Day #35 of the 50 Day Book Challenge..

[shadowkat]

I'm behind, I know.

The prompt is.. A book set in high school

Because I despised high school, I tended to avoid books set there.

However, I was forced to read a few here and there for school.

Vision Quest by Terry Davies it was assigned for everyone to read in one of our classes in high school or junior high - can't remember.

I only remember the book because I saw the movie soon after. The book is better.

Vision Quest is a young adult novel by Terry Davis, published in 1979.[1] In first-person, present-tense narrative, it tells the story of a few months in the life of Louden Swain, a high school wrestler in Spokane, Washington who is cutting weight and working toward the state championships. The book takes its title from the vision quest ritual of some Native American Indian tribes, of going into the wilderness alone to 'discover who you are and who your people are and how you fit into the circle of birth and growth and death and rebirth.'[2] John Irving called it "the truest novel about growing up since The Catcher in the Rye."[3]

Vision Quest was made into a 1985 movie of the same title, starring Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino, with a cameo appearance from Madonna as a night-club singer.

Mathew Modine was kind of miscast, I'd have cast Lou Diamond Phillips. And they kind of dropped the vision quest elements.

Here's the review by Siskel and Ebert of the movie, which again isn't like the book at all.

Watch on YouTube

My favorite book that takes place in a high school is a weird dystopian one..that few have heard of..

The Girl Who Owned a City - the city in the title is the local high school.

Comments

[mefisto]

Sadly, there's no book version of BtVS. Though I personally like the post-high school years better.

[shadowkat]

Yeah, so did I. I kind of half-heartedly rec'd it to a college pal online. Half-heartedly because she's a lesbian activist, specializing in domestic violence cases, and I'm not sure how she'd handle S6. S6 kind of pissed off the cultural activists online.

[mefisto]

I remember, all too well. I think, though, that more recent viewers don't share that reaction. Or at least they don't talk about it on, say, reddit. Even in the discussions I've seen, the tone is more of a discussion than a screaming match.

[shadowkat]

I think the difference is less emotional investment? Also since then, they've had other series to compare. For my niece - Buffy wasn't that big a deal. She's seen other things, and read other things - that are in some respects far more groundbreaking.

Also she binge watched it in the space of a few weeks when she was 14 with her Dad. (My brother/sisinlaw were fans, who loved the Buffy/Angel romance and didn't much like Spike. Although we never argued or debated it. They weren't into discussing television shows - or analyzing them and didn't understand why I wanted to. My mother agreed with my take and the appeal of Angel was completely lost on my mother - who didn't think David Boreanze knew how to act and was stiff as a board. LOL! ]

[mefisto]

Heh. I'm with your Mom on this.

[yourlibrarian]

Oh that's interesting. I don't think I ever watched Vision Quest but I do remember it. I didn't realize it was a book first, nor that it was so lauded.

And they kind of dropped the vision quest elements.

Typical Hollywood.

[jesuswasbatman]

Isn't The Girl Who Owned a City a right-libertarian Randist tract?

[shadowkat]

Is it? I don't know. Nor remember it that way? Why have you read it?

I mean I read it when I was 14, but I don't remember that at all. I haven't read it since then. I think I did a passage from it in a Speech class in high school.

If it was? It went over my head. All I remember was a 14 year old girl struggling in a dystopian America. Her parents are dead, the food is getting spoiled, and she has to figure out how to make things work. So she puts in place a government in the local high school. It's more of a Lord of the Flies meets the Walking Dead, except with a female leader. They have warlords and everything. Kind of an early version of The 100.
If it were there, the political theme was most likely lost on my teenage self. Because I don't recall that at all.

I just re-read the plot on wiki - and yeah, don't remember most of it. I read it in 1982.

[wendelah1]

I read "The Girl Who Owned a City" for a gift fic exchange. It was quite good, though I didn't end up writing for it.

The last book that I read that was set in high school is Agent of Chaos, by Kami Garcia. It's an X-Files novel, and was much better than I expected.

"How did Fox Mulder become a believer? How did Dana Scully become a skeptic? The X-Files Origins has the answers.

The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos explores the teen years of Fox Mulder, the beloved character depicted in the cult-favorite TV show The X-Files. His story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news.

The book will follow Mulder as he experiences life-changing events that set him on the path to becoming an FBI agent."

[shadowkat]

Do you remember if it was political or anything - the book Girl Who Owned a City?
I don't.

Glad someone else remembers it and liked it.

The X-Files story looks interesting.

[wendelah1]

I saw that comment. No, I didn't notice anything overtly right-leaning politically. If it was meant as libertarian propaganda, I'd say it failed spectacularly.

[shadowkat]

Thank you! I couldn't remember well enough to know - except that if it was - it went over my head.

I did read up on the author who was a carpenter and teacher. He was going to write a series but never got around to it.