiculous the mean girls really were. Claudine was audacious, charismatic and funny--things I hope to write about and still long to be. --Barbara Haynes wanted to be a librarian and a queen when she was younger. Now she writes for the teen sitcom The Latest Buzz. She figures it's a pretty fair trade. Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal (and various ghostwriters) To a prepubescent, Sunday-schooled girl with a drawer full of Winnie-the-Pooh-embossed dickies and a mouth full of overlapping teeth, Sweet Valley High was not a series of books. It was possibility. A beacon of light in a sea of geekiness. A harbinger of hope that one day a boy named Todd with coffee-brown eyes might hang out at my locker and otherwise make my impending sentence at high school bearable. After all, the lives of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield--the stunningly gorgeous fictitious twins around whose shenanigans author Francine Pascal's 20-year-long novel franchise revolved--were not so different from mine really, were they? Sure the tanned, shiny-legged sisters who appeared in illustrated form on the books' covers (oddly, their portraits became increasingly buxom as the years went by) lived in a Spanish-style ranch house in southern California and I in a stuccoed bungalow in northeast Calgary; true, their skin was café au lait to my skim milk, and their eyes aquamarine to my swampy green. But when I discovered book No. 1 (Double Love) on a pulp-fiction rack at Shoppers Drug Mart in the summer of '83, well, Catcher in the Rye would have to wait. Squeaky clean, predictable and formulaic, the books covered the gamut of problems that any waspy, good/evil identical twins and their friends might face, from cheerleading-squad squabbles and eating disorders to mistaken-identity crises, comas, kidnappings and, best of all, heart-wrenching breakups. To my tender sensibilities, it was all luridly fascinating (but sanctioned by mom!)--an education in how to be good (thanks, Liz) and why it was more fun to be bad (thanks, Jessica) for $4.95 a pop. Wikipedia does a bang-up job of summarizing all 152 books in the series, including these early favourites of mine: No. 7: "Dear Sister: Liz wakes up from her coma and has turned into... Jessica! She dumps Todd and starts flirting with the other boys like nobody's business." No. 14: "Deceptions: Jessica has fallen for Nicholas Morrow, but he only has eyes for Liz!" No. 20, starring Liz's gold-hearted best friend Enid Rollins: "Crash Landing!: Enid and her boyfriend are involved in an accident. Enid becomes paralyzed, which makes it kind of hard for George to break up with her, which he's been planning to do." My SVH addiction ran its course about 30 books in, when the author(s) started dealing with real issues such as racism and saying no to drugs. Besides, by the middle of Grade 8, Judy Blume's down-and-dirty Wifey was surreptitiously making the rounds of Ms. Burke's language arts class. I'd outgrown Sweet Valley High before I even got to high school. Maybe that had always been the point. --Jacquie Moore Comics by various authors The most influential books I read growing up were the ones you didn't admit to reading in school... the ones with glossy four-colour covers featuring a dysfunctional dark knight, misunderstood mutants and, listen bud, a guy with radioactive blood. I didn't read graphic novels. I read comic books. I called them "comics." And when I was a kid, that's what allowances were for. In elementary school I was all about the DC universe and I'd read anything with Batman, anywhere, anytime. The Dark Knight wasn't that dark back then and the Comics Code meant he solved more problems with his brains than with his batarang. And I loved him because he was the only superhero without superpowers. I was hooked on the Justice League of America--even though I wished they were the Justice League of Canada--because the most powerful heroes in the universe were always rescued by their least powerful members, like Batman, Green Arrow or the impossibly tiny Atom. My favourite DC "super" hero was Green Lantern, because the only limits to his magic ring were his will power and imagination. When I hit high school, I fell for Marvel and its heroes with "hang-ups," like The X-Men, Daredevil, The Hulk and Moon Knight, but no comics mattered more to me than the ones featuring everybody's favourite web slinger. I liked the amazing Spider-Man, but I loved his über-geeky alter ego, Peter Parker. Pete was Woody Allen with web fluid--nagged by Aunt May, tormented by Flash Thompson and abused by Jolly Jonah Jameson. But no matter how terrible Pete's life got, he always slipped back into the Spidey suit because, "With great power, comes great responsibility." Maybe everyone doesn't want to be a hero like Spider-Man, but I suspect there's at least one grade in everyone's school life when they feel like Peter Parker. About once a year, comics make the news because a superhero like Captain America "dies" and lazy journalists do stories about how "comics aren't just for kids anymore." But the only person who ever truly believed comics were just for kids was Fredric Wertham, the German psychologist who convinced 1950s America that comics were warping impressionable young minds and should be burned. But comics were never just for kids. And that's why kids read them. I know it's why I did. 