First Ever Kindle Read | The Art of Being Normal

  

I always meant to buy a kindle, but I never got round to it. When they were first introduced back in the day, I hated them. I was in my mid teens and I thought all bookshops were going to shut down, and the world was officially over. But I grew up. I realised that Kindles and E-readers aren’t replacing books in the market. That they are convenient and cheaper and easier to carry round.  I still adore paperback books and prefer them. But the thing we’ve all come for is the stories. The stories are what keeps me interested, not whether I’m reading it on paper or a screen.

But I never bought one. I never could afford to just drop £50 or £60 on something I didn’t really need. So when someone offered me a 1^st gen kindle as they’d never used it, I jumped at the offer.
It’s very basic, which I like. It has one of those keyboards where it takes about 5 minutes to type in the name of the book BUT THAT’S OKAY because you don’t really need the keyboard that often anyway. The only other downside I’ve encountered so far (which is really only a downside if you spend too much time on goodreads like me) is that it doesn’t have page numbers, so I can’t update where I am in the book. But this is the first kindle, and I’m assuming that later models have this function built in. Someone on the internet  has figured out how to figure out the page number using the ‘location’ number it gives you on each page which I suppose is useful but involved too much maths for me.  The way I see it, it allows me to focus more on the story without constantly checking to see what page I’m on.

I downloaded ‘The Art of Being Normal’ by Lisa Williamson which was £3.99 in the kindle shop. This is significantly cheaper than the paperback copy which pleased my bank account and my heart. I’d heard about this book last year at YALC where I met and had a brief conversation with the author. But I’d bought too many books that weekend and so it didn’t make the cut. But I’d been wanting to read it ever since.

The story is written in a dual narrative format, with David narrating one half, and Leo narrating the other. At the start of the novel, David tells us that he has always wanted to be a girl. This book delicately delves into what it means to be Transgender, and in turn, what it means to be ‘normal’, and how normality is viewed in the society we live in. This is such an important topic to discuss and to have present within novels, especially novels for young adults or young readers who experience and learn what the world is like through media representations in books, TV, film, etc.

I also thoroughly enjoyed how the book dealt with other delicate themes such as ‘coming out’ to your parents as transgender. It also deals with the idea of having an absent parent in your life and showcases the desire and need people have with family. Whilst Williamson writes her transgender characters well, I think we need to read diverse authors as much as we need diverse books.

I never realised this book was set in the UK and so was a nice surprise opposed to a lot of Young adult fiction being set in the US. I would also love to read some YA fiction written out of the western world (suggestions please J)

Best Wishes and DFTBA

Jaz x