My Pete Wentz Reading Challenge
A common piece of advice I hear in writing workshops is to read more than you write. The more you read, the better writer you are. I have mixed feelings about this advice, but what I do know is that the reading came first. I was a voracious reader as a kid, spending as much of my free time as possible devouring a new (to me) book.
From kindergarten to middle school, I would get lost in the Spiderwick series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Redwall, Warrior Cats, Maximum Ride, Uglies, and True Sight. As I got into high school and moved into AP Language and Literature classes, I got hooked on classic dystopian fiction a la A Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange (my favorite book to this day). These early influences of fantasy, science fiction, and existential dystopia heavily inspire the fiction I’m publishing now as an adult.
I discovered Haruki Murakami while I was in grad school, and have since sunk my teeth in the genre of surrealism with comparable authors such as Miri Yū, Inio Asano, and Toshikazu Kawaguchi.
I’ve had a great deal of respect for classics — I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein annually from 2011–2014 and have consumed every Jane Austen title at least twice (though Pride & Prejudice the most often). The Picture…
