Over the course of 2013, I began to realize how little I read. And I love books, so I thought of a few that I wanted and asked for them for my birthday. When my family went to Maine over the summer, I read "Looking for Alaska" by John Green. I felt so connected to the characters and the world they lived in that I cried when I finally finished it. I think I read it at a time where I needed to feel connected to something, because I felt like I knew every character like they were a friend of mine. In the beginning of 8th grade, I read the book "The Fault in Our Stars", which was also by John Green, and again I was amazed by how great he was at writing books for teenagers. I find that sometimes adults are so embarrassed or confused by their teenage years that they try to forget what it felt like to be one. And then, when the time comes that they have to look down at a teenager and see them from this new, grown-up perspective; they see them as naive, dumb, confused, awkward, problematic, etc. John Green writes for young adults the way they need to be written about, without saying "I get that it's hard to deal with your first breakup..." or "It's difficult to understand that your parents want the best for you." He acknowledges that teenagers are overly emotional and self destructive, but writes about feeling like you have no control over being that way.
Besides Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, my favorite book of 2013 is "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky. It's not a regular book in the way that it doesn't just follow a series of events that end in resolution to the conflict. Things happen throughout the novel, but the book is about Charlie. Charlie is a complicated person, and is described without being labeled, the way that many books I've read describe characters the way other people might see them. "My name's Charlie and I'm an outcast." Or, "I'm different from the other kids." Because the book is told from Charlie's perspective, you see Charlie the way that people view themselves. People don't label themselves as one way or another, but as a whole, as an entire person with conflicting emotions and problems that they don't know how to solve.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower also talks about human nature without needing an entire storyline to prove it's point. For example, in one part of the book. Charlie visits a friend of his. "Bob goes part-time to the community college. He wants to be a chef. He is an only child, and his parents are never home. He says it used to bother him a lot when he was younger, but not so much anymore. The thing about Bob is that when you first meet him, he's really interesting because he knows about cigarette rules and pennies and Mary Tyler Moore. But after you've known him for a while, he starts to repeat these things. In the last few weeks, he hasn't said anything that I haven't heard from him before. That's what made it such a shock when he told me what happened." Bob is a very small character in the book. But still, I knew when I read that part that I had seen that kind of person before in real life. I've found that Bob's behavior was often connected to loneliness. I think sometimes, when people don't get out very much or have close friends, they revert to talking and reminiscing about the things they've already known for years. This seems to happen with people who are older and don't have an extravagant social life anymore, so they always talk about their youth.
In conclusion, I've read a lot of YA books this year, and my favorites have been Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I hope to read a lot more, because it's exciting when a book captures the feelings of something as complicated as a teenager.
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