Did you see Caitlin Flanagan’s article about Twilight in this month’s Atlantic?
I’ve been reading The Atlantic for several years now, but I didn’t know I had much in common with Flanagan until she confessed that she hates YA novels because they “bore” her. Well, me too. Ok, yes, there are a few that I’ve been reading and rereading since childhood. But in terms of picking up new ones, now, as an adult, that I didn’t first read as a kid… nope. Can’t do it. Am hard pressed to think of any kids’ books I’ve enjoyed as an adult. Oh, The Lightning Thief! I did like that one. And the first Children of the Lamp book wasn’t bad either. But I couldn’t finish Inkheart even when my own son gave it to me as a gift. Harry Potter? No thanks. And in fact (here’s where Caitlin and I disagree) I didn’t even particularly like Twilight. Oh, it held my interest enough that I did manage to finish it, but… meh.
Oh hell, I sound like such a curmudgeon. Could be I’m reading the wrong kind of books. Lena subsists on a steady diet of fantasy, especially all those animal fantasies like that series about cats and that other series about owls. If there is a genre that I categorically can’t stand it’s Books With Talking Animals As Protagonists. Also, I know I’m not being very careful about distinguishing between children’s books and YA, if that distinction even matters. Anyway, maybe I’m reading the wrong kind of books… or maybe it’s just that I’m a grownup.
Remember the conversation here and here about The Thirteenth Tale and how our experience of reading has changed since adolescence? Flanagan talks about the same thing:
The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life — one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs — to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others — are met precisely by the act of reading.
Yup.
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Very interesting … you’re making me think here. :) For the most part I can’t get into YA books (with the notable exception of Twilight, and I readily admit it is pure fluff and not all that well written, but still quite enjoyable); they just don’t interest me in the least. Nor do I particularly enjoy children’s books, unless I’m reading them to kiddo.
However, I am a HUGE sci-fi/fantasy fan. I read all sorts of adult sci-fi/fantasy whenever the mood strikes me. Maybe that is whey loved the Harry Potter books. At the same time, I can’t stand “Books With Talking Animals As Protagonists”. I avoid them like the plague (except when reading to kiddo of course).
But I do agree with that quote about teenage girls – I lived through my books at that age.
I did read that review, and disagreed with most of it – though not the parts on adolescent reading. Too many responsibilities now to recapture that feeling of complete immersion. I sometimes wonder if I can go back to that when I’m elderly.
Anyway, I love reading YA now (not the cats or owls books, though), and have been enjoying many kids’ books that I totally missed as a child – partially from doing The Newbery Project (http://newberryproject.blogspot.com/ ). Have you tried “The Hunger Games” or “The Graveyard Book”? Both are brand-new and excellent. Much better than “Twilight”.
But speaking of “Twilight”, I have to say I got a whole new perspective on it from this review: http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html It just blows Flanagan’s away (though hers wasn’t a review so much as a launching point for an essay on today vs. the golden past, like most of her essays).
I look forward to reading these links! My 14 yo daughter and all of her non-reader friends LOVED the whole Twilight series. I went to the movie with her to see what all the fuss was about and I admit that the movie was fun. I cracked the book immediately upon returning home but O.M.G. the writing was so stilted and horrible that I couldn’t go on. It’s too bad, too, because it was a great premise (which was what the movie was able to capture). I’m having fun now, though, seeking out “better” vampire books to have my daughter read in comparison.
I really saw a lot of parallels, though, to the real-life dilemma of The Bad Boy vs. The Good Boy – which one to choose? And there were a lot more disturbing parallels as well, but that would be an entire post (at least).
This article really pissed off a few people in the kidlit community. Not because of it dissing on Twilight — most of us realize that Twilight’s a bunch of hooey — but because, in it Flanagan dismisses the relevance of YA lit, in general, and for boys in particular. Check out Guys Lit Wire for a response.
Honestly, I love YA books. Middle Grade, too. Won’t read easy readers, though. I like the way they tell stories, and I think a good YA novel can pack a punch with far less extra crap than adult books. But that’s just me; I’ll not go blasting you for not liking it if you don’t go blasting me (and we — those of us who do like YA and read it for a “living” — do) for liking the stuff. (I don’t mean you, personally, Julie, but rather the collective “you”.)
As a side note, you might like John Green’s books — he’s pretty challenging for a YA author. Check out Looking For Alaska. And did you ever read Sherman Alexie’s Diary of a Part-Time Indian? That’s good, too.
I love me some
Garth Nix, especially the Old Kingdom trilogy, though it has a few talking animals in it. That’s the main YA stuff I’ve read as an adult, unless you count the Earthsea books by Ursula le Guin. I read the trilogy as a child, but really didn’t get them, until I’d read some of her other stuff, then I went back to them and loved them.
Actually, I lie, there’s more YA stuff – the Tomorrow series by John Marsden kicks arse if you want to be scared out of your pants in an apocolyptic kind of way, though I’m not sure how relevent it would be to non-Aus readers, but I think it’s reasonably popular in the US. Er… Kerry Greenwood wrote some YA stuff before she really started concentrating on crime fiction…. I know there’s more (I loved HP) but I can’t think of it now…
Hey Julie, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year. I hope you and your family have a great holiday!
what are YA books?
sorry for being … whatever
YA = Young Adult
I am not sure I’ve read any YA… I’m looking forward to discovering John Green this year.