MAYBE GROWING UP IS THE SCARY PART: A FEAR STREET REREAD

Around this time last Fall, I was suddenly seized with the urge to place a massive book order. The impulsive stationary purchasing of my elementary through collegiate years - coinciding with the advent of school - had been replaced by a different form of paper-collecting as an adult. I turned to Book Outlet, to justify the pricing, which proved to be a very good idea when my order topped out at around eleven titles.

Three among them, were chosen specifically because of how well they fit my particular brand of Autumn-laced nostalgia: recent repackagings of R. L. Stine's Fear Street books.

FEAR STREET AT THE LIBRARY

I was a total R. L. Stine junkie as a kid. I always felt too shy to check them out of the elementary school library during our weekly "Book Time," but the local library branch, located a brisk ten minute walk from my house, had them in plenty.

Still, even my fourth grade fixation on the Goosebumps books, was nothing compared to the summer before seventh grade, when, week by week, I checked out every single Fear Street book on offer. 

I can even vividly remember where they were all placed... back in 2007, before my small suburban library had been struck by the impressive onslaught of the YA genre, all of the well-thumbed mass-market paperback books belonging to that age group fit onto a meager set of five wire shelves, all on one wall, at the furthest back of the "Kid's Section." Very different from the new and nicely-updated library I visit now, this corner used to be quite literally shadowy, largely due to its location, sandwiched behind two tall rows of shelves and the old computer terminals.

I would glance over the more antiquated fare - including two different time-stamped-and-stained editions of Go Ask Alice - and the cutesy teen romances with cartoon-emblazoned covers, but you couldn't help but notice when you reached Fear Street: the moody black, blue, green, and purple covers loomed darkly towards the bottom shelf.

As a kid who was - by all accounts, and still widely is - a total coward, these books marked a serious departure from my typical reading material. I don't know what prompted me to pick up the first one, nor what carried me through a row of approximately fifteen to twenty titles, but I know that I loved them all.

That summer didn't end up altering my overall typical reading style too much, but it is fondly remembered by me, every time I see R. L. Stine's name. It's perhaps for that reason, that I associate summertime so strongly with the Horror genre... or maybe I just prefer to read about creepy things when the sun's still shining.

I hadn't thought about revisiting Fear Street, until the second I saw them available in repackaged duologies on Book Outlet. Into the cart they went, and soon enough, they were in my hands. (Well, in my brother's hands. Ostensibly, I had bought them for him to read, too.)

But I hadn't read these books since that first binge-fest, back when I was only just about to turn thirteen that October. Now, I was 25. I had no idea how things were going to go. I just knew that it was a ticket back in time I was willing to cash in.

RETURN TO FEAR STREET

As it turns out, the books I remember reading so vividly back when I was a preteen, perhaps haven't stood the test of time like I would have liked them to. Then again, that isn't so much of a judgement against the source materials themselves, as it is against my expectations.

I should have expected the writing style to be fairly juvenile (they are Middle Grade, after all, and that's the time of my life where I enjoyed them the most). The diction is simplistic, and appropriate for younger readers, while the syntax is so brief and unornamented that you can practically fly across the page. I ended up skimming a lot, simply because there wasn't a ton of details to get caught up in. As I found out from listening to one of his interviews, this brevity is deliberate, as it allowed his fans to click better with the characters.

The fast-paced action and flow is also helped along by an array of stereotypical tropes of horror, in order to more easily identify the genre, and make it move along more briskly. There weren't just ghosts, or guns, or mysterious figures, or terrifying creatures, or dead animals... but all of the above! It's an overload of puzzle pieces, not all of which are essential to the construction of the narrative, but again, make it more recognizable to readers who aren't as acquainted with the genre as of yet. For many, the Goosebumps and Fear Street books are a young readers' first foray into the realms of Horror and Thrillers, and by stocking the books so completely with these elements, it orients them into the aesthetic.

