Y is for…

Young Adult Fiction

Since being a ‘young adult’ I have liked to read ‘young adult’ fiction, now as a slightly older but still very young at heart adult, that has not changed in the slightest. I do have varied taste but tend to enjoy the paranormal subgenre.

As I mentioned in my V is for…Vampire post I read L. J. Smith’s book The Secret Vampire and I have gone on to read all 9 of the Night World series. I have also read all of her The Vampire Diaries (not the TV spin offs yet) being part way through the final book Midnight at the moment. Also I have read, The Forbidden Game, The Secret Circle and Dark Visions (which I vaguely remembered the first part of so not sure if I read this from the library). All of those books are hidden in a second layer on the bookshelf along with Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series (that True Blood is based on). I’m actually guessing that those are adult rather than young adult but I’ve not started reading yet. I bought the first three of the Succubus series by Richelle Mead in a second hand bookstore the other week and again think these are meant to be adult. Richelle Mead has written a series called Vampire Academy which I believe is getting a spin off series shortly. I’m waiting to buy these because I’m undecided about whether or not to purchase hardcopy or on Kindle. The other books on the shelf are The Immortals series (Alyson Noel), The Morganville Vampires series (Rachel Caine) and The House of Night series (P.C and Kristen Cast – mother/daughter writing duo). Then Fallen (Lauren Kate -first of a series) and Beautiful Creatures (Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl – also part of a series).

At school I remember reading the Point Horror books (with titles like The Babysitter and The Lifeguard)  and Sweet Valley High (a slightly different genre) and I’ve read TV spin off books of Buffy etc. After the film version I read I know what you did last summer (Lois Duncan). One of my other favourites is The Changeover by Margaret Mahy – I re-read this recently and still found it creepy.

Of course I’ve read His Dark Materials (Phillip Pullman), some of the Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer) and The Twilight series (Stephanie Meyer). If you haven’t checked out The Host (also by Meyer) – do, I’d love to see it made into a film – the female character in it is a much stronger lead than Bella.

I have to admit I get a bit lost as to what is considered young adult sometimes, for example where do The Princess Diaries (Meg Cabot) sit? Malory Towers (Enid Blyton – hate the new covers). Lemony Snicket?

And what about Harry Potter? (cue an opportunity for me to add another picture of the bag that my HP7 came in and that I forgot to add into my H post). A number of these series at least start as children’s books but in HP’s case especially they move into Young Adult territory as they grow more mature in theme.

Now as you may have noticed a lot of these books remain unread (need more hours in the day please). And I haven’t even mentioned the ones on my Kindle yet (The Mortal Instruments (Cassandra Clare), Firelight (Sophie Jordan), The Tor (Lisa Granville), Fall of Angels series (Keary Taylor), My Blood Approves and Trylle (Amanda Hocking– if you have not heard of her you are probably not a writer spending a lot of their time on Twitter).

All of these are still sat there or tucked up electronically waiting to be devoured. I keep putting off reading because I know I’ll want to stay up all night to read them in one sitting.

Now I blame my growing library on Twitter and one person above all others – Jesi Lea Ryan who writes the blog Diary of a Bibliophile. I enjoy her book reviews so much she makes me want to buy and read the books that second. If you are interested in YA please do check her out (I’ve also added some other YA links in my blogroll).

When I do finally get round to reading, now I have a Goodreads account, I plan to write reviews which I may post here too and that should pop up in the little Goodreads’ widget. As I read I’m going to have to make note of some quotes so that I have more than Harry Potter ones pop up – not that I really mind that.

When I was digging through my parents bookshelves looking for a book that I thought I remembered from my childhood I came across The Tovers (Elisabeth Beresford) – I remembered the cover immediately and can’t wait to re-read. I didn’t find the book I was after. If anyone can help (and apologies if I’ve already posted this but it is bugging me) – it was a children’s illustrated book about a party on some steps in a castle/tower where everyone got a ticket which told them how many steps they had to climb and when they got to their step there was a box with their food in it. Please someone know this book!

And Tabitha Suzuma says I should have my signed copies of her books early next week. Very excited about those.

I wonder if there are any of you thinking, you’re a 30 something year old woman who is seriously needing to start considering hair dye, grow up and read Tolstoy or something. You might have a point, and I do also read fiction outside of this genre and written for adult audiences, but this is the type of genre I want to write so as well as being very pleasurable this is research and therefore a legitimate occupation for me. Actually strikethat it’s legitimate whatever my reasons because it is meaningful to me. I can still see me as an 80 year old reading about vampires and witches and angels and fairies and love and human frailty and I’ll be enjoying it.

This is a plea to come back on Saturday for my final Z post in which I plan to run a little social experiment that will need as many of you commenting as possible. On the day do tell your friends and share the link using the handy share button at the bottom of each post. Thank You.

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