Young Adult Book Reading Challenges discussion

I am happy to announce that the author of Genesis our March book club pick will be here all month long to take your questions and comments. Bernard Beckett is joining us all the way from New Zealand! Please give him a warm welcome!

Here are some of his books:

Hi Bernard! I'm really excited to have you here. Hope we all have a good time!

Hi Bernard! I just ordered your book, it should be on my bookshelf by tomorrow. Looking forward to reading it.

Greetings from Mexico!!

Hi Bernard! I hope to be reading your book shortly.

Hi Bernard nice to meet you can't wait to start reding your books!
Greetings from Ireland

Hey there, greetings from Canada!
Loved Genesis, what a great read =)

Hey Mr. Beckett, it's a honour to get a chance to converse with you. I admire your written work.

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely loved Genesis. I was absolutely floored by the ending and never saw it coming and I am good at figuring things out ahead. I recommend it to everyone I talk books with and there have been some lovely lively discussions. It will definitely go on my best reads of 2013 shelf and one of my all time favourites.

I love that the book is based on philosophical content and context. Who is your favourite philosopher? What was your inspiration to write Genesis?

Finally, will you be doing any book tours in Toronto, Canada?

Hi All

Thanks so very much for reading my book, and showing an interest in it. Always such a thrill for an author to find our stories have found new form minds so very far away from our own. A delightful thought.

Cathie, I'm not sure who I'd nominate as my absolute favourite philosopher, although David Hume would surely come close to top of the list. In terms of Genesis, it really began forming first when I began reading some popular science stuff on evolution, and the science of the mind, and thought, this is so much more interesting than most of what we teach in schools. How then to find a way of packaging that to make it accessible and enjoyable to teens. It took a good little while to find the right format, I spent three or so years picking it up, trying to get started and then realising I had the wrong format. When I finally tried the exam format, I knew instantly I'd found the way forward.

Bernard

Hello, Mr. Beckett. Thank you for your book and for joining us this month.

I liked the framing of the story - telling about the events that lead to the Great War as part of what appears to be the defence of a dissertation.

Sometime between the second and third break in Anaximander's examination I guessed at who Anaximander and the Examiners were. Were you hoping that your readers would extrapolate the events of Adam's life and guess at the probable outcome of his sentence? (Not necessarily the immediate outcome, but the long-term consequences of Adam's and Art's sequestration.)

Hi Grace

When you're deliberately holding a back a vital piece of information, or setting the reader up for a plot twist, there's always an element of hit and miss about it. The great plot twists (say The Sixth Sense) work because they manage to both sideswipe most viewers/readers, and yet make perfect sense in hindsight.

It's very hard to get the balance right, and even when you do, it'll only be for most readers. Make it too obvious, and everybody will get it, make it too hard to guess, and it'll lack the inevitability of a good surprise. Find the middle ground, and you'll have some readers who manage to see what's happening early, and some who feel there weren't enough clues at the end. I suspect Genesis is a better reading experience for those who don't see it coming, so I don't think I was hoping people would work it out, although I assumed some would.

As a general rule, when you're the one doing the writing, you tend to think you've erred on the side of making it too easy, simply because you can see the clues as you lay them out. One of the most important roles of a good editor is to let you know how the balance seems to them, as they read it with the prior knowledge the writer brings to the story.

Bernard

Do you have any new books coming out soon? Will we ever find out what happens to Eve and The Republic? What I love about your work is that while reading I feel like I am learning something, when you write are you trying to teach the reader?

Thank you soooo much for taking the time to stop by the group and answer questions Mr. Beckett! How do you feel about writing YA? Do you feel Genesis is for Young Adults or an older crowd? (I notice in different places it's marketed differently). Do you read any YA yourself? A lot of grown-ups are now reading YA so I am curious if you have any book suggestions for us that you loved.

The covers for this book are amazing. Do you have a say in the art work for any of them?

Hi Anthony

Not sure where you're based, but August has been published in the UK, and the ebook will be available on Amazon soon, I think. I'm currently in the process of finishing the third of my 'metaphysical' novels, called Lullaby. But I'm back full time teaching now, and have three year old twin boys keeping me busy at home, so writing's slipped down the priority list a little.

And yeah, to some extent I am trying to teach the reader, or at least introduce them to ideas that I find fascinating. I like that aspect of fiction, it can raise questions without necessarily having a neatly packaged answer.

Bernard

Hi Angie.

My pleasure. I wrote Genesis with a teen audience in mind. I know it has an adult readership, but my feeling was always that these sorts of ideas would have their maximum impact with teenagers, just because adult readers are more likely to have come across them before.

