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We interrupt this blog of random meme for this important announcement:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, jellibean!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope your special day is full of random geekery, yummy foods, and lots of adorable calls and texts from your new boytoy ;-)

**HUGS** love ya, babe.

"adult" books vs. teen books

So, I'm about to finish reading the first "adult" fiction book I have read in a long time. It's The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. I picked it up because it was getting rave reviews in all the journals and it was posted to Early Word. Even though it's not a very long book, I feel like it has taken me forever to read it. And now that I'm down to about 50 pages left, I've been thinking a lot about "Adult Fiction" versus "Young Adult Fiction" and why I find myself drawn to the YA area more often than not.

BTW, when I speak of "Adult Fiction", I'm talking about the literary fiction genre. These are the books that win the awards and get the rave reviews. The stories of everyday people and events.

ANYWAY - I find that, in teen books I feel like the point of telling the story is to have the character grow and learn. It always starts out tough, with life looking very grim, but by the end, the character has some kind of epiphany. You finish the book and you feel like they have accomplished something, you feel fullfilled as a reader.

But with Adult Fiction books, I feel like they tell a story and they are not obligated to have it go anywhere or do anything. I tend to find myself reading and saying "what is the point? these people were miserable at the start of the book and from the looks of it, they will be miserable at the end."

I wonder if this is why YA lit has grown so much in the past few years. I mean, yes Harry Potter and *shudder* Twilight have helped, but something is keeping those older teens and adults in this area of the library and bookstore. I think it is because when you finish these books, the ending means something more. There is a hero and they finish their journey and they grow from it. Even the most angsty teen books end with some kind of, for lack of a better word, lesson. Not in a preachy sense, but more of a "this is how life is, and I can deal with it now".

I dunno, I'm wondering if this all somehow links together to our cultural obsession with comic books and superhero movies right now too. It's not that they are juvenile - it's that the stories portray a hero vs an obstacle and we watch as they work towards overcoming it. Perhaps this is also the link to adult genre fiction too...

This is mostly just me thinking and typing, so I don't have any good examples, but...yeah...someone get me an AMST grad student who can devote more time to research this...

oh screw it, I'm gonna go watch the next Doctor Who episode...