YA Things That Bother Me: A List

• The "best friends" who are so obviously in love with each other but, like, everyone knows but them. Ha. Hahaha. Please.
• Insta-love. Dear universe, this is as annoying in books as it is in real life. Probably if you're one of the people it's less annoying, but for every single onlooker it's the worst.
• The best friends who've known each other THEIR WHOLE ENTIRE LIVES. They took baths together! Their mothers are best friends! (Please, let me know if you've known your BFF your entire life. Is this a real thing? That really happens?)
• The best friends where one is an introverted bookworm and the other is the party girl who's prettier and more popular. 

Friends, what am I missing?

Thoughts on the How I Live Now Trailer

Let's talk about this.

Yep, it's a trailer for the movie based on Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now. And I have some thoughts, so let's get started.

First of all, ComingSoon.net calls the movie a "doomsday thriller," which is not exactly (or at all) how I ever thought of the book. I mean, yes, I guess it is, but I don't think of explosions and running for your life when I think of HILN. I think of Daisy and Piper eating poisonous mushrooms and Edmund, and the other cousin, the one who doesn't ever talk. I think of how weirdly surreal the whole story is.

Which is what the trailer is missing. From the trailer, this movie looks wholly modern-day and bright and vivid and colorful while I think of the book in muted colors.

There are certain things I'm hoping they don't erase for the movie (her eating disorder and the fact that Edmund is her cousin for two -- those were both really big, really important parts of the novel), and other things that I'm not convinced will translate. I think one of the biggest things that made the book work so well for me was that it was from Daisy's POV. I mean, this is a book that deals with some really really really dark and strange stuff -- war, incest, anorexia, hallucinating because of eating poisonous mushrooms -- but Daisy's personality and attitude make it... not better exactly, but different. Because we're in her mind, we know that she knows how messed up things are and isn't completely off her rocker (mostly though, mostly). In a movie, I don't know that they'll capture that. There are certain lines in the book, certain things Daisy thinks -- her reaction to the soldier being surprised at her cousins smoking and her fervent big-sister-type love for Piper, for instance -- that were just so perfect. How will that fit in a movie? And, if the movie is going to be a "doomsday thriller," will they even try?

Thoughts/expectations for the movie?

Crazy Shenanigans in Books vs. Movies and Television

Last month I read Susanne Colasanti's latest novel, So Much Closer. In it, a girl finds out her longtime crush is moving to New York City, so she follows him there and enrolls at his new school in the hopes that he'll notice, and fall in love with, her. It's not a bad book, but the entire time I found myself thinking about how unbelievably unrealistic the whole thing was. I mean, really? It just seems crazy. The whole time I was thinking about how insane this character is and how I couldn't believe what she was doing.

It just wasn't very believable.

And then Saturday night I watched television. More specifically, I watched iCarly and then Legally Blonde, both of which I love. In the first, a girl checked herself into a mental institution because she likes a boy. And I assume everyone has seen Legally Blonde, but on the off chance you haven't, she follows her ex-boyfriend to law school in order to become a lawyer so that he'll go out with her again and ask her to marry him. Now, these things are equally as unbelievable as the plot of So Much Closer, but I accepted them so much easier. A mental hospital? From vapid sorority girl to law school student? No problem.


And the craziness doesn't stop there.  In Pushing Daisies, a character joins a convent to get away from the guy she's in love with (and also there's a dead girl who's never recognized by her family, but that's another type of crazy); Lizzie McGuire passed for an Italian pop star for, like, a long time. And I easily went along with those things.

So why is it that the most unbelievable (and, let's face it, usually pretty stupid) things happen in a TV show or movie, but when similar things happen in books it's so difficult to get past? All of the shows and movies I mentioned? Love them. The book? Well, the idea that The Office references were so obscure people wouldn't get them was my breaking point.

There is something wrong here, some disconnect between the fictional stories we see on television and the ones we read in books. Is it because the on-screen stories are comedies while most books aren't? Maybe, but even those books that are comedies couldn't get away with the type of storylines and character choices we see here. There are some things not even Scarlett and Spencer Martin can make believable and realistic.

And if it's not comedy, what is it? Is it easier to accept that worlds, though they look like our own, are their own universes when those worlds are shown on screen instead of in pages? Is it easier, somehow, to nitpick books? Are story mediums like television and movies more about escapism, whereas books are about relating? I don't know, but the more I think about it the more interesting the question becomes.

What do you think? Is it easier for you to accept the crazy things characters do if those characters are in TV/movies instead of books? And why?