I don't read a lot of teen fiction. Mostly, when I get the time to read at all, it's adult fiction, and a lot of non-fiction, that appeals. That said, to represent books from down this far end of the world, if you can get hold of either 'Sydney Bridge Upside Down' or Tim Winton's 'Breath', you'll not be disappointed. Both on the cusp of YA/adult, and both startlingly good.

And no, the cover work's thanks to people with talents I don't possess. I particularly liked the UK YA cover, a very subtle take on a mechanical garden of Eden, both smart and beautiful.

Bernard

Bernard wrote: "... setting the reader up for a plot twist..."

Thank you for your reply. I wanted to add that, although I guessed some of the things about the end, I was still surprised by the final events. (view spoiler)[ Until the very end, I thought Pericles was advising Anax with her best interests at heart. I was surprised to learn that he was really leading her through the process that would very likely (and did) lead to her death. (hide spoiler)]

Bernard wrote: "...have three year old twin boys..."

Sorry for jumping in - I also have twin boys although they're well past the age of three (36 years past, in fact). But I remember very well what life was like when they were three. Enjoy every minute of it. It only gets better (assuming you survive their teens).

Hey there Mr. Beckett. Like others in this thread I want to thank you for writing such a thought provoking tale and also thank you for taking the time to participate in the Q&A.

My questions: When writing the book did you choose the names of the characters because their personalities/views reflected that of the person you named them after or were they named that way for another reason? Also, during the conversations between Adam and Art did you ever second guess the dialogue between the two or how they were portrayed by Anax in the holograms? Was it a struggle to keep information short and concise so that enough detail was given to have an idea of how the Republic did things but not so much as to be telling a story separate from the one you were writing?

Thanks again so much for such a stellar book and for answering questions!

Hey Meaghan

The naming was a fairly loose process. Once I decided there would be references to Plato's Republic in the new society, the idea of names from classical Greece came easily, but the connections are often more whimsical strictly metaphorical (for example Anaximander had some interesting ideas about evolution, including the thought that we were descended from fish, so that seemed apt). Adam is a clear reference to the biblical story, although in this case he is the founder of a new species in a slightly different sense, and Art, well that name had to be I think, both artful and artificial, he is the story made flesh (well, metal anyway).

And yes, the struggle that kept me from getting this book going for a good amount of time was exactly the one you identify. I wanted, and needed, to get to the heart of the story, Adam and Art, quickly, but at the same time needed to dump a certain amount of information to give context. The examination structure gave me a way of doing this, although I still feel it's slightly more mechanical and obvious than I would like.

As a rule, I didn't find myself second guessing the conversations. I enjoy both sides of this particular debate, and so in a sense it was nothing more than letting two aspects of myself do battle on the page/screen.

Thanks for reading.

Bernard

This is a good book that I think would be great for college and high school creative writing and literature classes.

As I was reading, I constantly thought of your book as a paradox, the title, characters, etc. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks!

Hi Mike

Certainly I had fun with oppositions, and the inherent ironies there, which perhaps amounts to paradox in some cases. So, for me the fact that at heart the new society works only because the 'people' themselves do not understand their true nature, was an interesting idea for me to play with, as was that central notion that ideas create people as much as people create ideas. And of course the possibility that the reader would instinctively share Adam's reluctance to accept Art's arguments, whilst unknowlingly identifying with the aspirations of another machine. I think that whole thing of playing with and inverting expectations is always seductive, although it takes a certain amount of luck to happen upon a way of doing it without the tricks taking over the story.

Bernard

I am curious what types of classes do you teach? Does the subjects you teach or the students you have taught influence any of the material in your books?

Where there any other authors or philosophers that inspired you and led to writing this particular story? During Adam's tirade about what he saw in Eve that Art lacked, I was expecting him to mention love or compassion, not a shared feeling of choices made and challenges faced. Since emotion/empathy is often cited as the difference between man and machine, what influenced you to go on a slightly different path?
I also thought it was very clever how you set up the story so that the reader would empathize with Anaximander, only to find out she too is a machine.

Hi Monica

I started out teaching Economics and Maths. These days it's Drama and Media Studies. I have a short attention span and tend to flit about a bit.

There are many ways in which teaching feeds into my writing. Not perhaps specific circumstances or students (I'm yet to write that book) but certainly in terms of my sense of what the teenage mind might be interested in reaching for. Genesis and August are both responses to my feeling that teenagers are much more interested in the big abstract ideas than the world of facebook and reality television imagines.

