It seems like twelve months ago agents and editors were declaring that “New Adult” wasn’t a thing. Now many are clamoring for it. While Young Adult is relatively easy to define, a working definition of New Adult has proven somewhat elusive. Regardless many authors are forging ahead, turning New Adult into a genre/category that is defining itself. Time will tell if this is this a good thing, but in the meantime I’d like to offer my two cents on what New Adult could be, in comparison to what I’ve seen so far.

Sex

If you consider that both Fifty Shades of Grey and Bared to You qualify as New Adult by most definitions, then on average you could safely say there’s a heck of a lot sex in NA. Many NA advocates insist that NA is not just about sex but I have yet to see evidence of this. ALL the NA I’ve read has not only been high octane romance genre but at least half has featured a plot or important character arc relating somehow to sex. Rape recovery narratives are popular as are virgins or relatively inexperienced girls being repeatedly nailed by wildly experienced and/or slightly kinky boys or men.

New Adult doesn’t need to include sex at all when you think about it. In much the same way that chaste(ish) romance has monopolized the category of YA, spicy romance seems to have monopolized the NA category.  But need it be so? Where are the boy POV NA books? Where is the genre? The sci-fi, the historical, the high fantasy? I’m not adverse to a little hankypanky in my books but give me a plot to hang it on. Years ago I went through a phase of reading Marion Keyes books. If I were her publisher I’d be repackaging these books as NA right now. Writing richly plotted stories about young women just starting out in careers, drinking, smoking and shagging worthless boys, Keyes was NA when YA was still in diapers. But her books had substance.  I need substance

Non-Sex plot points (also known as “The Big Secret”)

The plot of many NA books seems to hinge on some moronic secret that a five year could figure out. It’s kind of like Superman trying to pass as Clark Kent. I mean come on. He’s Superman! Anyone could see that. As far as I’ve seen the “Big Secret” in NA usually  falls into one of two categories:

1.            There is some rift between the heroine and her love interest, often family related. His father killed her parents, he got her father fired, they’re new step siblings who hate each other’s parents and so on. Bonus points if one or both of them doesn’t know that the other is this hated person or from this rival family.

2.            There is some secret in one or both of their pasts that one of them knows and the other one doesn’t. Bonus points for one thinking that the other will reject them forever if they discover this secret. Extra bonus points if this secret is somehow related to sex. Triple points for some kind of poorly portrayed and factually dubious mental illness.

“Big Secrets” are ghosts in the machine as far as I’m concerned. They are a cheap way to add tension to what is usually already an overwrought plot. It is entirely possible and even desirable to plot an NA novel without “Big Secrets”. I really wish someone would do it. Just as an example I’m thinking of one of my favorite YA novels, BOY TOY by Barry Lyga. The hero of this book, Josh, is 18 years old and in grade twelve. If instead he was 18 years old and a college freshmen (bumping the category up to NA) the plot of the story might remain essentially the same; the general crux being that EVERYONE knows his sordid past (even the reader. It is revealed on page one). There are no secrets necessary. The tension in this fine book is derived from the question of whether Josh will be able to move on with his life.

Even if a secret is necessary there is no need to give it such purple treatment. LIVE THROUGH THIS by Mindi Scott has a secret, a devastating secret that is dealt with brilliantly. PERSONAL EFFECTS by E. M. Kokie also features a big secret that drives the plot without degenerating to cheese.

Romance (also known as insta-love)

Well, insta-love is a problem in YA as well, and it bugs me there too. But in NA insta-love seems to have been taken to new extremes. Usually it’s some variation of heroine having an instant lady-boner for the handsome hero, while  said hero is instantly smitten with the beauty and “innocence” of the heroine. So of course he can’t give her the rogering she so ardently desires because he’s “not good for her” or some other nonsense. Usually this happens within about five minutes of meeting, often before they have been formally introduced.

There are a million different ways for couples to fall in love. Not all of them involve instant hard-ons. At the very least I would love it if NA characters had a bit more personality. More talk about tastes and humor and less about rippling abs and alabaster skin and whatnot. So far the superficiality of NA is a real turn off for me both because it’s obviously a cliché but also because in general I don’t like superficial people. The otherworldly beauty of NA characters makes all these books seem like category romance. Nothing wrong with that but NA can be so much more.

Living arrangements

NA heroines mostly have two different living arrangements.

1.            They live in a dorm. As much as dorm life is a key trope in NA, it bugs me and I’ll tell you why. No one lives in dorms. Yes I know many of you did, but what American writers need to understand is that dorm life, frats and sororities etc are unique to America and as a result start to seem a bit dinky to non-American readers, much the same way that posh/ancient boarding schools (like Hogwarts) are a bit gimmicky.

2.            They live in some fabulously unrealistic and unaffordable apartment with their best girlfriend/gay friend. Or they MOVE into a fabulous apartment owned by the alpha hero.

I have three degrees. I’ve been to four different universities in three countries (the USA, Canada and Australia). In that time I’ve had a total of two friends who lived in dorms. I’ve been in a dorm room once (and no, I didn’t bonk him, though he did take me for a ride on his Harley). I’ve never even seen a frat house. Most of my friends lived at home, or in cheap apartments or shared houses while they were in college. Many continued living in these humble digs long after they graduated. Where are the stories of Mom and Dad’s basement, the large shared houses, the dodgy flats above sketchy grocery stores that rattled every time a streetcar went past? Where are the long nightly bus rides back out to the suburbs, drunk on beer, with your panties on backwards? The mattresses on the floor, the roommate’s dirty dishes, the cat box, the house party stragglers who need to be bounced in the morning? Where’s reality? NA is in danger of becoming “dorm porn” and I for one and not going to sit idly by.

Career

NA characters are often college students. Sometimes there is not a whole lot more information about them than that. No major, no career plan, mostly they seem to just be going to parties and mooning about boys.

If the NA is focused on the years after graduation there seem to be a limited number of career options available to NA characters.

1.            Something non-specific and vaguely corporate that affords ample opportunities to meet billionaire entrepreneurs

2.            Something vaguely artistic or creative like working in a gallery or in advertising

3.            Shitty job because heroine had to drop out of college to care for sick relative, usually mother or underage siblings due to death of parents. Bonus points if it’s degrading and slightly desperate but somehow sexy – cocktail waitress or nude model for example.

