Babbling Bubbles

Is there a website that tells you what you should listen to based on what book you’re reading? Because if not, someone should get on that.

What the ever loving fuck even just happened.
It was brilliant. Seriously terrifying in a mindfucking way, but brilliant.

Barnes & Noble was playing a Grateful Dead song. I have found my happy place.
Also, I bought On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

But then I realize that’s impossible. I actually don’t have anywhere near enough.

He’s reading Jane Eyre. For fun. And he loves it.

Excuse me, but I seem to have misplaced my pants.

I usually find Joel Stein pretty amusing. I mean, I don’t regularly read what he writes, but if I find myself with an issue of Time nearby and one of his pieces is in it, I’ll take a look.

This disappoints me though. A lot.

As an eighteen (and a half) year old, I constantly feel that I am stuck in this weird transitional phase between adolescence and adulthood (a. I’m aware that this is cliche, but some things are cliche because they’re true, and b. This always brings to mind that Britney Spears song from a million years ago about not being really a girl or a woman. Shut up). I mean, I’m still very much a child - a fact which I embrace, because I never, ever want to lose who I am (I happen to quite like myself as I am right now, thanks) - but I’m inching closer to that soul-crushing thing called “adulthood”, with all of its “responsibilities” and whatnot. I know that I’ll eventually have to stop wearing my Doc Martens 24 hours a day in exchange for something a little more professional, and that I won’t be able to wear the same pair of jeans for four days in a row. The things which I unabashedly adore today will, someday, have to be shelved as guilty pleasures in favor of being an “adult.” I can’t be eighteen forever.

But one thing I don’t see a need to change at any point in the future - near or otherwise - is my reading habits, because I don’t feel I ever should, could, or would transition out of Young Adult Fiction. And sure, I also read “adult” books, and occasionally books that are more serious in nature, and I’m sure that as I get older, the ratio of “adult” fiction to “young adult” fiction will shift. But I don’t ever want to abandon YA fiction, because I love it now and probably always will.

Here’s the thing: Yes, some YA novels are childish and are not going to appeal to the preferences of people over the age of, like, fifteen, but that’s not all of them. When I’m 25, I’m not going to be reading the 2018 version of Twilight or Gossip Girl. But I’ll sure as hell still read the next series like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, because those aren’t just books for young adults. They are not books with a time limit, because their themes are timeless. Love and friendship and courage and strength are not themes I ever want to stop reading about. And The Hunger Games series goes so far beyond just a story, with elements that apply globally to all ages and are pertinent to our current political and economic climate, that it’s ridiculous to say that “only” young adults should read the trilogy, because these are things that affect everyone.

I think one of the basic assumptions of people who look down on YA books is that the YA audience is too immature to be able to comprehend greater themes besides ehmahgawd are werewolves or vampires sexier? Let me assure you, however, that those people are dead wrong. Take, for instance, John Green’s novel Looking for Alaska. LFA is narrated by Miles Halter, a junior in high school. But it deals with love and loss and life on a far grander scale than some so-called “adult” novels I’ve read could ever dream of. Miles and his friends grapple with things throughout the novel that are universal, questions which have plagued people for centuries. But instead of feeling like you’re reading the philosophical ramblings of some dead guy, you’re reading a story. A fantastically well-written and enthralling and heart-breaking story. It still makes you think just as much, but makes it a hell of a lot more appealing.

My 56 year old mother read Looking for Alaska. And then she got her friends to read it, because she loved it so much, and they all enjoyed it, too. Hell, even my grandmother, at eighty years old, read Looking for Alaska, and let me tell you, she fucking loved it. Because it’s an amazing book, whether you’re 16, 18, 56, or 80, it doesn’t matter. The concepts in LFA are universal and timeless, and it’s a lovely thing to see someone like John Green trusting young adults to be intelligent enough to handle the greater questions of the story.

Another reason I take issue with the “Adults should read adult books” thing is that reading is about enjoyment. Once you’re out of school, your book preferences are just that - preferences. I know it makes you look “smarter” or more “interesting” or whatever to tote around War and Peace, but you know what’s far more awesome than being a condescending, lit-snob assbutt? Being someone who enjoys what they read. If you can really get your kicks from Tolstoy, then more power to you, but that doesn’t mean others are any less intelligent or whatever just because they choose to read something that isn’t almost 150 years old.

So please, don’t condescend to me in thirty years when I’m still reading YA novels. Just because I’m not reading the “classics” doesn’t mean I’m not challenging myself intellectually; it means that I’m challenging myself in a more meditative sense than I would be if I was trying to read something else. It means that I’m enjoying myself.