So lately I’ve had several book recommendations here and in other subreddits for novels or audiobooks that sounded great, but when I pursued them, I found these were young adult novels. Despite long discussion threads, no one mentioned this.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the occasional YA book. But it seems like something people should mention it is YA, like you might mention if something was softcore. It makes me wonder: Is this is not a big deal to people? Or do people not even realize these are YA?

The most recent was Red Rising, which was suggested as an audio book recommendation. One comment mentioned that they found this after looking for something like Game of Thrones . This is a fun book, and the audio narrator is great, but it is definitely YA and nothing like Game of Thrones, lol.

Anyway, just a thought…

  • davevr@alien.topOPBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Wow this was a fascinating discussion! I definitely learned a lot, so thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts:

    My take-aways:

    • YA is a marketing label so it isn’t that useful to treat it factually or to make decisions on it. I never really thought of that before, but this makes sense to me.
    • Putting the “YA” label aside, there is a lot of debate and disagreement on the nature of books written for a certain reading level. This is surprising to me since it seems fairly objective, but - something I will keep in mind and not take for granted in the future.
    • Best bet is to check a few third-party sources for their categorization if you really want to be sure what you are getting.

    Also - I want to make it clear that I am not dissing “YA” books. There are several great books that are geared towards a teen reading level that I enjoyed and would recommend to anyone, so I have nothing against such books. Ready Player One, Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, etc. And if it wasn’t clear from my original post - I liked Red Rising! I will probably check out the other books in the series or other work from that author.

    • nyet-marionetka@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Yeah, reading level doesn’t have much to do with YA vs adult. It’s all pretty much the same, 7th-ish grade. Most of our communication is not high grade level unless we’re talking about technical things. From my imperfect experience, it’s more themes, plot points, and tone that differ.

    • BabeWaitBabeNo@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      There was definitely a lot to glean from the responses to your post! I originally dove in because my personal definition of YA is teen angst, illogical/emotionally driven decision-making, and underdeveloped characters (e.g. The Lunar Chronicles series, most especially ‘Scarlet’).

      I saw you mentioned Red Rising and was a bit surprised, since I would not classify the series as YA. After Red Rising (already barely on the edge of YA), it rapidly becomes much grittier and has none of the tropes I attribute to YA books. It’s based on rebellion/uprising, revolution, war, and coups. I hope you take a chance on the rest of the series, as it only gets better!

      Personally, I’m dragging my feet on starting book 6 (Lightbringer) because of how violent and (oftentimes) depressing it gets. And I don’t mean that it’s gratuitous violence, just that it’s very in-line with the reality of that universe and the situation the characters are all in. I’ve never avoided a YA book for those reasons; only avoided YA for poor writing and dull characters 😆 the audio books for the whole Red Rising series are absolutely the way to go! Hope you continue to enjoy the series.