Although in reality college DOES involve a lot of partying and mooning about boys I would estimate that at least 50% of the drama of college life involves trying to keep up with homework and master the material. Most students have a declared major by sophomore year. That major then becomes a big part of their life, their thinking and their plans for the future. Just once I’d like to read an NA about a nursing student, a math whiz or someone in pre-law with a focus on environmental economics. These fields can be woven into plots that are deeper than just “how to bang the beautiful boy”.

As far as after college goes, there are two approaches missing:

1.            The reality of working in Starbucks with your MA in 12th century poetry or Peace and Conflict Studies

2.            A real life honest to goodness first job. Junior accountant, dental hygienist , assistant policy advisor to the Mayoral committee on urban planning, information officer for a drug and alcohol agency. The possibilities are endless.

Finally, so far I haven’t seen and NA that deals with the difficult and often disheartening SEARCH for the first job after college.

Race

Well, there’s not much to say about this. If YA is white then NA is…whatever comes after white. Some colorless color that the human eye can’t even see. NA is so white I need those snow glasses the Inuit used to wear so I won’t go blind from the glare.

My best friend in college was half Sri Lankan. Several of my classmates in my MFA were of Chinese or Vietnamese descent. Many classmates and professors in San Francisco were black or Hispanic. Not only that, but people DO attend and graduate college in other countries. Someone please write about them.

Covers

NA has three main types of covers that I will represent graphically here:

Covers can be and should be a varied as nature, humanity, the art in galleries and the photographs and images of daily life. As much as I like abs, why not show another part of the body? If the heroine has to be on the cover cannot she be doing something other than gazing wistfully into the middle distance or at her hot alpha hero’s lips? And does everybody have to be so WHITE? (see above)

Tropes

NA is nothing if not reliable with its tropes. I can pretty much set my watch by the possessive stalker trope, the rape rescue trope (often the latter justifies the former) and the clumsy heroine trope. Of course there’s the uber-orgasmic first sex trope (often involving a sexually dominant hero), that’s a given, and usually we get a bit of the fashion porn thrown in there, just for some light relief.

Here’s an idea: be original. Avoid tropes. Or better still, subvert them. Have the heroine take the designer  ball gown back to the store and spend the refund on cheesecake and iTunes. Have the heroine rescue the hero from a predatory skank or a beating by barroom thugs. Have the first sexual encounter be an awkward giggly mess. And let the heroine spend the whole book doing parkour in pajama bottoms and a Green Day t-shirt. Oh, and let HER tie HIM up for a change.

If NA is going to be a thing, and I think it is, then it behooves us to make the category as broad as possible. There was a time when YA was mostly viewed as “issues” books and gossipy series, now it encompasses everything from Steampunk to Cyberpunk to elves and mermaids, drugs, sex, swords, ghosts, bullies, suicide, shifters, spaceships, time travelers, and of course, vampires.

Why can’t NA be as broad as that? Come on NA writers and publishers – it’s time to spread your wings.

Rant over

(images Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos)

Lat week I blogged, like hundreds of other people, about #coverflip. Last week I also got my own cover, for my upcoming book AUDACIOUS. I’m kind of excited that #coverflip happened in the same week I got my cover for a couple of reasons:

1. People are thinking and talking about “feminine” covers
2. My cover is a great example of a “feminine” cover that works

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a girl. My last book, WICKET SEASON was about a boy and featured a boy playing sports on the cover, so I definitely wasn’t been dealt a cover worthy of a cover flip. AUDACIOUS on the other hand, is a verse novel, about a girl. There is romance, but that’s not the whole focus of the book. There is also a pink dress. It’s a book that will appeal mostly to girls. That’s perfectly okay with me. That said, as far as a cover goes, really I could have easily ended up with either an almost kissing couple like this:

Or a cover that made the book look like a prom dress catalog. Nothing wrong with frock book covers, but let’s be honest, they’re getting a little ubiquitous.

Authors aren’t always satisfied with their covers. I think this is what drove the #coverflip meme, with sympathetic readers adding fuel to the fire. And I can see how some authors and reader could get frustrated. Because it really DOES seem like there are  three general cover styles used over and over for female authored/girl reader orientedYA books:

1. the vapid girl cover with optional soft focus which, while a mainstay of the contemporary genre also creeps into some genre books, in particular as foreign editions. See the German edition of CREWEL (about which author Gennifer Albin said “I don’t know who that girl is”) and a few foreign editions of HOW I LIVE NOW.
2. the kissing/almost kissing cover/embracing couple which you would think was reserved for romance books, but as evidenced by the cover I referred to last week, for Janne Teller’s NOTHING, is clearly bleeding into other genres
3. Finally the frock cover which seems to a a Jill-of-all-trades cover, turning up on everything from science fiction, dystopian, paranormal, romance and contemporary “issue” books. Interestingly, the most common iteration of this type of cover is photographic. As though there is no other way to represent a frock. Oh, and of course the cover models are almost always white, thin and beautiful.

Which brings me to my cover, and why I’m so excited about it. Apart from the romance, there are three major “McGuffins” in AUDACIOUS. I don’t want to spoil it but ALL three are represented on the cover. Obviously the pink dress is one. To learn the other two you will have to read it. But beyond the cover being accurately evocative of the book in terms of the content of the imagery, it is also accurate in terms of the tone and the protagonist. Holy crap, that REALLY looks like the way I imagined her!

And the artistry is so beautiful. And the protagonist of AUDACIOUS is an artist. And the colors! You guys, I LOVE IT! I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Here it is:

I mean, I’m just…I can’t even…I FREAKING LOVE this cover! It is so specifically  relevant to the story in so many ways. And black and pink are my daughter’s favorite colors! And speaking of my daughter, she’s decided to become a gender anarchist. So far, mostly what she does is move Hello Kitty t-shirts into the boy’s department in Target. But hopefully she’ll be insisting her male friends read AUDACIOUS, publicly and proudly, pink cover and all.

Anyone in our business who looks at Twitter or Tumblr by now is very much aware of the greatness that is Maureen Johnson’s #coverflip. I got in on the act early on with a few challenges that people had tweeted. I wasn’t trying to say anything profound with these covers, just having a bit of fun. You can check my twitter account if you’re interested.

