That's right my friends I have finally realized something and I thought it was worthy of being deemed an epiphany.
It all started yesterday in the middle of my chemistry test. All of a sudden I realized that I really love contemporary YA fiction. Now some of you guys are thinking, "Kathryn, you specifically wrote on the blog that you like contemporary fiction. How is this an epiphany?" And this I shall explain. But to properly explain we must go back many years ago to a younger Kathryn (a seventh grade Kathryn).
When I was in seventh grade a very popular book series about sparkly vampires came out. Yes that's right...Kathryn was a twihard at one time. I will admit that after reading Twilight, and the rest of the series, I was a bit...obsessed. That being said I reread it many a time. This eventually led me to seek out books with similar plots in the paranormal genre. I have, in fact, gotten over my obsession with the Twilight series. And here is where the story of my epiphany begins. Most of the books I like to read are paranormal books. That's because, as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to read more from that genre after reading Twilight. For a while paranormal books satisfied me, and they still do for the most part, but then I stumbled upon a book blog that had a review of a Sarah Dessen book.
I had never heard of Sarah Dessen, but I did some research and saw that she had a new book coming out so I decided to buy it. (In case you're wondering it was Along for the Ride.) In a nut shell, I loved it. I realized that this book made me feel more of a connection with the characters because I could actually see these things happening in real life. Now you're thinking, "But Kathryn that book came out a while ago and you just had your epiphany the other day." This is because although I loved the new genre I had stumbled upon I was still more willing to live in the world of the supernatural. I liked the feeling that there could possibly be these weird creatures living around us. Now of course I knew full well they weren't real, but it's like hoping Hogwarts is real. You know it's not, but you wish it was.
And now we are finally to the point of my epiphany. If you've noticed on the blog I've been reading a lot more contemporary fiction. These past few months I've discovered some amazing YA contemporary authors who have helped me to see that the grass just might be greener on the other side. And here's what my epiphany was really saying, it's not so much that I don't like paranormal/fantasy books, because I still do, but that I would much rather read a good contemporary book. If you had asked me a year ago I would have chosen a paranormal book any day. But then again reading tastes can change. Who knows, in a few months I could be writing about how much I love biographies (this is very unlikely though).
Just so we can turn this into an actual "discussion post" instead of my story about an epiphany in the middle of chemistry I thought I'd share what I like about both the genres mentioned in this post. And because I'm a lazy person (even though I just wrote this entire post) I'm going to simply make some lists.
Contemporary
- The fact that it's a contemporary novel makes it feel like these things could actually happen to me ad allow me to better connect with characters.
- They make me feel like I can be a different person. (This makes me sound very weird. I promise I'm not.)
- I promise you there is much more than the two bullet points above as to why I love contemporary fiction, but it's late and I can't think.
Paranormal
- It's nice to be able to zone out for a few hours with a book that lets you pretend you're in a different world.
- Some paranormal creatures can be pretty awesome.
- Paranormal books usually give me this idea that I've got some power that's been hidden my entire life and I'm going to become an extremely amazing supernatural being. (This usually leads to strange dreams and people thinking I'm weird.)
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