Tuesday, September 08, 2009

What is Blake Nelson reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Blake Nelson, author of Destroy All Cars and other books.

His entry begins:
Right now I am beginning David Levithan's Love is the Higher Law, which I heard him read from about a year ago in NY. It's about 9/11 and the passage I heard had a cool haunting quality to it. I stayed away from 9/11 literature during the first wave of books on that subject. I couldn't really digest it, the reality of what happened or the reaction to the reality.

Now though I am...[read on]
Blake Nelson's first novel Girl (1994) has been translated into six foreign languages and was made into a feature film. After Girl, he published two more adult novels, Exile (1997) and User (2001). In 2003 he wrote his first Young Adult novel, The New Rules of High Sschool.

Since then Nelson has published six YA novels, New Rules, Rockstar Superstar, Prom Anonymous, Gender Blender, They Came From Below and Paranoid Park, which has been made into an award winning film by Gus Van Sant.

Among the early praise for Destroy All Cars:
"[A]n elegant and bittersweet story of a teenager who is finding his voice and trying to make meaning in a world he often finds hopeless."
--Publishers Weekly

"[A]s much as I liked the humor, I thought that the real heart of the story was pseudo-nihilistic James's ongoing affection for his idealistic ex-girlfriend, Sadie. When she asks him to help save a local pond, he puts aside his default pessimism and pitches in--will James and Sadie get back together, or will James just get over it? I'm not telling, but I will say that you should definitely check out this book...."
--Teen Vogue
Visit Blake Nelson's website.

Writers Read: Blake Nelson.

--Marshal Zeringue