Follow Friday 6/10/2011

Friday is upon us again, and here in another edition of Follow Friday by Parajunkee's Views is a pretty interesting question that we all need to answer.  This week's question is: 

Q. The magic book fairy pops out of your cereal box and says "you and your favorite character (from a book of course) can switch places!" Who are you going to switch with? 

If you have been following me for quite some time now, you would know that I have this sort-of-crush on Dash from Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, who's also my YA book hero.  So it follows that I would LOVE to switch places with Lily!  I also think her family is quite interesting, and it would be really great to take care of a dog again as my own dog had died years ago.  And Aunt Ida is such a charming character, I would love to finally meet her as I had this urge to hug her when I was reading about her in the book.

And Dash.  Dash!  I would be making snarky comments with him, eating frozen yogurt with him, reading the dictionary with him (he has no idea how much alike we are).  But I only have one question:  Would I be in my age now, or would I also be the same age as Lily is?  Since I don't know if Dash would like a relationship with an older woman (hee). 

However, I don't think my life would be much in Lily's eyes.  I have my brother, who never messes with me and gets into a fight with me.  I have my day job as a nurse - which might be interesting for Lily although she might get a little too tired, although would she be allowed to work in my place since she doesn't have my qualifications?  Well, if she won't be permitted to work in my stead, then she'll definitely find my life totally boring.

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Hello there again!  This is another hop that I have decided to participate in.  This is my first time on TGIF!  Yay!  Since I am always looking out for the weekend, it only follows that I should do this to really kick off the weekend fun.

 

This Friday's Question:

YA Saves: How do you feel about the "dark" books 

filling the YA shelves today?

I don't mind dark.  Really.  Because I had such a 'normal' (read: boring and predictable) teenage life that reading about tumultuous young adult lives fascinate me.  If you notice, most of the young adult books I own are contemporaries since I really like reading about real life, instead of made-up worlds - except if the made-up world is totally cool and suits my crazy taste.  'Dark' books take me into a world that shows there are people out there who do not have it easy like I did, and it helps me be more compassionate and understanding with other people, especially as in my line of work, I need to be constantly looking out for my patients.  I used to be a psych nurse so I am naturally drawn to books with mental illness, mental health problems which helped me understand more about the disorders that I encountered.  Even now that I have moved on to a different practice as a nurse, I still find these 'dark' books helpful, especially in dealing with teenage patients who are very difficult to get through especially after very traumatic incidences.  

The only thing that concerns me is the poor choice of book selections that some bookstores carry.  It's not the book's fault that it's dark and/or violent.  That's not the only book out there.  There are some light-hearted and morally-correct YA books too, it's just that maybe that particular book store did not choose to carry those titles since they know that paranormal and dark novels are all the rage now and more likely to sell.  To the mother who could not find a suitable book for her child, I would have asked her, "Why didn't you visit other book stores instead of immediately stereotyping the genre?"

 

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So that's it, I hope you all have a great weekend, and happy reading to everyone!