/lit/ - Literature

No, we can't. Now go back to tumblr, whore.

>>9411744
never

thread now

No

Please go back to tumblr and never return. You will be doing this board a favour.

I liked hunger games. Last YA book I read that I enjoyed was The Goldfinch by Donna Tart. Long and the ending was disappointing, but the middle was enjoyable.

>>9411882
>>9411922
thread now

>>9411730
No.

>>9411730
Go back 2 /r/books

>>9412075
No, deal with me right now

>>9412083
ok show your tits then

i work at a library with a bunch of middle-aged women who only read YA. the head librarian admitted she was a pleb and her daughter mocked her for reading vampire romance novels. the sad frumpy ones read YA as an escape from their loveless and barren life.

in descending order of books i hate the most:
>every one-use, paperback-tier political thriller that somehow gets a hardcover and 500 pages; in other words, the lovechildren of james patterson and tom clancy
>the endless series of meme murder mysteries for women (baking and murder, crocheting and murder, gardening and murder, caring for domestic animals and murder)
>a tie between the 940.5xxx section (which is on WWII and the holocaust) and the popfic books about a young romance between a jew and a gentile in dresden/paris/berlin/warsaw
then
>YA books about cliquish girls who are chosen by a secret organization because they're special (read: beautiful).
i bet pic related is in vogue right now, because we keep getting new books in the series and i keep having to shelve them.

>>9412139
in fact, why don't i just post YA series which i hate purely on their aesthetic and my visceral reaction

>>9412146
if i had a nickel for every YA series about super cool teens who save the world by working with a—you guessed it—secret organization...

>>9412152
on a more positive note, the spines of the "ashfall/ashen winter" series look pretty cool. i just read the synopsis and it doesn't seem bad either

>>9412139
Fuck I work in a library too, and you're right about the middle aged people. Young women read them too.
Also you forgot
>raunchy large print romances about arabian sheiks/highlanders/vikings/billionaire Greeks that old women read

>>9412139
I'm in to this post.

>>9412162
hah! i forgot about the large print section. ours is just a cesspool of that collected filth with no redeeming qualities. normally i don't notice the harlequin romances because they're sprinkled throughout, but gotdamn those fantasy/viking romances are awful.

>>9412172
Yeah, tell me about it. If I ever get to the point where my eyesight goes that badly, it's game over (suicide time). I am not reading that shit for the last depressing years of my life.

the best YA book i have found, bar none. i would not be surprised if it was written by a renegade from "TLoTiaT"

>>9412175
or you could hire some impoverished slavic wench to read aloud to you. i married an asian (and they age like milk), so that's what i look forward to.

>>9412199
for christ's sake

>>9412199
>old and wealthy
>hire beautiful women to read my books all day
>judge them firstly off of the quality of their voice and interpretation, and then their understanding of the material, and then how much fun they are to talk to
>have other beautiful women to shovel food and coffee in my mouth whenever I feel like it
>Live in a tranquil garden
>Insult people, make constant innuendos and intentionally commit social faux pas and everyone has to put up with it because I'm old and rich
suddenly old age doesn't sound so bad

>>9412139
Actually that series is regarded as the book equivalent of junk food in YA (you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't consider it a guilty pleasure), which I guess makes it even worse

>>9412199
>>9412204
>it's a dystopian

>>9411730
DELET

YA and Hunger Games in single post. WoW. I hope you are a femanon.

YA is trash apart from John Green

>>9413325
>John Green
>good

>>9414645
>he hasn't ascended beyond the 'John Green is bad' meme

>>9414650
I might be missing something but John Green's works (I'm assuming you mean the YA ones) aren't that good.

3 out of the 4 solo novels he has made follow the same "quirky boy" and "larger than life manic pixie girl" characters. The narrative ususally tries too hard to be 2deep4u, the teenagers don't act like teenagers.

The dude's nice and likeable but his books aren't the best to come out of YA.

>WE WILL NOT BE PUT INTO CATEGORIES

Seriously, I should become a YA author. Seems like a lot of money to be made in it.

>>9414658
Welcome newfriend.

>>9412221
Do people who read ya think the books about sparkly vampires aren't "junk food"?

>>9412199
Big kek, I'm tempted to use this as joke gift

>>9411730
I'd rather not

>>9411730
Is there good YA to read?

other than some fantasy?

>>9414730
ranger's apprentice is pretty good.
other than fantasy? i dont know.

>>9414730
The Sorrows of Young Werther.

>>9414730
Six of Crows, but it's technically fantasy

I've heard Illuminae is good but I can't tell you from experience

>>9414730

The Catcher in the Rye.

>>9411730

I just found out pic related had a sequel come out in 2013. Anyone read it?

It's weird how I've never reread it, but I have a much better memory of The House of the Scorpion than lots of books I read when I was younger.

