In a blatant (and successful) attempt at link-baiting, the New York Time published an opinion piece on their website last week about how adults shouldn’t be reading young adult fiction.
Cue the eye rolls.
(No, I won’t link to the article, you can find it if you Google “Joel Stein is a Sexist Ass.”) I’m not going to add to the commentary about how this is an absurd assertion, because loads of people have already done that extremely well, but I am going to ask another question,
Why the HELL do we even care what people do or do not read?
Seriously. Why is this important to so many people? It seems that at least once a month, there’s some new article (50 percent of which feature Jonathan Franzen bloviating about his supposed superiority) asserting that we should read X, that we should not read Y and that “serious readers*” would most definitely should not read Z.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you have probably figured out that my reading tastes are all over the place. But, I have a particular enjoyment of the following:
- Contemporary, realistic YA;
- Creative, entertaining urban fantasy;
- Urban crime fiction;
- Post-apocalyptic/dystopian (adult or YA)
- Books involving prank wars;
- Smart contemporary romance (a la Julie James and Shannon Stacey);
- Novels involving zombies;
- Novels involving werewolves;
- Middle Eastern women’s fiction;
- Graphic novel/fiction with visual elements;
- Funny memoirs;
- Sweet and fun contemporary YA (a la Stephanie Perkins);
- Books involving heists and/or capers; and
- Books that don’t suck (to me).