Saturday, June 1, 2013

Armchair BEA: Young Adult

So today we're talking about Young Adult books, which are near and dear to my heart. I still can't believe that a couple of years ago, I'd never really heard of this genre. I mean, here in Holland it's only gotten big over the last year I think, there's now a 'young adult' shelf in our local bookstore where before everything was just shelfed in 'children's' and there weren't really all that many books to choose from.

I love that there's such a big selection of books out there for this age group and I wish I'd known about it when I was a teen. At that time I wasn't really reading a lot of books. Instead, I scoured FictionPress for stories to read because the library didn't provide much of a selection (or I'd read them all a thousand times already) and well, I basically had no money to buy books. I'll be forever grateful for this though, because discovering the what was then called 'Queen of Glass' (you now know it as Throne of Glass) by Sarah J. Maas and following her blog led me to Goodreads, discovering so many books and then to blogging.
So maybe this has been a good thing.

But I'm drifting off topic.

I am one of those adults who read YA, I think I love it so much because there are just so many real and raw emotions. It's frequently a coming of age story and there's so much room for character growth! I love experiencing the first time someone falls in love with them and there are a lot of other firsts as well and I love that! And I'm not saying you can't have all these things in genres besides YA, I just come across them more often there. I love that it feels like everything's still possible and there's such a range of tough issues that are dealt with in these books!
And I love the gorgeous covers! YA has some of the best covers out there!

YA is usually fresh and new and I guess that's why I keep coming back for more.

Do you read YA? Are your reasons similar to mine? Leave me a link to your post!

9 comments:

  1. I am not much of an YA reader. As you know (and I am a bit older) there was not much YA when I grew up. Most serious books where Beckman I guess. I still cannot get used to this genre very much :) Sometimes though I pick up a book and try and as long as people will be raving about certain titles I might try it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. YA is almost all I read :D! And I don't care that I'm actually "too old" for it. And yes, they have the best covers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't read much YA, for some reason I was always in a hurry to get on to 'proper' adult books!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm not a huge YA reader, but I do tend to like the ones that I read. I find them really easy to fall in love with and easy to devour. They're often the best book if you're in a reading slump too!

    my Children's literature post

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love that you love YA so much Daisy, because it's often how I find out about good new ones :) Especially the slightly-younger stuff, like The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom - I got my hand's on that because you posted something about the sequel in one of your book hauls and it looked so fun! Speaking of which, I really should buy and read the sequel soon...

    ReplyDelete
  6. The majority of books that I read are YA, although I do read some adult novels. I think YA novels are actually quite magical because they're targeted at people who are at a critical age. If they like these books then they're likely going to like reading.

    Lovely post! :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I don't read a lot of YA (I'm not an young adult either), but those I do read I often enjoy. I tend to stay away from YA dealing with really heavy subject matters, sticking mainly with YA fantasy novels.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You know I never read YA as an adult until about a year or so after I became a blogger. I realized YA today is not the YA of my own youth- Sweet Valley High is what I automatically think of. I hated that as a youth, you know? But today I love YA. I love the emotional depth that the authors create now, realizing teens are not as superficial as they think, and realizing that adults are reading it too.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Young adult books will always be my favorite. It never occurred to me to want to read anything else (though I do dabble in adult books at times). All I really wanted to read was something GOOD. And a lot of young adult books fit that characterization!

    ReplyDelete