BBAW Interview: Renay from YA Fabulous!

As part of Book Blogger Apprectiation Week 2009 (BBAW), I exchanged interviews with Renay of the book review blog YA Fabulous!

First off, welcome to Monkey Bear Reviews! Can you share a little bit about yourself?

It’s awesome to be here (there? since I am writing this in the past?). I’m Renay and I’ve been bloviating on these here internets since 1994. I’ve spent most of my time in http://fanlore.org/wiki/User:Renay”>gaming/book/media fandom, but in 2006 I became a Book Blogger. My not-so-secret lair is located in Arkansas, which really throws people off sometimes, I can feel their incredulity in their comments when they reply going “I would have never guessed you were a Southerner!” I have a twang, ya’ll, picture everything you read from this moment on spoken like the best Southern stereotypical character you know.

(I do not live on a farm.)

I am also one of those artsy academic types and I like critical analysis of books. I live with a boy and three snobby cats. I am roughly a quarter of a century old and dudes, I have lots of book-loving years ahead of me.

What inspired you to start blogging?

Book bloggers outside this community. There are many of them on Livejournal, and that was my home base for years. I was reading as many as I could get my hands on, and when I started to get annoyed they weren’t long enough, or critical enough, or there wasn’t enough analysis, I figured: why not start doing this gig on my own. Plus side: choose my own books!

Why did you choose to review YA fiction in particular?

When I started YA Fabulous! I was in love with YA fiction. In a way, it feels subversive, much like my experiences writing fanfiction does. Here we are, celebrating this portion of life that most of the world wants us to grow out of, now now now, it can never come too fast…and YA literature sets stories there, and revels in this particular age range, and says: these experiences are more valuable than just rushing through them to get to being an adult.

And look how many adults read YA these days: what’s all that about adult-age-having being so coveted? Right.

The quality of YA Fiction has improved considerably since I was a teenager. I have the feeling publishers are more willing to take risks with books in the YA field than they are with many other genres these days. Why do you think this is?

Well, I think (and could be wrong, but I’ll give it a shot) that being a teen is about risks. There are a lot of firsts as a teen, and our world has changed a lot since the days of watered-down goody-goody YA I read when I was 13 and 14, like Sweet Valley High and The Babysitters Club, where society is realizing teens are taking the risks and the YA is written by adults who took them and aren’t afraid to put them in their work reflect that. Also, with true-to-life scenarios comes an ability to be more honest and open and I think that’s a big reason the quality has gone up. It’s not paint-by-numbers, fill-in-the-plot-circle stories anymore. It’s real, for various qualities of real, and that has helped it find its way.

Can you name some of the first book blogs you read?

Many of the LJ blogs are gone or sleeping with fishes, but one of the first regular book blogs was Dewey, who passed last year, and who really inspired me to care about reviewing and reviewing well and gosh, I miss her like burning. Another blog I followed was http://www.thingsmeanalot.com/ Nymeth at Things Mean a Lot because she is awesome, as well as Bookshelves of Doom (http://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com/), Chasing Ray (http://www.chasingray.com/), and Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (http://www.blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/).

Which books changed your life, altered your perspective on an issue, or inspired you to read more books in a particular genre?

Here’s where I get to flail about John Green, and how he brought me back to YA with his smart, funny book An Abundance of Katherines. I read it in 2007 and fell in love, head over heels, and searched out more of his books, which led me to the first book he wrote, Looking for Alaska. I don’t talk about my atheism much, but this book helped me so, so, so much, in reconsidering religion, and life and death, and what it means to exist; it made me be less angry at religion, and I was pretty angry and had been for a long time, so the fact that I read it and it was like cooling, diving into still, silent water, finding a peace that had been out of my grasp for so long.

I imagine that a lot of YA does this for a lot of people about many, many issues. I’m not the first, or the last, but this brought me back to YA and made me able to address topics I couldn’t even approach before emotionally or intellectually. Books that can do that to you don’t come along very often; I’d have been a fool not to search out more YA after that. It hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

Which new books are you particularly looking forward to reading over the next few months?

Oh, gosh, there are tons! Fire by Kristin Cashore, Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, Ash by Malinda Lo and The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don’t Mind by Kirstin Cronn-Mills (the last two which actually came out recently, I just haven’t gotten my hands on them. Toward 2010 there’s Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green/David Levithan and perhaps Scott Lynch will release the third book in the series I’m following, Republic of Thieves.

Out of all the experiences you’ve had blogging so far, which has been the best? Which has been the most frustrating?

The best was becoming friends with Dewey and then Nymeth (http://thingsmeanalot.com) and Chris (http://dreamstuffbooks.com/blog) and Debi (http://dastevens.blogspot.com). I don’t really know how to express how rewarding they’ve made my experiences here, how many good books I’ve been introduced to through them, how they encourage me to grow as a reader and a writer and a person. I think, this answer right here, is what the whole week is about in part, the people that fuel this crazy thing we call book blogging. The books are great, but it’s the hands and the brains and the opinions of people who turn them into action. The people, the bloggers who touch us and change us forever, the bloggers who are text on a screen but become friends who we trust and love just like people we know offline, and how it’s so amazing that such a life-altering experience is brought about through reading about imaginary characters and places. Making friends seems like such a trite answer, but on the other hand, all my best experiences were brought about by meeting these people and all the other bloggers that have touched me and given me their words and support. That’s going on my Best of List: Life Version.

The most frustrating part so far has been being a critical blogger. Before I was a Book Blogger, I was a Lit Major, and I paid people to teach me how to take literature apart and I’ve never quite broken the habit. Also, being a feminist and a white ally has made my experience really weird. I’m pretty openly critical with no apologies about it, which has made me a target for every mouth-breathing jerkface angry that I didn’t like their FAVORITE BOOK EVAR!!! It’s like high school bullying, but with more accusations of lesbianism (as if this is an insult) and offers to “put me out of my misery”. Of course, every experience has a good and bad side and I try not to let the bad side get me down too often, but it’s hard when there aren’t too many critics in my field I can cling to.

Any advice for newbie bloggers, or pitfalls to avoid?

The only advice I have is write, write, write, write, write. The best book bloggers I know are ones who I can read their writing and know that it’s them because they have spent time on their writing. Sometimes I see a big focus on the reviews and their style, do this, include this information, should I use ratings and not like: is this writing good? Does it flow well? Am I making good points? Have I blatantly stolen jacket copy without citing it? Also, there is this big push to be FIRST!!! and once a few people have been FIRST!!! I see bloggers that didn’t make it start to get down on themselves. I think this is a mistake, which this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pawk5zHVl14 outlines really well. The pertinent part is this: “The only thing that matters is that you have your own voice and you use that voice to say things that you believe are true. Because you’re never going to be the first one to speak, but you’re always going to be the first one to speak with your voice.”

What are your favourite YA books so far in 2009?

This hasn’t been a great New Releases! year for me so far (by not great I mean, uhhhh wow, nothing is really a 2009 title), but I have been catching up on 2008 titles. Graceling by Kristin Cashore was awesome, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness was so fantastic I did something I never, ever do and wrote the author (who is also fantastic). I am pretty sure it’s my favorite book read this year, hands down. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan and My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger were two others I really, really loved, as well.

That’s that! Thanks for having me.

To read a long, rambling interview with me (Sarah), visit Renay’s blog. Contains much navel-gazing, so be warned!

Tagged as: BBAW, Blogging, Interview, Reading