Road Trip Wednesday #211: Diversity In Your Reading

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic. We'd love for you to participate! Just answer the prompt on your own blog and leave a link - or, if you prefer, you can include your answer in the comments. 

I don't have any fancy charts, but here's the list of books I read this year:

P.S. *** means that this is a book I've read before. 

2013 Year End Road Trip #5 - YA Highway

It's that time of year again. Time to reflect on the months we've lived and loved. Time to look back on 360-odd days of AWESOME YA! (YA Highway's Year End Road Trip series is a five part series in which we tell you about our favorite YA moments and invite you to do the same.)

My answers aren't strictly YA, and these are books I read this year but not necessarily books that came out this year. Here we go!

Best in YA films/television: Catching Fire for sure. It was much better than the first movie. I was extremely excited for the host but it was a huge disappointment :(.
Best Music to Write To/Be Inspired By: Right now "Arms" by Christina Perri is inspiring me while I write the scenes between my main character and her love interest.

"I'll never let a love get so close.
You put your arms around me and I'm home."

Best YA/Pop Culture Tie-in: I can't think of an answer for this one :(. 

2013 Year End Road Trip #4 - YA Highway

It's that time of year again. Time to reflect on the months we've lived and loved. Time to look back on 360-odd days of AWESOME YA! (YA Highway's Year End Road Trip series is a five part series in which we tell you about our favorite YA moments and invite you to do the same.)

My answers aren't strictly YA, and these are books I read this year but not necessarily books that came out this year. Here we go!

Best "I Want To Go To There" Setting in a Book: The first thing that came to mind was the cave in The Host by Stephanie Meyer, which seems completely absurd since it wasn't supposed to be a place anyone would want to go. Otherwise, I would of course have to say Hogwarts and Hogsmead.
Favorite female YA Character: I'm torn between Tris from Divergent, Wanda and Melanie from The Host, and Hazel from The Fault in Our Stars. :)
Favorite male YA Character: Gus from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green 

2013 Year End Road Trip #2 - YA Highway

It's that time of year again. Time to reflect on the months we've lived and loved. Time to look back on 360-odd days of AWESOME YA! (YA Highway's Year End Road Trip series is a five part series in which we tell you about our favorite YA moments and invite you to do the same.)

My answers aren't strictly YA, and these are books I read this year but not necessarily books that came out this year. Here we go!

Best "New To Me" YA Author: Veronica Roth.
Best Sequel: Crossed by Ally Condie
Best Debut: I think Divergent was the only debut I read this year, so that would win.
Most Anticipated Book Releases in 2014: All That Glows by Ryan Graudin.

What does your character hide in their underwear drawer - or other secret location?

The inspiration for this post came from a post on YA Highway (yeah, haha, I realize that it's over three years old).

I've always kind of scoffed at questions like these, because they felt superficial to me. I would think, "Yeah right, like that's going to tell me anything new about my character". However, I figured I might as well try it (after all, I have struggled in the past with creating characters who aren't flat).

Wouldn't you know, I had a sudden flash of insight into my main character, and it turns out that including a moment like this in the first few chapters of my book is exactly what I needed to show (versus tell) something from my character's past.

I guess the cliche "Don't knock it 'til you try it" is a cliche for a reason.