Your Favorite Five

As I was on my knees washing baseboards today, my 6-year-old stopped by to pat my head and say hello. I had Metallica and AC/DC playing on my iPod. (It was that kind of morning, plus I hate doing baseboards.) The little guy took the earbud out of my ear, listened for a moment, smiled, and said, "You're so old-school." Kid you not, that's what he said. The youngest of six, he's always been a precocious one and absorbs things like a sponge. He's way beyond where I was at his age. At six, I was still writing my name backwards and tripping over my untied shoe laces.

He's right, I am the old-school type. I'll admit it. I was surrounded by a family of English Majors in my childhood, and they always read and discussed classical literature within my hearing. As a teenager, I loved poetry. Especially Tennyson and Longfellow. Tennyson was my first literary crush. I girlishly dreamed that if I had but lived 140 years earlier, Alfred and I would have seen each other across a crowded Victorian drawing room... Lightening bolts! The meeting of soul mates. Sigh.

On another note, it really makes me mad when I hear Charles Dickens dissed at writing conferences. Authors today think they can write better, and that's fine, maybe they do in some ways. I have heard several speakers make fun of the immortal line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I want to raise my hand and say, "Dude, don't insult A Tale of Two Cities. Will people be quoting you a hundred years from now? Probably not." A Tale is written in an older style and requires a little effort from the reader, but it is a glorious, inspiring work.

I know, I know. I'm on an old-school rant, and I'll stop.

When I grew up, there wasn't any YA genre that I knew of. Really. I don't remember anything back then like the books available now. (Cue Dana Carvey's SNL character, Grumpy Old Man.) "Back in my day...you either read The Little Princess, Little House On the Prairie, Nancy Drew, and Charlotte's Web or you snuck a peek at your mother's books when she wasn't looking. And we liked it, we loved it, we wouldn't have had it any other way."

Kids today are smart, savvy people. They have driven a whole new genre forward and made it grow into a huge industry. YA is mostly uncharted territory for me. Right now, I am reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, (adult fiction), but I have a stack of YA books just waiting on my night stand. The stack includes: City of Bones, hush, hush, Catching Fire, Beautiful Creatures, and Wings. Plus, I have Shiver on order. Exciting, creative things are being written in this ever-expanding category, and I'm looking forward to discovering them.

Are you trying out another genre? What are you looking forward to reading? What's in the stack of books on your night stand? Can you give me a list of your "favorite five" books? I can't wait to hear...