Every chapter ends with some form of cliffhanger, be it a foreboding final sentence promising danger to come, or a terrifying action about to take place. Repetitive and exaggerated, they easily compel you to keep on reading, something beneficial for readers with a shorter attention span, kind of akin to the end caps of Nancy Drew novel chapters.

At first, with Party Games, I chalked my apathy into being too focused on the para-text of the material (not only was the plot one I immediately remembered, but it actually bears some similarity to the movie Game Night). In this novel, a hardworking and down-on-her-luck girl catches the attention of longtime crush and resident rich boy Brandon Fear, and is invited to a secluded cabin on an island for his birthday party with his friends. The "game" of them all getting arrested by the police goes sideways, when real kidnappers hijack the party.

Then, with Don't Stay Up Late, various hallmarks of Stine's books - having an unlikeable main character, ignoring the warnings about Fear Street - started to irk me the more I read them. Every single person gets warned, and chooses to ignore it. Every single character has a secret motivation, a guilty conscience, or just a history of bad behavior. When you're a kid, these repeats feel familiar, like a recognizable motif of the author, but to an adult, they can become overbearingly repetitive.

I stopped after two books... the month of October was just not long enough to continue justifying reads that didn't fit my mood. But after a year of ruminating over the "failed" experiment, I think that I have a firmer grasp on the Fear Street books, why I loved them, and what I don't necessarily love them now. Essentially:

MAYBE SOME THINGS ARE NOT GOOD AT 25, BECAUSE THEY WERE SO GOOD AT 12

As you can probably tell from the previous section, the various foibles of the Fear Street novels - be they stereotypes and tropes, or simplistic writing - are made all the more into assets when transferred to the hands of a twelve year old. In rereading them, I was forced to confront the idea that maybe they weren't as good the second time around, because they weren't for me anymore. 

Listen, Middle School is a weird time, and Middle Grade is at least partially written to recognize that fact. For me, Stine's series became a summer fixation, not just because they were fast-paced, filled with thrilling action, and plots that felt like something new... but because at that time, I was really looking for something that made me feel a little bit more grown up. That dark and Shady (wink wink) shelf at the back of the Kid's Section, marked a departure, and reading about high schoolers encountering scary things, without adult intervention, felt like stepping into a new chapter of my own. Look at me, Mom, I'm checking out books from the YA section! They made me feel so teenager.

Reading them again as an adult, and seeing with more experienced eyes, only made me realize how young I really was, when I loved them. In the end, I can't help but miss not only the Fear Street books I read in my past, but the person I was when I tore through them all so voraciously. 

Despite the fact that I didn't fall as fully back in love as I did as a kid, I would still pick up some of my old favorites - like The New Girl, Prom Queen, The Dead Boyfriend, Killer's Kiss, and the Fear Street Cheerleaders books, especially - in a heartbeat. I hope they keep coming out with more of the reprints... I may not be the one to read them right now, but I'm still willing to bet that there are plenty of kids who would be willing to give these strange and familiar books a go.

(But more importantly, I recently learned they re-released the Dangerous Girls duology into a single package as Bitten, so that's going to be high on my TBR list now. Because that's still a whole other story.)

Did you ever read the Fear Street books? Are you an R. L. Stine fan? 

Let me know, in the comments below! 

REVIEW CATCHUP: AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER

Not only is Summer over, but her more serious and grey sister, Autumn, has officially moved into Washington State. After all, nothing says like "Fall weather" like back-to-back thunderstorms, an early death for my cucumbers, and leaves that are already starting to turn outside my bedroom window.

Unfortunately, that transition found me fairly absent, as I tried to soak up the last vestiges of fairer climates as possible. Sorry! Hopefully you haven't been waiting too long for me to write anything... job applications have been overwhelming the majority of my keyboard time. Until we wait for their replies, though, why not do a bit of an update on some of the books I enjoyed during the past two months?

Maybe you'll find something cozy to cuddle up with as we shift into more apple cider-appropriate times.


