by Chris Bodenner
A reader points out:
Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird are young adult novels, you know. Many young adult novels are just "novels" made accessible for teenagers, because they're the ones in the thick of the angst that the "adult novelists" write about for the rest of their lives. That's what I like to tell myself while I'm writing my YA novel, anyway.
Another thing To Kill a Mockingbird and Hunger Games have in common: they're both on the top-10 list of banned books in school libraries. Another reader:
I was in the midst of the last the Harry Potter book when I was still traveling too much for business. I cannot tell you have many adults would see what I was reading – on the bus, airplane, hotel lobby etc. – and start up a conversation around the book.
Even one of my clients saw the book in my bag and spent 15 minutes of a 30-minute critical business meeting discussing the series. These talks always started with the so-called children's book and progressed to more so called adult conversations. Not one of those conversation would have began without that so-called childrens lit book. Even the client who saw the book called me two weeks later to discuss our business proposal but ended up talking about how were both bummed that Harry Potter finally ended. (He signed the business deal, by the way.)
Another:
My brother is 58. He had not read a book since high school until a coworker lent him Twilight. It lit him up like a Christmas tree. Now, a couple of years later, he has not stopped reading and his interests are broader and have included the likes of Tom Clancy and other challenging adult fiction. It won't surprise me a bit if he reads, and loves, Hunger Games. More power to him.
And I too occasionally dip into YA novels by authors like Garth Nix, who also writes adult fiction. In truth some of them are every bit as good as their counterpart in adult fiction, if less demanding grammatically.
The Dish 