But #coverflip has become a talking point for some pretty serious issues. One criticism of #coverflip has been that it is inherently critical itself of anything “feminine”. In other words a girl on the cover equals a trashy book. Frankly that’s not a very sophisticated read on the #coverflip meme. It’s actually a very nuanced argument that the people who are discussing coverflip are trying to make. Perhaps we may not even understand that clearly ourselves.

But I’ve been thinking that since we are talking about a visual issue it might be best to try to parse out the argument visually. Each coverflip submission is of course a visual statement, but the whole argument hasn’t quite been put into visual terms that satisfy me. So I’m going to try.

I’m going to start with a Printz winning book, HOW I LIVE NOW by Meg Rosoff. Like most successful books, this one has a number of covers, some are more “feminine” than others. But here’s the one most of us are familiar with:

It’s a great cover. Graphic, moody, artistic. It looks like the serious book that it is. There are a couple of variations on this cover. But there are also some that do something completely different.

These other covers are nodding to some pretty ubiquitous YA cover trends that can roughly be described as “Faceless girl with optional wafty hair”, and “soft focus girl with optional flowers/butterfly”. OK, so fine. Apart from the fact that these cover models all look high, it’s still a great book and how can we control what foreign publishers put on covers? Maybe it’s not such a big deal.

But here’s the thing. I really like the first cover and it kind of reminds me of another book and cover I really like, MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD, by  Francisco S. Stork. Also a very well-reviewed award winning book. And here’s the cover we’re most familiar with:

Same ideas – graphic, stark, evocative. It’s a little more literal than Rosoff’s cover but I still think it has the same artistic feel. So probably there are some covers where Marcelo is looking vague and soft-focused right? Let’s see. I’m looking. I’m looking.

Hmm. This is the closest I could find:

In fact almost ALL the foreign editions of Stork’s book use the original cover. It’s almost as if foreign rights publishers don’t know something like the below cover, I just designed would sell more books, especially to girls, whom we all know are particularly drawn to out of focus vaguely stoned looking heroes and heroines.

My coverflip: (Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

(as an aside: do you know how hard it is to find stock art with boys and men looking vague and useless? Go ahead and browse some stock sites. You’ll see what I mean)

The complaint that drove #coverflip yesterday and today is very real. It’s not just about girly books and girly covers. On the one hand it, like similarly amusing yet pertinent awareness campaigns aimed at comic books, is about the narrow range of images accepted as reflecting femininity. I’m speaking now of passive, softly focused girls with floating hair and fluffy dresses, and their ubiquity ONLY on books written and/or about girls and women. On the other hand the #coverflip campaign has also drawn attention to the fact that books authored by women often get incongruously “feminine” or “romantic” covers, even when the content within is not very feminine or “romantic”. Consider this Printz winner, NOTHING by Janne Teller, maybe the least romantic book I’ve ever read (and I’ve read 50 Shades of Grey).

Anyone would think this was a heartbreaking romance, like THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. Oh hahahahaha. It’s not. It’s so VERY not. But apparently American publishers wanted people to think it was.

Maybe because this is such a deeply messed up and brilliantly twisted and disturbing book, it’s perhaps not surprising the wide range of covers NOTHING has had. Only the American paperback has this soft and romantic look. Make what you will of that. If you’re interested this cover is a much more accurate depiction of what happens in this demented book:

Look at the “feminine” cover. Then look at the other one. Then look at the feminine one again. Then imagine that the author was a man. Would this cover happen to M. T Anderson? I don’t think so.

For final proof at the below two covers, both award winning books:

At a glance, pretend you don’t know, and tell me which one was female authored. Right, it’s the soft blue colored one with the sky and the geese.

And which one is set in juvenile detention? In fact they both are, despite the fact that the female model looks like she just came from a beauty salon and is out in the park watching the abovementioned geese. So for my final trick, I’m going to ask you in your mind, to flip these covers.

Interesting, right?

What is a “boy book” anyway? The accepted wisdom is that at the very least boys prefer to read male protagonists. Well, last week I recommended a wide range of girl protagonists books that I think boys would love.

By contrast, girl readers are believed to be open to either boy or girl protagonists. But frankly I think it goes much deeper than this. Many books with male protagonists are still distinctly girl oriented – if they are romantic for example. The boy protagonist/narrators in these tend to be perfection personified “book boyfriends”. As much as I like these books for myself, they can hardly be described as “boy books”.

So below I’m going to suggest some boy protagonist books that, while being great recommendations for boy readers, also offer girl readers a more realistic insight into the complexities of boyish life. While some authors here are women, there are a few male authors too.

Young Adult readers:

HOLD ME CLOSER NECROMANCER by Lish McBride is just darn good genre fiction. It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s gruesome, it’s clever. This is a mixed narrator book, but very much about the fledgling necromancer Sam, and his feckless but entertaining friends. With its two tough female supporting leads, its dark humor and slightly clueless boys this is an antidote to all the soft and squishy urban paranormal out there.

A.S. King’s EVERYBODY SEES THE ANTS is a complex story about a delightfully messed up boy and his weird way of dealing with things. So beautifully written without being flowery or soft focused, this is a genuine boy story that boys and girls will relate to.

So many YA boys are either perfect (often in a stalkery way) or just total jerks or wastes of space. Sutter in THE SPECTACULAR NOW by Tim Tharp is sort of all three. He’s lovely and a jerk, definitely a wastrel but ultimately gives more than he gets. I classify this as a boy book because Sutter is so darn COOL but I think girls will fall in love with him too.

For an insightful look into the mind of exceptional boys MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD by Francisco X Stork and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME by Mark Haddon are highly recommended. Boys think differently from girls and autism in some ways is just a more extreme expression of this analytical thinking. These protagonists really get inside the autistic mind.

Janet Tashjian’s series THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LARRY also concerns an exceptional boy, though one without the social limitations of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The hero of this, Josh, is a socially aware, technology savvy super-kid. And it all comes back to bite him in the ass. Such fun to watch him try to figure a way out of this and the two sequels. These are intelligent and funny books and completely unfluffy.

WILL GRAYSON WILL GRAYSON co-written by John Green and David Levithan is kind of a perfect boy book in many ways. The two protagonists, both called Will Grayson are funny, vulgar, horny, devoted, misguided, and reckless.  One is gay, one is straight. They meet by accident. They change each other’s lives. One of them uses the C word in the best (and most deserved) way EVER.  Girls reading this will adore them both.

