Personality <> Books

"A joke is a very serious thing." - my eighth cousin five times removed, Mr. Winston Churchill

First of all, look at this. For right now it's just through phones and special glasses...but just wait until it hits contact lenses.


Neither of my sisters is particularly eager to take book recommendations from me. The youngest claims she doesn't like the books I liked when I was her age (yet is perfectly willing to read and then loves them when people other than me say they were good), and the other...I don't actually know.


She refuses to read John Green books not because she doesn't like his writing, but because I watch him on YouTube. I do not understand why this is a problem. And just to be clear, I was halfway through An Abundance of Katherines in May of 8th grade (God, it's been awhile) when I realized that this John Green was that John Green. It (originally) had nothing to do with the fact that I like his videos.


But okay. Nerdy vlogger probably writes nerdy books (he does). Fair enough. But then, having started Maureen Johnson's The Last Little Blue Envelope last night, I tell my sister that she should read Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, or really anything by her, because I've read and enjoyed all of them.


My sister says "You shouldn't have told me the author, because now I'm not going to read it." Maureen Johnson does not write nerdy books. Just because I follow her on Twitter and she's friends with John Green...Most American YA authors are friends with each other. Twitter isn't even a nerdy thing anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time. It's a social networking tool. I'd wager that most authors are on Twitter, even if Maureen has won a few awards for being one of the best personalities to follow.


Every author puts a little of themselves into their writing, but books are still separate from personality. You can really like a person and not like their writing, or you can really like their writing and agree that the writer is a jerk. And just because I like what an author does as themselves as well as what they do as a writer doesn't mean that their books are bad and I'm just horribly biased (I will be biased, but not that much).


But on the note of recommendations, if you're going to read one of Maureen's books, I'd suggest starting with The Bermudez Triangle. It's been labeled, not by me, as a book that absolutely everyone, regardless of gender or age, should read. It's about three girls who are about to start their senior year of high school, and I read it in a single afternoon-- which is saying a lot, since it's nearly 400 pages.