This week’s Booking Through Thursday is:
Another question raised by YA author A.S. King‘s blog post last week which touched on
censorship—especially as it pertains to young adult books.
She writes:
If there really is [an
ideal] town like this in America, I am happy about that. Really truly happy.
But are your teenagers going to stay in that town forever? Don’t you want them
to go to college? Or go out in the world and do stuff? And don’t you want them
to be prepared for all of these real things that happen all the time in real
life? Don’t you want them to know that they will make mistakes? Don’t you want
them to learn how to make smarter mistakes?
Fiction can help. I write my
books for one reason, whether they are for adults or teens. I write to make
readers think. I write to widen perspective. I write to make readers ask
questions and then answer the questions or start conversations. And I write
sometimes to give voice to the throwaways, of which our society has many, but
we usually hide them because we are still uncomfortable with what we see as our
own mistakes. Make sure you say that in a whisper. Throwaways.
And so … this, right here, pretty much explains exactly WHY I like
reading so much. Yes, it’s fun and entertaining and diverting, and all that,
but ultimately, it TEACHES me things. It broadens my horizons and makes me look
at ideas and people and life in general in new and interesting ways. Isn’t that
what reading and art in general is SUPPOSED to do? How do you feel about this?
Do you agree? Disagree? Discuss!
I completely
agree with the idea that reading should teach you something. That’s what
stories were originally intended to do – to provide life experience without the
need to go out there and make lots of dangerous mistakes yourself.
While a lot
of modern (and, admittedly, some not-so-modern) novels and films are simply
pleasant to look at without much depth, for me the sign of a good story is
that, by the end, the protagonist has changed and grown. If you could drop the
finished character right back at the beginning and they’d make exactly the same
choices, it wasn’t a worthwhile story. So many plots nowadays focus on the
superficial (rags-to-riches is a popular theme, in which the main character is
usually showered with popularity, wealth, etc for reasons beyond their control
that have nothing to do with their own personal merit), whereas the majority of
novels written 100 or 200 years ago focus on the development and the learning curve
of the protagonist.
I think
fiction is a great place to learn about the more challenging aspects of life
and to experience them in a safe and vicarious manner. For me, reading a book I’m
really into is like living another life, in another world – it’s a truly
wonderful feeling.
The above
question is also addressed with fantastic insight by the aptly named Christopher
Booker in his book The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, which I
whole-heartedly recommend to anyone interested in the reading and writing
process, its history and its development.
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