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Tuesday 30 April 2013

Y is for YA

Argh, can't believe I missed the penultimate day!

But yes, Young Adult fiction. I'd say that even though I recently turned 21, 80% of my bookshelf is still teenage fiction. Why I hear you cry?

Because it's gooooood.

Its an assumption (proved wrong, obviously, by the sheer amount of young adult and middle grade books that are published every year and the amount of those books that are turned into movies) that younger people are much more difficult to coax into reading. For this reason, I think YA books work harder at keeping your attention. The drama is bigger, the characters are more colourful. And, because teenagers are hotheaded and famed for poor decision making, it usually leads to very interesting problems and conflicts. The romances are often also quick and intense because of all those raging hormones.

My dad used to be an avid reader, but due to ongoing health problems he has little enthusiasm for anything except the television. I insisted that he read the Hunger Games before the movie came out last Autumn and he had the entire series read in under a month, which for him was amazing. Mum also had it read in no-time at all.

Since then, Dad and Mum have both been picking out titles from my bookshelf.

Why do you think YA is such a stomping success, for all age groups, in the last decade or so?

Sarah x


1 comment:

  1. I loved the Lightning Thief series as well. I think part of why I enjoyed it was that there was no drama of romance and the story just moved along at quite a clip. Some of the "adult" books I had read awhile back seemed so concerned with flowery prose that I got bored before I could fins the story.

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