Slate article

[fabrisse]

The online magazine Slate has become even more click-bait focused, and today's eye-roller is about adults reading YA books. I've read the article and I disagree with the author, especially since her entire argument seems to boil down to "things should stay in their own boxes."

So, I'd like to tell a story based on my own experience about why we shouldn't give a damn about adults reading YA.

I was on the T late one night. I'd waved goodbye to my friends at Porter Square and settled in to reread Emma while the red line chauffered me home to Quincy. It was fairly deserted and around Park Street, a guy probably a decade older than I was got on. He seemed a little drunk, but wasn't belligerent, so I kept reading. Two stops later, he asked me if I liked reading. I gave a tight nod and kept reading. He asked me another question, which I ignored, and then he asked, "Have you tried those Harry Potter books?"

I had. I had indeed. I think the book of Goblet of Fire had just come out. He said that he hadn't read a book since he got out of high school. He was divorced. He only saw his son on weekends and it had completely flummoxed him when his son brought a book with him to read, not because it had been assigned, but because he enjoyed it. When his son started on the second book, he asked to borrow the first. He was hooked. He rearranged his custody weekend to take the kid to the midnight sale for Goblet and proudly bought two copies so they could read it together.

It started him back on the path to reading. He'd found Ken Follet's books and didn't like Dan Brown much and wanted to know if I thought he'd like Emma. (I said I wasn't certain and gave him a synopsis. He thought no. But he asked if I had any action adventure recommendations, and I suggested The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan, one of the early LeCarre books, and the Sherlock Holmes stories.)

My first thought on reading the Slate article was that she would rather this man, whose name I never learned, continue to be excluded from the world of books. His "in" for reading was Harry Potter. And really, are the mystery stories my mother reads any more sophisticated than a YA novel? They're set in the adult realm, but they're formulaic (as is some of my favorite science fiction).

I don't know why this got under my skin, but it really, really did.

On another note, does anyone want to help me set up my World War I blog?

Comments

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

See also (or instead):
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/06/05/319064976/the-muscle-flexing-mind-blowing-book-girls-will-inherit-the-earth

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Yes, a much better perspective. Thank you for that.

[katewallace.livejournal.com]

Oh, for crying out loud! What's next...the book police? "I'm very sorry, ma'am, you can't read Sandra Boynton because you're over the age of 6" I'll read what ever I damn well want to, thank you very much. If someone gets joy or information or solace from reading a certain book, so much the better. My Boynton's rub spines with Tom Clancy and Andre Norton and a whole host of other stuff. I read the whole "Harry Potter" series in my late 50's and loved every one of them and never felt like I was reading 'juvenile literature'. Break out of your boxes, people, and read what you love!

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Things like this seem to spring up every decade or so. If it's not age, it's gender or ... I don't know, hair color. I half way expect someone to tell me I shouldn't have read Anne of Green Gables because I don't have red hair.

[natashasolten.livejournal.com]

I guess adults shouldn't read comic books, either. But that would mean all those blockbusters that are out right now (and every year at this time) should only be peddled to children...or never made in the first place!

That is a very snobby article which is, unfortunately, a side-effect of humans needing to label everything...and then believing in those labels as if they are the last word.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'm still don't understand her point. I know I only have so much life, but surely reading is such a personal connection -- and different books mean different things at various stages of life -- that nothing needs to be proscribed.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder if she's ever actually read a YA book, because some of the YA I've read was... intense. Yes, there's been silly and contrived books, but I'd argue that's true of literature intended for adults. It's really about taste.

Also, you know what I did after 9/11 and I was scared we were about to go to war and all this other stuff would happen? I pulled out my copy of GoF and read this:

What would come would come, and they would all have to face it when they did.

So yeah. Ruth Graham can shut up right about now. (Okay, so I was sixteen at the time, but that's not the point. It was a deeply upsetting and tragic event, and a quote from a stupid YA novel comforted me.)

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

"Not amused" sums up my reaction very well. We all find comfort in different things at different times in life. At one of my deepest points of depression, I'd have been lucky to focus well enough to get through "Pat the Bunny" in one reading.