Matthew Quick is fast becoming one of my favorite male authors. To date he hasn’t fallen into the teenage boy fantasy fulfillment that seems to plague so many young male authors (I’m looking at YOU, early John Irving). There are no mysterious, supernaturally beautiful yet tragic women/girls in his books, just regular messed up people. So his book BOY21 is a natural recommendation for this list. It’s quirky. It’s sad. It’s scary and funny. It also has a tough yet vulnerable and very real female love interest that girl readers will love.

Barry Lyga made the Girl Books for Boys list with GOTH GIRL RISING but that won’t stop him from making this list with BOY TOY. This is a powerfully affecting novel about the aftermath of sexual abuse on a teenage boy. The perpetrator is an attractive young woman. All kinds of things are pulled apart and put back together in this remarkable book. It’s VERY graphic though and best for older teens.

Finally, Neal Shusterman makes pretty much every list I’ve ever made and this one is no exception. So much of the recent dystopian trend relies on “kick-ass” heroines who spend inordinate amounts of time choosing dresses and mooning over one or two boys that Shusterman’s UNWIND is a welcome change. Connor, the protagonist has little time for fashion or romantic entanglements; he’s running for his life in one of the craziest dystopias I’ve ever read. The premise of this is literally killer. A must read.

Younger /middle grade readers

Harry Potter and Percy Jackson have proven to us that younger girls have no problem reading about boys and those two series should keep girl readers busy for a while. When they run out here are a few boyish books to keep them going.

John Flanagan’s series RANGER’S APPRENTICE is kind of a cross between Tamora Pierce for boys and Games of Thrones for young readers. Set in a familiar but fantastical world the books concern Halt, a grizzled ranger (kind of like a medieval Navy Seal) and his young apprentice, Will. There’s a lot of sword but very little sorcery in this series. The drama relies on political and personal conflict. Will matures as the series progress, but each book is self-contained and conclusive. Twelve books on, Flanagan has just begun a companion series set in the same world, THE BROTHERBAND CHRONICLES.

A similar but shorter series of three books, SEA OF TROLLS by Nancy Farmer concerns Jack, who is taken prisoner by Vikings before he can complete his training as a bard (a kind of magician). Unlike Ranger’s Apprentice, this series is rich with magic and magical creatures. But it’s also an epic adventure with many strong female characters added to the mix. This one is a winner for boys and girls.

Finally three verse novels: SHAKESPEARE BATS CLEAN-UP by Ron Koertge, and LOVE THAT DOG and HATE THAT CAT by Sharon Creech. These three books star great boy characters facing very real and poignant struggles that girls will relate to as strongly as boys.

Boy Books Girls SHOULD Read

My boy list included some books about sexual assault and exploitation that boys should read for an insight into this aspect of girl life. So if sexual assault and exploitation are particularly “girl” topics (about 90% of the victims are girls) then crime and incarceration are particularly “boy” topics (about 90-95% of incarcerated people are male). Ergo, girls might benefit from books offering an insight into this world. Here are a few suggestions:

There are two books called LOCKDOWN. One by Walter Dean Myers, is a realistic tale, and the other by Alexander Gordon Smith is part of a terrifying dystopian/sci fi series called ESCAPE FROM FURNACE. Will girls like these books? Who knows? They should read them though, for a little look at the fears that confront many young men.

For further reading, the Newbury winning HOLES by Louis Sachar is a lighter look at the same topic. BOOTCAMP by Todd Strasser is a very real and very terrifying exploration of private prisons for teens. WE WERE HERE by Matt De La Peña is a more psychological journey of someone consumed with guilt and TWISTED by Laurie Halse Anderson concerns the angst of the falsely accused.

One of the reasons we all evangelize about reading so much is because we all believe that reading affords an insight into people other than yourself – people whose lives, economic situation, physical or mental health, sexuality or culture might be different from what you know. So it’s important not to forget reading across the greatest divide – gender. Even though, at least when it comes to YA, the majority of readers might be girls, as writers we need not become complacent – writing only the things that we assume girls want and need to read.

In the end, books should be for everyone

I don’t want to talk about Boston. I don’t want to talk about a misguided, possibly deluded 19 year old who lies fighting for breath in a Boston hospital, mourning his brother, mourning his life, which if public sentiment is any guide, is likely to end with a lethal injection. I don’t want to talk about his many victims, who also suffer, who also mourn. I REALLY don’t want to get into the debate about Islam, and race, and immigration and fundamentalism. I don’t want to talk about how our own violent, individualist and often callous culture is at least partially to blame. I really don’t want to talk about that.

I do, however, want to talk about this picture:

As much as I love the sentiment of this exchange, there is something disturbing about the juxtaposition of these two images. Can you spot it? Let me help you. Count the women in the Syrian photograph. Take your time. I’ll wait.

Now count the women in the Boston photograph.

Before you complain that Syria is a war zone and that the women and children are probably inside where it’s safer, let me remind you that Boston has just been bombed. But more than that, let me share this photo, taken during the London Blitz, in World War II:

This is a very similar event – a photo taken for media and morale purposes, on a bombed out street, during a horrifying international conflict wherein people were dying. Notice anything? Count the women. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

There are at least four women visible in the photograph, including one at the center of it all, a woman we came to know in my lifetime as the Queen Mother. Notice her husband, the FREAKING KING, standing deferentially behind her. Notice the respect, reverence, protectiveness and love in the faces of the men around her (is it me or is the man in the overalls looking at her boobs?). Feel the power and influence pouring off this woman, who, with her daughters, the future Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, were key figures in maintaining the public morale and calm for which wartime Brits became famous.

I don’t think I need to spell it out. Possibly some of you will have somethings to say about this. Maybe my argument is flawed. I’m happy to discuss it. Just let me say this to Syria in particular, and to many other countries and cultures (who know who they are) in general:

If you want peace, step one is to emancipate your women. If you want prosperity and justice, step one is to educate your women. If you desire democracy, LOOK TO YOUR WOMEN. Next time you send us a photograph, please for the love of Allah, include some women in it. I know you meant well with the photograph for Boston. And I know that Americans need to understand that you are not all violent fanatics. But your photo offends me. If this is a representative of your culture, then your culture offends me. I know my culture is not perfect, but at least I have a role in improving it. The women in the Boston photo have a role in improving it.

