YA

This blog post was motivated by a video by Ariel Bissett.

Around my 18th birthday my friend Nina said to me "you're not going to stop reading YA now are you?" "Of course not" I replied. And within a week of my eighteenth birthday, I was reading mostly adult fiction.

It wasn't a conscious choice, let me make that clear. It's not like I'm one of those numerous journalists who throw bombs at the YA community and run away cackling. I'm not denying that what I've read was irrelevant or juvenile. If a new Sarah J Maas or Samantha Shannon book got released tomorrow I would run to Amazon HQ to get it if I had to. However, my tastes have changed.

The conscious part of this choice was that I wanted books that were very plot driven that weren't about the topics that YA is usually about. I was struggling to find new material in the YA section that was different. I read the blurb of a book called The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair in the adult section of Waterstones. It had so many things that were against it: its 700 page size and my lack of concentration, its weight and my bad back, the fact that Agatha Christie gives me nightmares, let alone a modern crime book and the fact I don't like French Literature. This book really changed what I look for in a book. It covers some pretty dark themes but it's clever and manipulative and truly wonderful. It was so very different to all the YA I had read. A new love in adult literature was born.

I feel like I've grown up a lot in the past month. I am very consciously thinking about how I am going to university in September and how I'll be a real adult, a proper "I can cook and iron and pay bills and know what those symbols on washing labels mean" adult as supposed to a "hi the government lets me buy sparklers now" adult that I currently am. I feel like maybe that's made me change my choice in literature.

I find that adult books put different emphasis on their topics. For example, style can be really important and I struggle to find the element that makes me love Jeffrey Eugenides and Meg Wolitzer in YA. The biggest difference is the emphasis on emotions. When a character in a YA novel feels something they feel it deeply and passionately. If it's a romance, they won't be wondering if the guy they're interested in is good marriage material, they care about the chase. That makes young adult books exciting in many regards. However, sometimes I want adult books for their different emotions and sometimes I like the element of hindsight on the teenage years.

I have struggled in the past with the large emphasis on dystopian literature in YA as it often feels very repetitive and needs development psychologically for the characters. In contrast, adult dystopian can be beautifully foreboding (The Circle by Dave Eggers is wonderfully realistic).

I'm honestly happy with this change. Growing up isn't a bad thing and wanting to read many categories instead of just YA feels liberating. I haven't discovered all my favourite books yet, but I'm closer to it now.

Books set where you live

I see myself as having two home cities: London, where I'll be moving to next year if I get AAB in my A Levels, and Oxford, where I currently go to school and have lived near for 13 years.

I read The Bone Season in June and I absolutely adored it and one of the reasons I fell absolutely in love with it is because it's set in Oxford. It has a map in the front showing all of the colleges that are important in the book and all the main roads in central Oxford. It got me thinking about how some books are a really personal experience and connecting to a book is heavily linked with that.

So when I hear about Americans reading The Bone Season I become very protective over it. In my head, though irrational, it belongs to me and my city.

I had never quite connected with a book on this level before: the sharing of a place that is so fundamental to both of your identities. I have had a very strong relationship with Oxford which has been primarily built over the last year and two months. The Bone Season somehow captures my relationship with Oxford. I am constantly in awe of Oxford in the way it is grand and magical and makes me feel very safe, especially in the old parts.

I'm getting nostalgic, please do stop me. I just know in six months I will go through my school leavers ceremony and in eight months I will never return to Oxford as a student who studies there. Oxford has become a city where I found out who I am and where I have been happiest, with the exception of Walt Disney World. Losing it feels just so premature.

I know next year when I'll be living in London *touches all the wood* I'll need my disposable camera prints and my Oxford Sketchbook I got for my birthday and The Bone Season.