Books are like oranges: the ones marketed to kids are not only easier to get into, but more enjoyable once you do. Why shouldn't adults have easy-peel, sweet-tasting oranges, and fun, exciting stories? I blatantly buy the ones aimed at kids anyway, but why are they marketed that way?
Most of the book series I've really enjoyed in recent years have been young-adult books. Harry Potter. Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy, and most of his other work. Artemis Fowl. The Hunger Games. (Still reading that, so no spoilers please!) Conversely, while I've enjoyed some adult fiction (Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series being a notable example), a depressing amount of the adult fiction I read feels dull and lacking, and fails to grip me.
Am I immature? (I don't mind if so. I'm exploring literature in society, not fishing for reassurance.) If I am immature, in what way? Or, to look at it from the other side: what makes a book YA? Superficially, it usually has teenage protagonists and no sex; but those are clearly not the only or primary criteria for marketing something as YA (nor the criteria that appeal to me about it).
Is it that adult books have depth and subtlety which goes over my head? Or is it that only teenagers are supposed to like books about Ultimate Reality and Truth and Big Moral Questions? And if so, is that because teenagers are still figuring those things out and adults should have already done so; or is it because teenagers still care about those things, whereas adults are supposed to be boring and jaded and enjoy depressing books which reflect the mundanities of everyday life?
Is it that I'm just reading the cream of YA fiction, and mediocre adult fiction, so it's an unfair comparison? That's a possibility; YA fiction seems to exist in a much taller and narrower pyramid, so you mostly only hear of the bestsellers, whereas the adult market is a lot bigger and less neatly distinguished among. And, of course, you can't just generalise about "adult fiction" as a category. Because it's a bigger market, it's much more diverse than YA.
Where does escapism come into it? Most of the fiction I enjoy is speculative in some way, but there's plenty of adult speculative fiction and a lot of it has bored me recently (and conversely I really enjoy some non-speculative fiction aimed at teenagers - mainly classics like the Anne of Green Gables series). Does escapism mean spaceships and wizards, or does it mean fictional settings (whether speculative or not) which have morality and meaning, unlike the real world? I mostly (apart from when having a faith crisis) do think the real world has morality and meaning; but even if it didn't - especially if it didn't - then I can't see why I'd want to read stories that didn't either. To me, story involves finding or creating meaning; otherwise it's just recording, which takes much less skill and is much less interesting to read. But it's not as though the YA stories I like are morally glib and neat, with obvious goodies and baddies, and happy endings. That may be a stereotype some people have about children's fiction. But then, maybe it is, compared to adult fiction, and I'm failing to see the deeper moral complexity in (a lot of) adult fiction, and mistaking it for a moral void?
I share your liking of YA fiction - and Scott Westerfield, thanks to your and Alex's gift of Leviathan, the first of his books I've read. I finished it today, it was awesome ;)
More generally, when it comes to adult stuff, I do prefer the escapism of fantasy and science fiction, although it doesn't have to be spaceships and wizards. Actually, the same is true of YA books - I know there are some excellent YA books out there set very much in the modern world, but they don't interest me as much.
And I'm not really sure what makes a book YA. I thought it was pretty much just the age of the protagonists, to be honest...
Sorry, that's just general musing and probably not really answering your question ^^;;
Yay, we're both really glad you liked Leviathan - and just noticed the next two appear on your wishlist :)
"Spaceships and wizards" was me deliberately stereotyping in the manner of someone criticising escapism and speculative fiction; but that probably wasn't clear. Personally I tend to prefer the kind of sci-fi and fantasy which is set in a world like the real world but with a few tweaks, as opposed to the massive-worldbuilding kind; but YMMV and I have nothing against either kind.
I really agree with all of this, but don't seem to have many answers!
I think your point about people growing out of heavy handed moral messages and finding some plot devices cliched might be part of it. Like, I read Diane Duane's So You Want To Be A Wizard, and I genuinely did feel I was a bit old for it.
I think there is something about YA protagonists that allow them to be a bit 'stupid' and impulsive. Like, if you're in a dystopian society and 50, and you wake up one day and suddenly realise it's a dystopia... well, that might make quite a good book, but it's a bit odd. Whereas teenagers are finding out about the world and building models of what works and why all the time. And it's more in character for them to be less self aware and more impulsive, so I forgive them more 'gosh! I will chase him on my hoverboard without telling anyone where I am going'
I think also, YA is written assuming that readers have quite a short attention span and want a) books where lots happen, b) quite short books (at least compared to 900 page fantasy bricks) and c) books where the art of the writing doesn't get in the way of the story (I'm not saying they're all badly written, but they tend to be straightforwardly written). I like all those things, so YA works well for me.
