After finishing Thirteen Reasons Why, I discover Jay Asher has written another book: The Future Of Us. Having seen this book in my store several times, I've always ignored it and never thought to take a second look. The cover is blue with a red outline of a heart, and that's all I've noticed. After re-finding out about this book, if that makes sense, I went online to do some research. The red heart is actually made of a cable wire, with frayed wires on one end, and a phone jack connection on the other. Right off the bat, this got me interested way more then I ever had been, I assumed the book was some lame love story, like most teen books are, and that's not my cup of tea. Upon further inspection, I learn The Future Of Us is about two young teens, best friends and neighbours in 1996, whom install the latest version of AOL on their computers... only to discover facebook pop-up, which hasn't been invented yet. A bit confused, it seems the facebook they discover, is their own from the future. There is an excerpt for this book in the back of Thirteen Reasons Why, that I of course, had to read. How cool would that be to go into the future, through facebook, and see what you're life will be like. I have had several talks in the past with close friends, about how facebook is setting new precedence for the way we may story tell in the future. I always imagine being in my 40s, with my kids old enough to use the computer, and have their own facebook account, if it's still around. I imagine them sitting on the computer, going through MY facebook profile, looking back at photos of me from my early 20s on, watching me grow up on the internet. They'll be able to see what was going on in my life, generally, at any given point in time. Depending on status updates, or links I shared, they'll be able to see what was relevant in my life, hot trends and topics. Now I'm not saying this is the way it will go, already the pictures uploaded of me have drastically slowed, and I rarely post anything anymore unless it's a funny picture. So that may not happen, but it's neat to think about. And although this book isn't exactly that, it's cool to think about how much you can learn from anyone, especially yourself, from facebook.
So, ya, I'm excited to read this one. I hope to post a book journal on it as well, and I hope it's as good as his last.