Show me that you respect and include women in your culture, and I will show you a much brighter future. Go ahead. Show me. I’ll wait.

Recently I had a brief Twitter discussion about “Books for Boys” lists. A librarian I follow complained about people displaying “Books for Boys” lists without also displaying “Books for Girls” lists. I was hesitant to even wade into that discussion. One part of me can see that there are many and various ways to approach this task and almost as many to get it horribly wrong. For one thing, it would be easy to say “ALL books are for boys or girls” and be done with it.

I mean, why do we even NEED such lists?

DO we even need “Books for Boys” list? By god, yes we do. And, in fact I don’t think we need books for girls lists nearly as much. While literary awards and prestigious reviews are still skewed towards male authors, when it comes to middle grade and young adult readership, we got this, ladies. The world needs “Books for Girls” lists about as much as we need “sports for boys” lists. I’m not against booklists for girls; I only wonder what is the premise behind such lists? Are these books girls in particular will enjoy? Books girls should read? The same goes for boys’ booklists. What are we saying about boys and girls with these lists?

One thing in particular that I have noticed about lists like this is that the boys lists are almost exclusively boy point of view and male authored (with The Hunger Games being a frequent exception) and the girls list are almost exclusively girl point of view and female authored.  Boy lists are heavy on genre while girl lists tend to have more contemporary offerings.

I’d like to mix it up a bit, by providing a few alternative lists. I’m going to start with a list of girl point of view books for boys.

For Young Adult readers

THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins is an obvious one. I’ve never met a boy who has read this and not loved it. The interesting thing about this book is that the protagonist, Katniss manages to be both ultra kick-ass and almost uncomfortably girly. There’s quite a lot of talk of dresses and best friends thrown in with the hunting and death. That said, this book hardly warrants inclusion because it’s already so widely read.

HATE LIST by Jennifer Brown, both female authored and girl point of view has many of the elements that are believed to NOT appeal to boys as much (romance, school politics, contemporary setting etc.) but the premise underlying HATE LIST is one that I think boys will strongly relate to.

BRUISED by Sarah Skilton, also female authored and girl point of view, but again, framed by a violent premise and containing themes of physical strength, fear, athleticism and aggression that boys may be drawn to.

LIAR by Justine Larbalestier is a tricky book, no matter how you look at it. A YA book with a girl on the cover is always a hard sell for boy readers for starters. That said, this is just so creepy, mysterious and in the end, darn right weird that I think it’s the kind of thing that boy readers might really dig.

UGLIES by Scott Westerfeld is another book/series that I feel is hurt by the rather feminine cover. Given that this is a book about a plain daredevil girl who goes on the run, riding a hover board and exploring rusty ruins, it really has all the ingredients for a book boys would love. If only the US publisher used the Russian covers! Check them out! But seriously, these UK covers are hot too.

Westerfeld’s MIDNIGHTERS series is another girl point of view series that boys might enjoy. The heroine, Jessica, gets chased by some kind of saber tooth tiger in the first book. What more could you ask for? But again, this is a series that could benefit from a less feminine cover.

BENEATH A METH MOON by Jacqueline Woodson. Most of the boys I have spoken to about reading seem to enjoy books wherein the life of the main character is extraordinarily hard. Privation seems to be a favorite theme. METH MOON definitely qualifies, as do a number of other addiction related books. METH MOON also has the advantage of a gender neutral cover.

GOTH GIRL RISING by Barry Lyga. Yes, this is a sequel and yes it has both a girl on the cover and “girl” in the title, both turn offs for boy readers, but perhaps drawing boys into this series with the first book, the boy point of view  THE ASTONISHING ADVENTURES OF FANBOY AND GOTH GIRL  might work. Regardless of how it’s achieved, this is a very unromantic look at a very hard to love character. But I think boys would love it.

EVERLOST by Neal Shusterman. No list for boy readers would be complete without a book or two by Neal Shusterman.  This one, like all Shusterman’s books, scary and suspenseful, is a dark portrait of the afterlife through the eyes of a car accident victim and her dead friends. What’s not to love?

HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT by Natalie Standiford. This one is a heartbreaker. It’s a great book and very boy friendly with its platonic couple, radio shows, robot related title, loners, weirdos – it has all the ingredients. The only problem is boy readers would not be caught dead reading such a pink book. Every edition of this book has the same nauseating Pepto Bismol shade of awful. In every other way this is my favorite type of cover.  I only wish the publishers would rethink the color scheme. Here’s a little inspiration for them:

TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN by John Marsden. This is a great and unputdownable series that is less widely known that it should be. Concerning a group of teens on the run from an unnamed invading army in Australia, not only does its female protagonist, Ellie, give new meaning to kick-ass, but also contains the survival/privation aspects that seem to appeal to boys in particular.

For younger readers

In general, younger boys are less likely to be turned off by girl point of view books. For this age group there are distinctly “girlish” books, almost all with girl protagonists, and relatively neutral ones, which can have either boy or girl protagonists. Here are a few girl protagonist books that might be particularly attractive to middle grade boys:

THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY by Adam Rex. This is funny and weird, and poignant. It’s a road trip book, a survival book, and alien book, a buddy book, and it has pictures! Overall a great book for boys with a junior kick-ass heroine to boot.

THE CITY OF EMBER by Jeanne DuPrau. Here’s another take on the privation that boys seem to enjoy so much, set in a perpetually dark and isolated city, which is running out of supplies and falling apart. Add a spunky young heroine and you have another winner for boy readers.

WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead. Boys will be drawn to the freaky quantum mystery of this book, as well as the universal themes of friendship and sacrifice.

A WRINKLE IN TIME, by Madeleine L’Engle. This is an oldie but a goody. Here’s a book that had its first decent cover fifty years after its first publication. That has got to be a record. But it’s a great adventure through space and time that boys will love.

Then there are “girl” books that boys SHOULD read. These are books that do an excellent job of revealing things little understood by boys about girls and womanhood, mostly having to do with sex. I know there are other books like this out there and I’d love to hear some more suggestions.