So I think it's a bit that I'm 'immature' in some ways, and a bit that YA is just a 'trendy' genre where the good ideas are bubbling up at the moment and that is drawing good writers. I expect this has happened in other types of books at other times (sci-fi, fantasy, feminist publishers like Virago)
if you're in a dystopian society and 50, and you wake up one day and suddenly realise it's a dystopia... well, that might make quite a good book, but it's a bit odd. Whereas teenagers are finding out about the world and building models of what works and why all the time. And it's more in character for them to be less self aware and more impulsive
Interesting. I was imagining that authors set out to write a YA novel, so therefore decide to make their protagonist a teenager. But maybe it is the other way round: they write a story which only works with a teenage protagonist, and so it gets marketed as YA.
I wonder to what extent readers (of any age) need/want protagonists of about their own age. Could a story which needs a teenage protagonist be an adult novel? I'm sure there must be examples, but can't bring any to mind OTTOMH. I can think of a couple of adult novels with child protagonists (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Room - both adult novels I did like) but they're fairly unusual.
Interesting. I was imagining that authors set out to write a YA novel, so therefore decide to make their protagonist a teenager. But maybe it is the other way round: they write a story which only works with a teenage protagonist, and so it gets marketed as YA.
That's how it happened with one of mine (not that it's been marketed, of course!) - it was never intended to be YA as such, but the setup required a teenage protagonist so that's how it's been pitched.
Serge made the point earlier that YA novels tend to involve coming of age, and I suspect the assumption is that adults aren't interested in that, hence they're not marketed at adults.
The Catcher in the Rye (which I don't like) is a teenage protagonist coming-of-age book which I think fails (deliberately, not incompetently) a and c (but is mercifully b!)Have you read Bujold and the Vorkosigan books? They are definitely adult sci-fi, not YA, but are awesome in similar ways to many YA books (including meeting a to c) and some of the books (the ones in Young Miles) have a protagonist who I think is teenage (late, rather than early?)</p>
Also, there are books I _hate_, like Angus, Thongs, which are clearly a different type of YA but I think still YA. It's a bit the 'less interesting stuff happens' and a bit 'this morality / world view annoys me' and a bit 'this protagonist is just _too_ selfish and stupid'
This! I don't get much time to read for pleasure these days, so I might actually have been a YA the last time I really read much YA fiction, but I continue to feel that I want stories to be big and dramatic, and make me feel scared for the characters, and to have moral commentary, and to be exciting so that I don't want to put the book down. I read a lot of reviews of the latest adult fiction, and pretty much all of it sounds deadly boring to me.
I suppose there are adult sideways steps you can take, e.g. into horror (Stephen King is a great writer, but his books sit, perhaps sometimes uncomfortably, somewhere between the thrills of the supernatural and the everyday boring of what I think of as standard American adult fiction), or maybe some science fiction (a genre I don't know well at all)? And some of the 'classics' of literature are much better reads than I think a lot of today's books are (though NB in schools these tend to be thrown at teenagers!).
I read something a while ago about YA fiction - the person discussing it (I forget who, but it was probably in the Telegraph somewhere) said that there seems to be fewer quality checks in the YA world. So for all those really good examples of YA fiction, like the ones you mention you've enjoyed, there are a whole lot more really bad examples, with sloppy treatments of vampires / princesses / wizards / epic quests / school dramas / whatever. (But TBH I suspect the quality checks on adult fiction are not that great, so I was suspicious about treating YA fiction as a special case.)
Why shouldn't adults have easy-peel, sweet-tasting oranges, and fun, exciting stories?
I think this is really true. I think there are (obviously) good books that are inherently complicated, but I think there's a completely wrong perception that being difficult and miserable are inherently more "sophisticated". Being fun and accessible are good things, and people shouldn't complain about them!
I'm not always very exuberant, but I cherish the right to be exuberant when I want, without people automatically classifying it as immature.
It's also the case that people use reading in different ways: sometimes as intellectual stimulation, sometimes as escapism, sometimes as both, etc.
woodpijn
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