19 January 2009

Lizzie and Darcy snubbed

The Guardian is offering up a list of the 1000 novels everyone must read.
'Over seven days our writers recommend the best books to read about crime, war, fantasy, travel, science fiction, family and love.'

So far they've done love and crime.

On the Love List, the only book I was able to readily identify as what we might call YA is Dodi Smith's I Capture the Castle, but it does mention lots of others that I read as a teenager and loved (The Great Gatsby, Love in the Time of Cholera, Lolita, The English Patient)*,
or hated (Wuthering Heights**, Lady Chatterley's Lover***),
or thought I liked but wasn't 100% sure because I didn't really, and still don't quite, understand it (The Unbearable Lightness of Being),
or read recently and am sure I would have loved as a teen (The Virgin Suicides)
or read recently and am sure I would have hated as a teen (Death in Venice)

If you could make a Love List of YA books what would you have?

The Onions would start with:
The Changeover by Margaret Mahy
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta
When you wake and find me gone by Maureen McCarthy
Guitar Highway Rose by Brigid Lowry
And love it or hate it - Twilight is all about the luuurve.


* Pride and Prej didn't make the Love list, but we're betting it'll show up on the Family list. If not, we might have to write AN EMAIL to the Guardian.
** Other Onions would like to point out they loved this one . They are strange and wrong.
***We are willing to go on the record as saying no one should ever HAVE to read DH Lawrence.




6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it a prerequisite for writing YA books that you have the initials MM?

Misrule said...

I prefer the romance in Melina's On the Jellicoe Road myself--one of the most compelling romances in YA, I reckon. I also love the romance between Katsa and Po in Kristin Cashore's Graceling, which was published as YA in the US, although we've got the adult UK edition here. (I reckon it's definitely YA myself.) Finally, Tom and Polly in Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock.

Penni Russon said...

Oh, I love the relationship between Tycho and Angela in Catalogue of the Universe
New Patches for Old by Christobel Mattingly (maybe not quite YA, possibly a bit younger, but loverly)
Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? by Paula Danziger
And Seven Little Australians - sigh.

Anonymous said...

I'd throw in the whole Alex quartet, by Tessa Duder - in which Alex loves and loses, but lives to love again...

The Alien Onions said...

Anonymous - Yes! The Alex books - Good thinking. The fateful first love, and the highly appealing Kiwi opera singer pretending to be an Italian. *swoons*

Penni - I love The Catalogue of the Universe. But somehow I couldn't imagine that the stunningly beautiful Angela would actually stay with Tycho. I felt that as soon as my back was turned after the end of the book she would run off with someone else. I'd proabbly put this one on my Family List - because Tycho's family is so funny and awesome and hideous and real, and Angela has all that family angst also.

Judith - To my shame I haven't read On the Jellicoe Road. You have re-inspired me to go and get hold of a copy and read immediately.

Virginia - Yes. They check your birth certificate before they let you write YA. Judy Bloom's real name was Murgatroyd Mummenschanz

--Susannah

Anonymous said...

Oh, I'd forgotten about The Changeover. Loved that one and probably still do.

Anything by Dianna Wynne Jones would make my list along with Eva Ibbotson's Which Witch ... which I stupidly let someone borrow.