Kitchen Counter Cooking School, Kathleen Flinn

Truly a heartwarming and endearing food read, much in line with the love I felt for her family-inspired pseudo-food-ancestry-memoir, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, earlier this year.

In KCCS, Flinn walks a gaggle of knife-cut newbies through a summer of cooking classes in Seattle, in the hopes of inspiring them to take hold of their own kitchens, health, and confidence. Along the way, she imparts the reader with similar lessons to what she instructs, depositing carefully-chosen representative recipes at the tail end of each chapter.

What I really love about Flinn's style, is how obvious it is that she knows what she's talking about, while also using language that's more than easy enough to understand. She's a good teacher, and an even better storyteller, and truly does an effective job at demonstrating through a written medium the importance of knowledge of food providence, waste, and preparation as wonderfully as I'm sure she did in her classes.

All told, another resounding success from Flinn, that makes me want to cook even more... despite the fact that I made dinner just last night. There's just something about her books that makes me want to jump right into the kitchen!



The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions, Emily P. Freeman

A concise, compassionate self-help book about using your own discernment and faith in making difficult decisions. Each chapter ends with a prayer and an actionable step to help lead you in the correct direction, and the chapters themselves are filled with anecdotes from Freeman's faith and writing life to help steer you on, and motivate you not only in your decision-making, but relationship of trust, expectation, and support in God.

Nothing too radical, just a gentle, personable collection of many of the reminders its good to hear when you're in a point of transition, closing out with the big truth, to essentially, "let go, and let God," while also making sure you have faith in your own choices, too.

I'd definitely be interested in reading more of her books in the future, as this one was quite a short, easy read.



Mr. Fox, Helen Oyeyemi

A work of magical realism that transcends time and setting, with main characters that orbit like planets around each other through the changing entropy of their surroundings: S. J. Fox, the writer, Daphne, his anxious and angry wife, and Mary Foxe, the mental invention who helps further his career... and is ruining his marriage. This trio forms the only concrete ground on which the narrative is constructed, and yet, the rest houses shadows and glimpses of their changing dynamic, direction, and ties to each other, through brief anecdotes and shorts.

Original and inventive, Oyeyemi has become a fast favorite of mine in recent years, particularly for this sense of unmoored reality, with threads of emotional truth running through the narrative. Slightly unreachable, while resounding with a sense of certainty, it doesn't matter that you pivot through concrete setting, fantasy elements, multiple time and perspective shifts, tangents that feel disconnected to the main narrative but which preserve some elements of the pathos of the story, because you know you'll circle back around at some point.

She almost feels akin to another one of my favorites, Jennifer Egan, for this degree of aloofness in her storytelling, but Oyeyemi can be even more inscrutable, thanks to her consistently unusual brand of magic.

The whole thing gives the feeling of a modern-written riff on fairy tales, like another one of her novels I've read, Boy Snow Bird, which toyed with the nature and tropes of the "Snow White" story. In turn, this novel held many of the trappings of folklore: for instance, the proliferation of twin figures or similar first names which ran throughout, with S. J. Fox / Mary Foxe, short story characters Charles Wolfe and Charlie Wulf, and even comparisons between Daphne and Mary. There are references to color theming, particularly around blue tones. Most notably, the presence of a malicious minor character in multiple shorts - the woman murderer and mischief-maker Reynardine - could be interpreted as a deliberate reference to the European Middle Age folklore character Reynard the Fox... like our main character Mr. Fox, who has gained a habit of murdering the female characters in his stories.

The whole thing is deliciously wrapped together, enmeshed and encoded like a puzzle you have to riddle over to crack. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about the book at all, was the cover, which I feel is horribly ugly.



Other books that I read in the past two months - reviews for which you'll be able to see in new blog posts coming out this Fall! - include:

Gretchen Rubin's Happier at Home

Ariel Levy's The Rules Do Not Apply

Charlotte Gordon's Romantic Outlaws

What were some of your late summer, early fall transition reads this year? What are you picking up before the end of 2019? Let me know, in the comments below!