Bernard

Hi Kritika

I was hinting at empathy too, although perhaps not as clearly as I might have. I think there's a whole package of feelings and attitudes that emerge from our self awareness, a sense of purpose, of fraternity, of duty etc and I wanted Adam to give the defence of these being uniquely human qualities his best shot, knowing full well that Art could always reply 'yeah, I feel like that.'

This particular story emerged from a number of sources. One was certainly my reading of pop-science evolutionary titles, from the likes of Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley, the other strand was diving into various summaries of Western philosophy, and trying to get at least a very loose grasp of the major traditions.

In both cases I found ideas that, being new to me, had that compelling freshness that makes you want to find some way of passing them on. It's the teacher's obsession, really, wanting to share the things you learn, and the danger is always the risk of becoming didactic. Which is why I prefer to deal in the ideas I'm least certain of.

Bernard

Mr. Beckett. I am curious what your religious beliefs are (if you don't mind answering). And did these beliefs inspire some of what you wrote in the book? What I find wonderful about this book is that I think it would appeal to both those of us who are religious and those of us who are atheist or agnostic. Great job there!
When you wrote this book.. was a young adult audience in mind? I don't think it was since in other countries it's sold as an adult book. I am glad this book is being marketed to young adult though.. I would hope it would get them thinking outside the box.

Hi Eddie

with regard to religion, I'm what one might call a passionate agnostic. Passionate on the sense that I'm fascinated by religion, and love discussing and thinking about it, and agnostic in the sense that I've never found a set of religious beliefs (atheism included) that didn't stretch my personal sense of credulity beyond breaking point. (If you're interested, I'm in the midst of a series of blogs on agnosticism on my website www.bernardbeckett.org) In some ways this was important for the book, in that for me agnosticism and curiosity go hand in hand, it's a stance that encourages and rewards speculation and interrogation.

And yes, i wrote this for a young adult audience, and in New Zealand, where it was first published, that's how it was marketed. Other markets pitched it at both markets, in the hope I suspect of creating extra sales, but I'm not sure that often works out. Books that cross over markets seem to do so after the event, I don't think it's a smart move to try to achieve that form the get go. The danger is that instead you end up with a book without a natural home.

Thanks for the questions.

Bernard

Who was your favorite character to write in this book? If you could pick a character in another novel that would be trapped in the room with Art and might have influenced him/it differently who would it be and what do you think Art would've done?

Angie, good questions! I'm looking forward to the answers.

Hi Angie

By far the most fun character to write was Art. His is the role of the devil's advocate, in lots of ways, and just like the devil, he gets all the best lines. In terms of who it'd be fun to put in the room with Art, how about Holden Caulfield, who would have instantly pronounced Art a phony and sat himself in the corner feeling sorry for himself. I think Art would have a fair a bit of trouble getting through to that one.

Bernard

Ooohhh Holden Caulfield! Yes, now that would have been very interesting! (One of my all time favorite characters :-)

I love love Holden Caulfield! I think that would be an interesting conversation as well.. once Art finally got him talking. I don't think though that Holden would've influenced Art to act any differently in the end of the book. Great pick!

Hello, Bernard.

I was wondering if you have any advice for aspiring authors? (Besides reading, of course). Do you have a least favourite character in any of your books? Was DNA mutation always a thing of interest to you? How long would it take you to finish writing a book on average?

Thank you in advance! :)

Hi Shelley

The advice is nothing new, I'm afraid. Write, write, write. We learn to write the same way we learned to walk and talk, I suspect, by doing (and making mistakes). At some stage, when you're ready, find a person who will give you honest criticism, and listen carefully, but not uncritically. Finding the balance between remaining true to your vision, and being open to feedback, is a lifetime's work.

A book takes me somewhere between one year and three, although for me it's a background activity, with family and teaching being bigger priorities. I treat it like a hobby, and try not to get too invested in where it goes.

Bernard

Angie wrote: "I love love Holden Caulfield! I think that would be an interesting conversation as well.. once Art finally got him talking. I don't think though that Holden would've influenced Art to act any dif..."

I totally dislike Holden Caulfield, but I have to agree that he would be interesting in the same room with Holden. :)

I would like to thank Mr. Beckett for stopping by and doing this Q&A with the group. Really great questions from everyone! This was a lot of fun!!!

Thank you for arranging Mr. Beckett to be here to answer our questions Angie! It was a very interesting discussion :-) Genesis is one of my all time favorite reads and I was thrilled to hear from the author firsthand :-)

Cathie wrote: "Thank you for arranging Mr. Beckett to be here to answer our questions Angie! It was a very interesting discussion :-) Genesis is one of my all time favorite reads and I was thrilled to hear from..."
Thanks!!! It was interesting that's for sure!!