'Nuff said. --Mark Leiren-Young wrote and directed the award-winning feature film The Green Chain. His comic memoir, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, is now available in bookstores. -------- A new generation of icky, angsty, inspirational books for teens. (Part 2) http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/swerve/story.html?id=4f48bffb-c488-47e1-99bc-032d457c352e&p=1 Roberta McDonald, Calgary Herald Published: Friday, October 10, 2008 Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson In high school my best buddy Gavin and I fancied ourselves literary snobs. We read Dostoevsky--he was our favourite--and Tolstoy and Dickens and classics of all sorts. As teenage poses go, it was a pretty good one. At 16 or 17 I remember bonding with Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, which described a man's romantic obsession with a waitress. Since I was drinking kegs of tea every week just to be in the presence of a lovely young woman who worked at a local café, this was literature that spoke to me. But when it comes to inspiration--the kind of book that makes a young man think "Wow, that's for me"--it would probably be Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson. After first gaining fame with his book on the Hell's Angels and then ascending to counter-culture god status with his hallucinatory road saga Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson set out to chronicle the 1972 presidential election campaign in a series of dispatches originally written for Rolling Stone magazine. He focused on the idealistic insurgency of Senator George McGovern as it upended the Democratic party structure and rewrote the rules of American presidential politics. Along the way Thompson himself rewrote the rules for political reporting, mixing shrewd observation with wild fantasy. Finally came the fear and loathing as Thompson watched Richard Nixon crush McGovern in the general election. Thompson was perhaps not an ideal role model for a teenager, but few teenage role models ever are. While he revelled in descriptions of rampant drug use, his writing was not a harbinger of slacker culture--far from it. Thompson was deeply, angrily engaged in American politics. No other writer could simultaneously be so savage and so funny. Thompson demonstrated that it was possible to go right over the top and yet remain firmly in control of his style and his narrative. He may have appeared thoroughly outrageous, but after all it was a self-portrait. Hunter Thompson's brand of insanity obviously didn't affect his storytelling abilities. If he was indeed a certified wild man, we were taking his own word for it. Thompson ripped open the staid world of journalism and made it seem like a vibrant and exciting pursuit for a young person. Unfortunately, too many of his young admirers attempted to write just like Thompson--a doomed aspiration. And considering Thompson's gradual decline and eventual 2005 suicide, it's advisable to be discriminating about which aspects of the Gonzo man's life you seek to emulate. But for a teenager seeking new ways to engage with the world, Thompson's obvious intelligence and savage humour were anything but negative influences. --Steve Burgess Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen The summer before I began high school, I discovered Leonard Cohen. Without any real knowledge of who he was beyond the recognition of his name on the bookstore shelf, I purchased a copy of Beautiful Losers, the second of Cohen's two novels. Published in 1966, it is now regarded as one of the greatest works of postmodern Canadian fiction, and a hugely difficult read for anyone, let alone a 14-year-old. The novel revolves around three main characters and their obsession with a 17th-century Mohawk saint named Catherine Tekakwitha. Upon its publication, critic Robert Fulford famously called it "the most revolting book ever written in Canada." He may have been right. Although I barely understood Beautiful Losers, I loved it. And I wasn't just enjoying the book, I was experiencing new concepts of what literature could be. Like many Cohen fans, I quickly developed an obsessive interest in his work. I read biographies of his life, and collected his albums and books of poetry. I copied out lines from his song lyrics and taped them into my binders at school. I've since forgone the binders, but to this day, Cohen is a staple of what I read and listen to. In the 1965 National Film Board documentary of Cohen's early years, Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen, there's a scene where Cohen reads his poetry in front of an audience of awed young adults. It may have been over 40 years ago that Cohen made that sort of impression on young people, but not all that much has changed. Certainly, the core of his fan base is aging, but his work is as relevant as ever. A few years ago, I had the good fortune of finding Beautiful Losers on the reading list of a course I was taking at the University of Calgary. My classmates' responses to the book were incredibly varied--some loved it, some hated it, some were just plain offended. But everybody had something to say. Looking back, my purchasing the book seems serendipitous. Suppose I had randomly selected someone else's novel? Would my experience have been the same? Could any book have changed me, or was it up to Leonard Cohen? Either way, I've kept reading. I've read Beautiful Losers many times over. And whenever I return to it, it remains as challenging and engaging as the first time I picked it up. --Lindsay Bowman is the office co-ordinator at CJSW, the University of Calgary radio station. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous* It's allegedly one of the books that led Sarah Palin to have that infamous conversation with the head librarian in Wasilla, which is reason enough why Go Ask Alice has been a must-read since it was first published in 1971. My beloved teenage copy, one of more than five million in print in 16 different languages, is long gone, but I recently found a new edition, stacked beside grungy '80s plaid shirts and Japanese-inspired manga Ts at Urban Outfitters in New York City. "Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her," reads the copy on the back cover, and even for a generation immune to overt marketing, it's no hype. The "found" diary of a good girl gone wrong because of peer pressure, sex and drugs is as mesmerizing as I remembered it, with the Button, Button LSD game; Richie, the sexually ambivalent medical student who seduces our never-named heroine into pushing pills to grade-school kids; and the harrowing freak-out in the closet, where she believes she's been buried alive and scratches herself raw to get rid of the worms and maggots. She wakes up in a mental hospital with the ends of her fingers looking like "hamburger cooking under the sunlamp," and if that image doesn't scare you straight, nothing will. Of course, that's exactly why Go Ask Alice was written in the first place. It's since come out that the real author is a Mormon youth counsellor named Beatrice Sparks, the book's sole copyright holder. When asked to produce the original diary, Sparks said that she destroyed parts of it and locked the rest away in the publisher's vault. But while she may be as savvy a druggy fabricator as James Frey, the author of the discredited A Million Little Pieces, Sparks is also uncannily good at channelling the insecurities, frustrations and dreams of the suburban adolescent. More than the drugs, more than the sex, I remember the sections in which the heroine agonizes about her weight, her skin, her disgustingly lank and oily hair. Like Bridget Jones's hilariously petty rantings, her diatribes inspired four decades of girls to iron their hair (sure, she did it with an actual iron, but if progress can be measured in the straightness of our strands, today's teens have it made), wear the right clothes, say the right things and finally figure out how to be themselves and still fit in. The only thing that truly rang false to me about Go Ask Alice was the ending, in which the parents come home from a movie and find their daughter dead of an overdose. Was it an accident? Was it a suicide? Only the ghostwriter knows for sure, but it did take care of that pesky little problem of having to produce the actual "Alice." If I had the opportunity to do a rewrite, she would have become a writer who moves to Manhattan, drinks Cosmopolitans, buys shoes, has three equally fiesty gal pals and trades that addiction to drugs for one to unavailable men. --Shelley Youngblut The Knife in My Hands by Keith Maillard Back when I was a boy, two bookstore shopkeepers, Charlie and Dan of This Ain't the Rosedale Library in Toronto, introduced me to my formative early adult books: Bums by Peter Golenbock, King Leary by Paul Quarrington, Harvey Pekar's comics, the Oberon editions of books by W.P. Kinsella, and The Knife in my Hands by Keith Maillard. You might not know who Keith Maillard is, but it doesn't matter. Back in the early 1980s, no one knew him either, but he still became my favourite writer. Keith (or Mr. Maillard, which is probably what I'd call him if I met him) isn't what you'd consider a giant of Canadian literature. Most folks probably know who Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler are, but throw them a name like Keith Maillard and they'll likely harrumph and get back to waving around their garden shears. Still, despite his quiet literary status, Maillard's novels had a big impact on me. The Knife in My Hands is what reviewers would probably have called a coming-of-age novel. During the years in which I came of age--14 to17--these kinds of books were pretty much all I read. They focused on young people and the complications of their lives. They addressed things I couldn't discuss with my mom and dad--drugs, sexuality, violence, prejudice--and became another instance of books filling a quasi-parental role in my young reader's life. I made other literary coming-of-age discoveries--Be True to Your School by Bob Greene, Jack in the Box by William Kotzwinkle, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler, and The Outsiders and Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton--but I identified most with Maillard's protagonist. John Dupre was, like me, a young person searching for a world beyond his small town (for Dupre it was Raysburg, W.Va. for me, Etobicoke, Ont.). Through Dupre, I related emotionally to the prose. It was as if my life was being played out through the character's story. Sitting in the front seat of my car--or rather, my parents' car--parked against the edge of a frosted-over baseball diamond smoking Camels was the first real tactile reading experience I can remember: the weight of the (remaindered) hardcover in my hands, the look of the cigarette's blue smoke as it clouded the air, the chill of the season on my hands as I turned the pages, the upholstered cushions of the Delta 88 supporting my back, the fat winter sun shining across the ice-glazed park, the pop of the cigarette lighter as it disengaged from the car's dashboard and, of course, the hum of Maillard's easy prose buzzing across my thoughts. Whenever I'm asked to write about my formative literary experiences, I mention The Knife in My Hands, partly because I can talk about it in a way that's personal and partly because it's a way of keeping the book's title alive. --Dave Bidini. Bidini's erotic hockey play, The Five Hole Stories, will be remounted by One Yellow Rabbit this February at the Jack Singer Concert Hall. - - - Win a Collection of Wordfest Young Adult Must-Reads Is there a book that changed your life when you were a teen? Send us your ode to the most icky, angsty, inspirational read of your youth and you could win a selection of books from current YA literary gods, all of whom are appearing at WordFest, Oct. 14th to 19th. E-mail your entry to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please put "angst" in the subject line and include a daytime phone number. Winner will be chosen by random draw. Contest ends at noon on Oct 29, 2008. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to sixties-l@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
