# of Pages: 435
Bingo Category: Book You Heard About Online
So clearly I'm going a little out of order with these book entries now, but I wanted to write about the books I'd taken out on book loan from work before I had to return them again, and now I'm backtracking for the reading I did midst my final school assignments.
Here is a book that I had wanted to start reading for a very long time. I even vowed that once I got back into Welland after handing in my final paper that I would get off the bus and make a b-line for the bookstore and finally pick up my own copy of Fangirl. I'd read her earlier book Eleanor & Park last year and absolutely loved it, but that wasn't the only reason. Twitter has been buzzing about this book for quite some time - part of that reason may be that I follow Rainbow Rowell on Twitter - and geek girls from all over seem to be falling in love with Cath and her story that Rowell skillfully tells. I've even seen creative adaptions of the book, such as a video that is part of the "I Didn't Write This" video series created by one of the executive producers of Shipwrecked Comedy, Yulin Kuang.
I'll admit that I knew about the book before I heard so much about it online. I do work in a bookstore, so when new released crop up, especially in the Teen section, I know about it fairly quickly. When I found out that this book was about a girl who writes fan fiction, I was immeasurably happy. I've never written fan fiction before, I'll admit it, but I've been doing online roleplaying for almost 6 years now, which is in many ways similar to fan fiction. It made me really happy that Rowell's book will be able to bring awareness to an amazing genre of writing where writers young and old can both profess their love for various works by paying homage to them with their own work, and where they'll be able to sharpen their skills as writers.
One aspect I really enjoyed about this book was its size. When I was getting close to the end of the first semester, it felt like the book was about to end, but I was always ecstatic to see that I had a bit chunk of pages left to flip through. More than likely, this book could have been split into 2 volumes if Rowell had desired it, but I'm glad that it's just one book. Reading Fangirl made me fully understand what friends and customers mean when they tell me that they don't want to get caught up in a full-blown series at the moment and they're just looking for a singular read. I felt completely satisfied by the end of the book, and didn't have to experience that sick feeling that I would be waiting a full calender year to find out what happens next.
This book should be a required text for all geek girls, especially if you suffer from any of the anxiety issues that Cath experiences throughout the story. I could completely relate to how she was feeling when her anxiety would begin to bubble up, and it made me wish that I had a twin sister somewhere on the same campus as me that I could lean on for support. If I had a rating system, I would easily give this book 6 out of 5 stars and shove a copy into as many hands as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment