Hey Adult YA Readers, Grow Up Already

Time was, adults wouldn't be caught dead reading a book written for teens, but now grownups buy more young-adult books than young adults themselves. At Slate, Ruth Graham wishes this weren't so. "Adults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children," she writes. Sure, they'll argue that the YA genre "is more sophisticated than ever," thanks to titles like John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. But this is mostly sappy, escapist fare with neatly wrapped-up endings, devoid of the "complexity of great adult literature," writes Graham.

"Fellow grown-ups, at the risk of sounding snobbish and joyless and old, we are better than this." For a rebuttal, see Mark Shrayber at Jezebel, who thinks Graham is being too preachy. If you're an adult YA fan, apparently, "you should feel ashamed that you are not reading Ulysses or Dubliners or that one book by Christopher Hitchens that everyone likes but you don't because it is long-winded and was kind of a waste of fourteen dollars no matter what a brilliant thinker he was." His bottom line: If you're an adult, you can read whatever you want. Click for Graham's full post, or for Shrayber's full post. (More opinion stories.)