Today, I am coming to you about YA novels. I am going to do my best not to criticize, but instead just bring things to your attention, in case your attentions weren't there anyway.
I'd like to think I am the key demographic for Young Adult novels- I am a teenage girl who likes to read and will put up with a lot of rubbish exposition for about fifty pages. (I read Twilight, didn't I? Nothing happened for roughly the first 110 pages. And I read it before the sensation started, too. There was nothing keeping me there but my ironclad patience and lack of anything else to do.) Also, I have outgrown quite a few children's books, but am throughly bored and/or disgusted by some adult books. This type of literature was made for me.
Or so you might think.
There are quite a few excellent YA authors, and what makes them excellent is that they do not pander to their audience. They understand who they're writing to. They know that not every single teenager has their mind completely fixated on the opposite gender and how to make the other gender love them (though it would be a lie to say that doesn't play some part). I like books that bring up some sort of thought, some sort of wondering about the world. I think teenagers have a lot that we're not sure of, and we don't really seem to fit in anywhere. We're too old to do things that we like or liked to do, but too young to do things that seem like the next step from where we are. It's an extremely awkward and boring place to be in, sometimes, and finding that state of wondering that isn't child-like but isn't grown-up is hard to do, but really pleasant to read when the author finds it.
For these sort of books, I like Paper Towns by John Green (probably the best YA novel ever written) and Don't Call Me Ishmael by Micheal Gerard Bauer (which is funny the entire time. Also, Australian).
But then there are YA books that I don't like, and I won't mention any of these by name because I hate them so much.
Usually, these books involve a girl. This girl will be either be:
- some sort of completely inadequate and insecure so-called 'smart-girl' who has one super-mega-totally-tight-yo-best friend, a horde of 'just-there' friends, and lots of time to complain. You will be asked to relate to her, but there is a 75% chance* that you will hate her.
- some 'new girl' who is 'different', 'smart', and 'totally appealing to everybody' but will still wind up being the whiniest brat in the whole story. You will be asked nothing of her, because she is so 'meek' and 'shy', but there is a 92% chance* that you will hate her.
- some kind of a Mary Sue who's desperately insecure and hides it all behind her Homecoming Queen smile and straight-A average (she will be involved in 'dozens of extra-curriculars' but somehow also have enormous amounts of time in which to complain). You will be asked to relate to her. However, because she is both irritating, spoiled, and completely unrealistic, there is a 89% chance* that you will hate her.
- some awful variation/combination of one of these.
What will happen is that this girl will be completely fixated by some boy, and this boy will be a vampire but nobody else at the school knows it, and he'll be intrigued by her because he can't read her mind, because, you know, he's a mind reading-vampire-thing, and they'll sit next to each other in biology and he'll sparkle in the sun like a pretty, pretty diamond and she'll want to kiss him, but he'll be afraid that he'll eat her if they do kiss so he won't but then they do, and then there's a werewolf who comes in and makes things complicated but he's not really a werewolf and he doesn't own a shirt and he smells good which is part of the complication but that comes later, because now there's only the sparkly undead manly-man and the masochistic little wimpy high-schooler who is getting in too deep.
So...yeah.**
Quote for Sunday, April 3, 2011:
Kat: You are amazingly self-assured, has anyone ever told you that?
Patrick: I tell myself that every day, actually.
Muse for Today:
Violet Hill, by Coldplay. This is my favorite song by them.
*Rough mathematical estimation made by a cow in Wellington boots
**Not every bad YA book is the one I was heavily referencing up there, but scores of bad YA novels were based off of that one and making fun of it is WAY too easy. So I failed not criticizing, but won my own heart.