>>9414804
Wow, you've just reminded me about that book. I loved it when i was a kid.
definitely what i would consider a good YA book

Try the gaskun meme books

>>9411730
Actual good novel. Highly recommend the series.

>>9414804
Agreed, best YA book I encountered growing up. Although Castaways of the Flying Dutchman came close for me.

I happened to read Lord of Opium at some point in highschool, unfortunately not nearly as good as I remember House of the Scorpion being. The atmosphere is thrown away in favor of action and the whole book suffers. Still potentially worth the nostalgia read though

horatio alger jr is the greatest ya author

So why does /lit/ hate YA? Is it a legitimate reason or are we stuck in 2007 "hurr hurr Twilight" memes?

>>9416315
Name one YA book from the last 20 years that has a crumb of literature in it?

>>9418003
Anything by John Green, duh

>>9412139

Those covers are aesthetic.

Nothing but "the chosen one" cliche but targeted at young women. Oh, she was plain looking, but when she got shined up a bit she was the most beautiful girl ever. And she saved the world blah blah blah. It's the Princess Diaries rehashed a thousand times.

Formulaic, poorly written and nary researched pieces of shit, but they always make bank.

>>9414730

His Dark Materials was alright. I hear good things about Narnia and a bridge to terabithia, but I haven't read them.

Fucking read it you faggots

>>9411744
fpbp

>>9412139
Fuck you, political thrillers are leagues above the rest of he bullshit you listed.

>>9418003
What is literature for you?

>>9418465
It sure as hell isn't YA trash

If you want a couple of good or decent YA books that aren't written for cat ladies and/or teenage vagina creatures you may enjoy these as much as I did:

> All the pretty horses
Comradery and adventure, a touch of romance and plenty of humour.
> Ender's Game
You should fucking know this one, the two sequels are great too, a bit more "deep".
> Red Rising-series
Like the hunger games, space communism and shit except it is actually rather enjoyable - even though it has its cringey moments; it is a modern YA after all.

For me, a lot of "adult" fiction is very drawn out. I really do not care about some random details that don't have any purpose or reading about the same thing five millions times. Also, most adult fiction is about people who are married, have kids, are getting divorced or struggling with midlife crisis. As someone who is 25, none of these appeal to me. Perhaps I'm not picking up the right adult books, but none of them are really appealing to me. I will read a thriller every now and again since those ones keep my attention more, but most adult things I just don't care about. For me, they're often a chore to get through. I don't want reading to be a chore. YA is often more fun and light, and makes reading enjoyable. Some of more "advanced" then others, some are more simplified, but I don't have to sit here for twenty pages reading fluff that turns out to having nothing of importance to the plot. There is a genre of "new adult" for 18 to 20-something, or whatever, but a lot of them are filled with excessive sex scenes (often horribly written and obnoxious). I barely like sex in the real life; I don't want to read about it everywhere.
Oh, and for "underlying themes" or "messages", I don't care about those. Those are not reasons I'm reading a book. I just want a fun story to take my mind off of things and relax.

>>9414658
>>9414650

John Green fucking breaks the fourth wall so often as you can tell he's trying to directly speak to his reader through one of his characters in the shitty quirky dialogue. His teenagers talk like bigger autist than literal autistic high schoolers do. I just wanted to yell "NOBODY SPEAKS LIKE THAT" to his face every time I've read his work.

He's philosophy is also plebbit-tier 9deep11me.

>>9418711

I must be tired - I just read through my own post and it reads as if it were written by a fucking dyslexic retard.

This kind of "literature" is actually detrimental for your health. Have you considered actual books? The ones you won't regret once you grow up

>>9418669
A lot of 'serious literature' is about relationships - usually ones that are breaking up. I find few things as tedious as hearing about someone else's relationships, so for me it's the examination of characters and the descriptions of scenes that I find interesting in those books. YA just doesn't have the writing quality or the characterisation that can match it. It might be fine if I just read a book occasionally, but if you read a whole line of lightweight fiction in a row it feels like trying to live on a diet of M&Ms.

An alternative is well-written genre fiction (most is badly-written junk, but there are good ones). Crime fiction has the best examples with writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

>>9418669
>I barely like sex in the real life; I don't want to read about it everywhere.

Have you read Anais Nïn's Delta of Venus? It's an erotica and drowns in sensuality on some sense but very senseful and the chapters touch some very problems in sex fore example too. Not to give a chore or to force it but it might open up some prejudices on that matter, that you may think to be interesting. Not too hard or intense to read either.

>>9415626
literally no title

>>9418726
How the fuck can a book be detrimental to your health? The only thing it might do is turn you into a tumblrina, which isn't a problem if your not a shitty teenage girl.

>>9418726
Literature can be both thought-provoking and simple entertainment.

Saying words can deteriorate your health is on the same level of unsupported elitism as saying cartoons make you dumber.

Regretting reading books is for faggots. Read Twilight and take that with you to the grave.