SPEAK, by Laurie Halse Anderson is an obvious one, for obvious and timely reasons. I haven’t included many dual point of view books on the list so far, but I would like to make an exception for another book on the topic of date rape, YOU AGAINST ME  by Jenny Downham. This is one of the few rape themed books that includes significant amounts of time spent on the perpetrator, although the male narrator is the victim’s brother.

I’ve struggled with the recent dystopian trend in that I haven’t found many books that posited the kind of sexual repression and control that would be likely (and that in fact exists in recent or current real life dystopias such as Afghanistan under the Taliban or North Korea). For this reason I would recommend to older boy readers THE HANDMAID’S TALE by Margaret Atwood as a book that gets into the mind of a young women whose sexual agency has been taken over by the state.

Still on the theme of sexual control I would recommend two verse novels: MY BOOK OF LIFE BY ANGEL by Martine Leavitt, and SOLD by Patricia McCormick.

Finally, another verse novel, though one with many points of view, OCTOBER MOURNING: A SONG FOR MATTHEW SHEPARD by Lesléa Newman. There are so many reasons I would love teen boys to read this book but perhaps the most important are the poems included that are from the point of view of the perpetrators of this hideous crime. Perpetrator point of view is one that is rarely included in books for young readers. Since the majority of juvenile crime is committed by boys and young men…well, you do the math.

This is a good start. I’d love to hear any suggestions. Next week I’ll compile a list of “boy” books for girl readers, focusing on boy point of view, male authored and “boyish” themed books. I’d love any suggestions for that list too.

Wow, meeting my quota this month was tough. I’m deep into deadline hell with the sequel to AUDACIOUS and also had to contend with two weeks of spring break, with my daughters day camp in the second week being cancelled! The lovely folks at Arts Umbrella saved the day (at least three hours of it) but still. I also had a few few did not finishes in my reading efforts this month. That didn’t help. But I pulled through. By blasting through a few books in the last few days, I not onlu once again made my quota but I also discovered my first five star book of 2013. Let’s start with that.

One book written for adults:

THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK by Matthew Quick

I love love LOVE Matthew Quick’s YA books so I’m not at all surprised how delighted I was with THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. On the surface this book was in danger with me. It has some of my literary pet peeves. I know this is weird because I have openly declared my love of broken boys, but normally I’m not a huge fan of broken men (literary or real life). But protagonist Pat Peoples is hard to dislike, for me at least, in part because he actually seems very young. Readers seem to interpret Pat as being mentally ill, and maybe if Matt reads this he can give his thoughts, but I saw Pat as brain injured. I think there are many clues pointing to this not least of which is that his friend Danny, who he met in hospital, clearly is. Well, for me there’s a big difference between brain injured and mentally ill, maybe not that much literally speaking, but narratively speaking. I don’t want to speculate too much on this but for me I think the idea that Pat was brain injured made this story feel new. A lot of literary and mainstream fiction uses mental illness as a device, so much so that it sometimes becomes a deus ex machina in weaker narratives, not so much to solve the conflict, but to create it. By contrast, Pat’s mental state was not the source of the overarching conflict in this complex book, it was something that needed to be handled while the conflict was settle. It complicated things, complicated the puzzle of Pat’s life but wasn’t the whole of it. The other thing that often trips me up in books for adults (I’m less troubled by it in YA and MG books) is a heavy sports motif.  Football figures prominently in this novel, but there is very little description of actual play so that helps me because I get bored with that very quickly. But the other thing I sometimes struggle with is when sports are awkwardly manhandled into some kind of metaphor for struggle or growth or whatever. That can be really pretentious. This book doesn’t fall into that trap. In fact it’s lack of pretension is probably why I loved it. Pat’s narration (perhaps because of his brain injury) is very straightforward. There is no awkward and self-conscious literary prose. The voice is very believable for who he is, particularly given the state of his brain. One comment, and I can’t really call this a complaint, but since I needed this book and couldn’t wait, I had to buy it at a bookstore and all they had was the movie tie-in edition. I HATE MOVIE-TIE INS!! Jennifer Lawrence’s name is a big as the author’s on the cover! She didn’t write this book! She was probably in high school while Quick was writing it!  So irritating. You’ll note I use the paperback cover in this post. Apart from that I really loved this book and am so glad I read it before seeing the movie, which I also want to see. As I said, 5/5 stars, my first for this year.

One Middle Grade:

CUL, DE SAC KIDS by Alison Acheson

I might be kind of a cheat to call this book middle grade, because it’s really more akin to a very early chapter book. It’s very short (I read it in about 30 minutes) and peppered with black and white illustrations so it’s obviously aimed at a pretty young audience. The author Alison Acheson (who was my prof at UBC) autographed my copy to my daughter who is 8. She read it once and then picked it up and read it again that’s a good sign. There are a few things to recommend this book. One, it’s one of the few kids books I’ve read that deals with the introduction of the step-father into a family in positive way. Many books have well established stepfathers (both good and bad) but often when a new man is coming into a child’s life the story presents it as negative, at least from the child’s point of view. The kids in this story seem genuinely pretty happy with their new dad, so that was kind of nice. Oddly enough, because this is a book for very young readers, I kind of felt like the stepfather’s story was the most interesting. It’s almost like I could read a companion novel written from his point of view, as a childless man joining a family with two kids and being “schooled” by his new neighbors on how to be a good dad. What do you think Alison? I also thought the street hockey and the other outdoor activities that the kids get up to were really great. Overall, this is a quiet but thoughtful book for less sophisticated readers that I think would make great classroom material.

One non fiction:

HOOKED: When Addiction Hits Home by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes

HOOKED is a good demonstration of why non writers shouldn’t write books. While the subject matter (young people dealing with an addicted family member) is interesting and important, the way the stories are told in this is so pedestrian that it takes away from the impact. It’s clear that the people featured in this book wrote their own chapters with only minimal editing ny Shantz-Hilkes. I’m not expecting poetry; an unpretentious voice is appropriate for this material. But I would have liked to be a bit more drawn into each story. They were awkwardly expressed, almost cold and clinical. I think this was a missed opportunity to create a really readable collection on this issue. As it is, it reads almost like a case study textbook. Since this is a book designed for teens a little more thought on how it was put together would have improved it.

