Bookish Questions – YA or Adult Literature?
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Do you prefer YA or Adult Literature?
Can we just stop categorizing books? Who cares if the protagonist is a child, a teen, an adult, or an anthropomorphic cow, as long as the story is good? I love all sorts of books. My favorite series is Harry Potter, which you will always find in the Children’s section of your bookstore.
There are two things that I look for in good literature, I want to be absolutely devastated by the things that happen in a story, and I want to be left with a feeling of hope at the end. Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle series is a great example of this. I went into the last book, The Raven King, totally prepared to have my heart ripped out. And it was, but sooner than I expected, and that left room at the end of the book for hope.
Do you have a particular age category you prefer to read? Or are you like me, choosing books by how they make you feel?
Totally on feelings! When I’m tired, I often go for children’s books. YA these days seems to be so depressing–I don’t read to have my heart ripped out, I read to relax, to learn, to enjoy. Whatever happened to upbeat fiction for highschool students? Surely they like to laugh too, or be inspired, or at least entertained in a positive way! I like a good “cozy read”–not just mysteries, but books with a cozy flavour to them. Which is not to say I don’t read serious adult fiction/nonfiction, I do. But so often I need an antidote to stress, not books that will stress me out.
Just in passing, I’ve discovered YouTube nature sound videos on my tablet to help me relax at night. I’ve been under a LOT of stress lately–my pastor is in the hospital with a (so far) unidentified “mass” in his stomach; it could be anything from a polyp to something much more serious. And he’s only 59! And there are only about 12 members of the church, half of whom are his family. I’ve started listening to wind/rain/birdsong in the evening as I lie there in bed. You want an experience, read Wuthering Heights to the sound of blizzard winds!
Dystopian fiction is really popular right now. I’m not sure why we want to escape the things going on in this world for things that are even worse. Maybe it makes us feel better to know things could be worse. Maggie Stiefvater has a series that I just finished a week or so ago called The Raven Cycle. Those books do have some stressful moments, and the last book definitely gave me the feels, but it had a happy ending that made me beyond happy I read it. For cheerier YA, you might try Rainbow Rowell. I’ve only read one of her novels, but it was engrossing and ended happy.