09.29.13

I just finished reading TFIOS.

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When you're a literature major, you get to read books that are considered "acceptable." These are books that are sometimes very good and very interesting, or sometimes terribly boring. But these are books that are deemed acceptable to find in the bag of a literature student. These are books people expect you to read.

Consequently, when one is a literature major, you tend to veer away from certain books. Or more specifically, a certain genre. This genre has recently been overrun by sparkling vampires and other cheesy supernatural creatures. This genre is (unwritten and unconsciously) considered shallow and beneath a respectable student of literature. This genre is the Young Adult category.

But I remember being a young adult. And it was full of drama and happiness and a general influx of feeling that, let's face it, is still experienced by the general adult-adult population. Although greatly ignored. These feelings, these experiences, are pushed aside and considered flimsy and frivolous and of utmost unimportance.

And for the longest time, I was that literature student. I was reluctant to even approach the YA section of a bookstore, seeing in my mind's eye the disapproving and condescending smirks of my professors.

But then you find a few gems like TFIOS, and you remember why you loved reading the genre once upon a very long time. You remember what it was like to be a teenager. And how no matter how old you are, a part of you will always be a teenager.

I'm glad I'm back to reading Young Adult books. Because these books are different. They're easy to read, yes. They deal with common young adult-y problems, yes. They deal, oftentimes, with the concept of love that we once had. Once, when we were not yet our jaded, deniably bitter selves.

But they deal with feelings, with emotions, in a way that sometimes "smart" books just cannot touch upon. They may not be deep and intellectual, philosophical or existential in the academic sense, but they have feelings. The feelings that these books deal with are feelings that we deal with. Everyday feelings. Human feelings. Feelings that we dismiss as shallow and childish. These feelings may have started in young adulthood, but even as much as we try to deny it, they do not end in young adulthood.

The Fault In Our Stars was the first YA novel I've read in a while (discounting Harry Potter because I've re-read that too many times to count). I also read it in less than a day. A feat that has not happened in a while. I knew it would be painful as soon as I knew what the topic was. A book about kids with cancer cannot end well. And it cannot end happy. And it didn't. And I was glad it didn't. I cried, sure; many times while I was reading. But I am glad it was sad. It was a beautiful kind of sad. Maybe that could be attributed to my strange fascination for all things miserable, but the story would not have worked with a happy ending.

Besides, young love, and true love, very seldom have happy endings.

I'm glad I read it. I'm glad I'm starting to gravitate toward this genre again. Not to be saying that more, er, sophisticated literature isn't worth it (I mean, have you read Siddhartha? Lolita? A House of the Spirits?), but that we need to realize that though the YA section of bookstores have some questionable titles, it doesn't hurt to visit and find the ones worth ripping your heart open for. I'm very glad I am discovering them again.