One collection of poems:

THE MESSENGER by Stephanie Pippin

Someone please just shoot me now. Nothing against Ms. Pippen but I didn’t relate to a single poem in this collection. I don’t think I understood or saw the point of them at all. Am I just stupid? Should I just give up right now? I don’t think I can face another nine books like this. And this one I read after giving up on two other collections! For god’s sake I’m supposed to be a poet myself. What’s wrong with me? I shall persevere and hope that next month’s poetic offering is more my cup of tea. I don’t have high hopes though.

One “genre” :

HOLD ME CLOSER NECROMANCER by Lish McBride

I met Lish McBride in January at ALA in Seattle. We bonded over our mutual despair over literary fiction and the use of “pants” as an expletive. This month when I realized I was down a genre novel with only less than a week to go, I grabbed this one and plowed through it in two days. SO MUCH FUN. I had a real kind of Douglas Adams feeling as I read this. Not Hitchhiker’s Guide so much as THE LONG DARK TEATIME OF THE SOUL with it’s complicated and sublimely silly plot. McBride’s book is not quite so silly, but it’s at least as complicated and has many of the same rather surreal elements. It’s gorgeously written without being self-consciously clever and the post high school characters are all delightfully directionless. This is what “New Adult” should be if there must be such a thing, rather than a parade of horny girls in college dorms. It’s scary, sexy and clever. The multiple points of view (a mixture of 1st person and 3rd person) and male protagonist lift this “urban paranormal” out of a rather saturated field and into something with more literary worth and more staying power. I’m looking forward to more in this series.

One graphic novel:

PUNK ROCK JESUS by Sean Murphy

I mean, PUNK ROCK JESUS! How could I pass this one up. This is actually a collection of  what was five short serialized graphic novels published last year. It’s being published in this omnibus edition on April 9th. I scored a eARC from Edelweiss and boy I’m glad I did. This is one of the few times when I’ve received a eBook to review where I actually have plans to buy the print book when it comes out. I’m not a huge consumer of graphic novels, and I had to read this one off a computer screen, which is never ideal but I just loved this. So subversive, so beautiful, PUNK ROCK JESUS somehow manages to be an indictment of both the media and Christianity, capitalism and science. In fact it shits all over everyone who isn’t a teenage punk rocker, which, while being a sentiment I once shared, as a semi-responsible adult now usually irritates me. But it made perfect sense in this story. The artwork was phenomenal – very graphic and intense, though not being an expert in this form I can’t really compare it to much. I want to read this again. I want to hold it in my hand. I think I’ll give two or three copies as Christmas presents. PUNK ROCK JESUS, people! Why didn’t I think of this?

One pre-20th Century historical:

DAVID by Mary Hoffman

I’ve always had a thing for Michaelangelo’s David and once toyed with the idea of writing something about him myself. So when I saw this on the shelf at the library I picked it up knowing nothing about it. Well I was delighted. This is another book that would do well by being included on lists of “New Adult”. Gabriel, the protagonist and narrator is eighteen years old and trying to make his way in the world away from his family for the first time. The fact that he is the (fictional) milk-brother of the famous sculptor, and the model of the famous sculpture only adds to his NA hero charm. And charming he is. He charms the bloomers of several women in this fast paced and intriguing story of Renaissance Italian society and politics. The historical details in this blend seamlessly with a quite contemporary feeling narrative about political and family alliances, ambition, deception and the temptations that inevitably face beautiful young men on their own for the first time. Gabriel is a complex character, and flawed, but he’s easy to love. 4/5 stars.

One verse novel:

PURPLE DAZE by Sherry Shahan

I appreciate what Shahan tried to do with this book, but in the end I felt that there were just too many voices vying for attention. I find this is a problem with a lot of verse novels that attempt multiple protagonists. While this is a form that lends itself to experimentation, and certainly some verse novels with multiple protagonists work extremely well (many of Ellen Hopkins’s books for example), PURPLE DAZE struggles to express a coherent narrative, instead spending a lot of energy and time creating the moment (the late sixties). I was left with a very unresolved feeling at the end of this. Not in the good way that sometimes happens, wherein questions are left in your head to ponder at the end of a book. Rather I felt that this book ended before it really took off. At the end I knew a lot about the period, about the war and the protests etc, but very little about the characters and their motivations. And I had no sense of where any of them were headed. Some lovely verse in this and interesting historical detail but a bit disappointing overall.

I’ve learned some reading lessons this month. I’ve learned that a lot of adult romance literature is absolute shit. I’ve learned that  a lot of poetry is unreadable gobbledygook. I’ve just learned how to spell “gobbledygook”. See you next month.

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

Publishing mergers are in the wind a lot these days.

It’s not so much that I think one entity, possibly Amazon, wants to rule the entire universe, it’s that merging and acquiring has become somehow fashionable. Mergers and Acquisitions are the new vampires, the new dystopias, the new New Adults. They’re trendy. I don’t think it will be long before individual authors will cotton onto this trend creating literary hybrids never before imagined. Here are some suggestions:

In a hostile takeover, Cassandra Clare will acquire  John Green. All of John Green’s beautiful eloquent and/or dead teenagers will be tattooed and put to work killing demons, which will severely impede their opportunities to wax poetical about books they read and thoughts they had while gazing at the stars. Many fans will cry. Others will laugh. No one will be prepared to say either way whether this is a good thing.

Neil Gaiman will merge with Doctor Who. Not the production company behind Doctor Who, nor the actor who plays Doctor Who, the ACTUAL Doctor Who. No one will notice.

E. L James will become a majority shareholder of Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie Meyer will react by selling her remaining shares to George R. R. Martin and taking the black, becoming the first female (and the first Mormon) member of the Night’s Watch.

ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS and ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD will merge into a new and terrifying book called ANNA DRESSED IN FRENCH AND KISSED IN BLOOD. It will be the number one most challenged book of that year for sheer inscrutability.

Cory Doctorow will acquire Gideons International and proceed to place copies of LITTLE BROTHER in hotel rooms around the world. The changeover will be greeted with universal approval.

THE GIRL WHO CIRCUMNAVIGATED FAIRYLAND IN A SHIP OF HER OWN MAKING will merge with MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL  and EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX (BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK) creating the longest book title in the history of publishing as well as a new and mostly unmarketable genre.

There will be cross platform merging too:

Christianity will merge with Bernie Botts Every Flavour Beans in a last ditch effort to make itself relevant to a younger generation.

