READING NOW VS. THEN: CATHERINE RYAN HYDE’S JUMPSTART THE WORLD

I’ve been so wrapped up in the release of PLAYING HURT—and the super-fun corresponding blog tours—I haven’t had much time to blog about anything else! (I can’t even begin to describe how truly cool bloggers have been about the release of PLAYING HURT. I’m not joking. My readers? The best. I’m so, so lucky…)

I’ve been wanting to write a post for some time about Catherine Ryan Hyde’s JUMPSTART THE WORLD. Thing is, every single time I start to write it, I get a woosh of all sorts of images: me sitting in the movie theater when I was in grad school, watching PAY IT FORWARD (I was already a fan of Catherine’s)…I remember the insanely exciting, scary, stressful months leading up to the release of A BLUE SO DARK, and the hope and—okay, intimidation—I felt approaching Catherine for a blurb. I think of all the exchanges I’ve had with Catherine via email and online in the months—good grief, A BLUE SO DARK is actually nearly a year old!—since she sent her incredibly encouraging blurb…

As for JUMPSTART, I loved it—as I absolutely knew I would. Some novels (I’m thinking of Anderson’s WINTERGIRLS or Suzanne Phillips’s BURN) you read because they instantly put an off-kilter feeling in your gut. You’re propelled forward to find out how the protagonist’s knotted-up mess will finally untangle. Although the storyline is equally as compelling, JUMPSTART has a vulnerability about it, a more gentle tug that draws the reader on to its conclusion. The sweetness is what I wanted to return to, each time I had to put the book down.

As for me, anytime I cracked the cover of JUMPSTART, I also thought about Catherine. I saw her hand in the pages…

Before I began writing full-time myself, authors were truly distant, almost sacred creatures. I saw novels as objects—as things. As I was growing up, and as I entered adulthood, authors seemed, for the most part, somewhat unapproachable. Not Catherine, though. And because of that, as I read JUMPSTART, I truly felt that the novel was living. Breathing.

I don’t think I’ll ever pick up a book again and think of it as a thing…

Thank you, Catherine…

How about you? Has meeting an author online or in person changed how you read?

(Aaaand...because the PLAYING HURT Tour is still rolling: Check out the interview at Yay! Reads. I'm also in the midst of a couple of international PLAYING HURT Tours...Check out my guest post on world building and the review posted at Amaterasu Reads (as part of the Philippine Tour). And, as part of the Canadian Tour, check out the interview and review at YA Booklover, as well as my guest post on Clint, my last-minute addition, and the review at Moonlight Gleam...)