Do You Like to Read Non-Classic Young Adult Fiction?

Guttersnipe

Guttersnipe

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By 'non-classic', I mean none of the stuff that made Rowling famous by appealing to everyone, but young adult books like the Scythe series that are truly meant for teens and/or early twenty-year-olds. I myself have read Stardust, The Alchemy of Stone, and a few others.

Follow-up question: Do you feel like they aren't "real" books, and are less than proud for reading them? I personally feel that, if I were in some literary circle, I'd be nervous about recommending, say, Stardust. Do any of you get a similar feeling?
 
Nope. If they are good then I will read them. Preferably along with my kids. If they are poor then the kids canread them alone, though they are usually discriminating enough to chuck the rubbish on their own accord.
 
My mindset is that well-written fiction appeals to all ages, regardless of its original intended audience. So there are a lot of "YA" books that I have read and enjoyed and often will reread and enjoy even now (and meanwhile there is a host of fiction supposedly written "for adults" that can't satisfyingly address similar themes or tell a story even half as well). So I'm sure by most standards I'm probably knee-deep in YA novels.

But I don't get too hanged up on "seeming" educated when recommending books or telling others what I've read. If I enjoyed a book enough to recommend it, then that's my personal taste and if someone else is unwilling to read my recommendation solely because it's marketed at young adults then that is entirely up to them. (I'm the sort of person who would enthusiastically recommend One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Phantom Tollbooth in the same breath, if that's any indication).
 
If its good I'll read it, sometimes I think books get classified in to categories for marketing purposes. I never considered Stardust as YA. Mind you I don't consider Philip Pulman YA.
 
"sometimes I think books get classified in to categories for marketing purposes".

I sit on the Board of a Foundation that owns some of Robert Heinlein's copyrights, and I know durned well they do :)
 
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