Self-published eBooks will merge with self-promoting eHarmony profiles. No one will notice.

Manga will merge with Magnum, creating a chocolaty animated ice-cream fetishistic adventures that you eat from back to front.

Steam Punk will merge with Daft punk. It will be utterly awesome.

Cosplay will merge with Coldplay. People will say “I’m just surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

Pope Francis will merge with the estate of Dick Francis and pen crime novels set in the Vatican, putting Dan Brown out of a job.

Dan Brown will acquire the Republic of Cyprus.

Amazon will acquire NASA, the Republican Party, Tom Cruise, the last samples of the smallpox virus, Jupiter, the Antarctic, Frank’s Hot Sauce, Las Vegas, your belief in the fundamental goodness of the human spirit, Wayne Gretsky, socialized medicine, Camp David, Grumpy Cat and that fluff everyone’s dryers before finally Walmart takes away their credit card and makes them clean their room.

Walmart will acquire God only to open the box and find that it’s empty. Richard Dawkins will snigger into his tea. God will send Richard Dawkins either an empty box or a box with a cat in it, just to mess with him.

Life will go on, as predicted.

(warning: triggers, adult content and language)

I might just have to stop looking at the internet for a few weeks because every time I turn around someone else is decrying one of the most precious and valued human emotions: sympathy. My sympathy for Steubenville’s Jane Doe is a given for anyone who knows me (or reads this blog). I know not all people sympathize with her; and their lack of sympathy is based mostly on the belief that she somehow “deserved it” for getting drunk or being “a slut” or whatever. Bullshit. No one deserves to get raped, right?

But sympathy for Jane Doe does not preclude sympathy for her rapists. One of the most disgusting things I have read from this sentencing was someone mocking these boys for being scared that they will be raped in prison (depending on where they are incarcerated there is a very good chance they will be). Wait a minute; did we not just say that NO ONE deserves to get raped? Are we making exceptions to that rule now? How far do those exceptions go? For example, let say you are one of the 1,500 women currently incarcerated in the USA for a sex crime (almost 100% of which offended against minors). If the two Steubenville rapists had attacked you instead would that have been okay? Let’s say you are one of the 700 or so juvenile females arrested every year for sex offences. Do you deserve to be raped? What about the many hundreds of children under ten who are arrested each year for sex crimes? Would it be okay to rape you?

Read my fucking lips: NO ONE DESERVES TO GET RAPED.

I don’t excuse rapists from their penance and punishment (and treatment, one would hope). But nor do I exclude them from the human race. EVERYONE is deserving of sympathy, no matter what. Not everyone is capable of offering that sympathy. I doubt for example Jane Doe could muster any up for her attackers, nor do I expect her to (though I hope someone tells her she should try to eventually forgive them, for her own sake). And I’m sure she might not understand my sympathy for them. But unfortunately she doesn’t get to decide how I feel. Because if we let victims decide how perpetrators are treated we would be executing people every day, even in Canada. And I’m not okay with that.

I want my heart’s capacity for forgiveness to be infinite. If there is a human soul I sincerely hope even Hitler’s soul is at peace. I know that might disgust some people, but I like it that way. And as for feeling sympathy for boys who murder rather than rape teenage girls, read a little about 17 year-old Jake Evans, who murdered his sister and mother for no apparent reason, and get back to me. Then read about Katy Hutchison and Ryan Aldridge and try not to cry. Then read one of the many cases of girls and women who kill their newborn babies and tell me sympathy for murderers is not socially acceptable.

There is more I could say on this. Much more. I could talk about the Schadenfreude that motivated both the Steubenville assault and the collective gloating over the convicted tearfully watching their lives go down the toilet. This Schadenfreude permeates our culture like a deadly cancer of the soul. If we’re not watching Honey Boo Boo make fools of her whole family, or snickering about the fall of Lindsay Lohan, we’re sharing “drunk yoga” pictures on Facebook. Many of us have a twinge of guilt about these. So thank god for teenage rapists; they are people we can Schadenfreude with gleeful impunity. Because they deserve it. And yes I just verbed Schadenfreude. Sue me.

I could say more, about what it means to be a registered sex offender, about juvenile sex offenders having the lowest recidivism rates of almost any crime, about how young black men are transformed, and not in a good way, by incarceration. I could talk about how throwing these two boys into the volcano will not appease the rape culture gods in any way, how our gratification at this sentence is a dangerous illusion and how this will keep happening despite locking teenage offenders away. I could talk about how they might have been part of the solution, but now they will never be part of anything ever again.

And I could talk about how the idea that rape “ruins” women’s lives or is “a life sentence” or a violation “in the worst way” is actually an offshoot of the very thing we are trying to conquer, which is the belief that women are only as valuable as the soundness of their hymen. Feminism has mutated this ancient belief, but still left many women with the impression that they must guard their sexual self-determination with their lives, and that failure to do so will lead to ruination and despair. I could talk about the many millions of supposedly “ruined” rape survivors who are successful journalists and authors, politicians, mothers, artists, executives, teachers, doctors and soldiers. I could talk about how being told that my life is “ruined” is deeply offensive and misogynist. Drugs ruin lives. Being paralyzed by a drunk driver is a “life sentence”. And the worst possible violation is not the forcible insertion of a penis or other object into the vagina but the forcible insertion of a bullet into the brain of your child. The second worst is when the bullet is inserted into YOUR brain. And I could remind you that the gun lobby’s official comment on rape is that “women should carry guns.”

I could talk about all kinds of things, but instead I prefer to let America’s favorite philosophers do the talking.

Many people who are married in churches have the Bible verses “Love is patient, Love is kind…” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) read during the ceremony. It may interest you to know that the classical English translation of these verses, from the King James Bible concerns CHARITY not love. According to the verse, charity “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” It goes on to say of faith, hope and charity “The greatest of these is charity”.

The chapter begins by pointing out that if I “have not charity, I am nothing.” Charity would have saved that poor girl from her ordeal. Charity could save us all.

Here’s another one we could all have a little think about:  ”Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth ” (Proverbs 24:17–18)

Oh yeah, and “He among you who is without sin, let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7)

I could go on, but I grow tired of schooling a Christian nation on the nature of Christianity. I really do.

Rant over.