According to this article, it just might be.  But it’s working its way up.  In all honesty, I’m not sure whether to feel a little patronized by the article or encouraged.  Or maybe both.

I think, at this point, it’s safe to say that hard reading, read: literary reading, is boring and not done by the masses.  If that weren’t the case, The DaVinci Code wouldn’t be an international bestseller and teens would still be clamoring for Hemingway.  But the truth of the matter is, most people, when they read a book, want to be entertained.  Ruminations on a person’s inner struggle in life are not entertaining.  Unless that guy’s a spy who’s lost his memory and he has people shooting at him.  If the dude’s just sitting on the train, who cares?

The important part of the article is that it’s focus is young adult.  Adults are tapping into the “guilty pleasure” zone of YA in place of their adult reads because they provide something much more exciting than they could get in their normal novels.  But why is this a guilty pleasure?  It’s not like the books are any lesser than those on the shelves in the rest of the stores.  It’s not like they’re any easier to write (and if anyone says it is, punch them for me).  I mean, naval gazing and literary masturbation is easy.  Writing to engage a teenager who spends all their time on the computer is not.  See what I mean?

While there are some books in the YA world that are guilty pleasures regardless of where they may be shelved, there are just as intellectually stimulating ones, heart-racing ones and spooktacular ones.  So they can’t stop open bank vault doors.  It just means you can read more in the same amount of time it would take to read a “regular” book.

The thing with YA is that, yes, you need to get over the embarrassment of going to pick one out.  Libraries and book stores are not going to re-shelve the YA section to make it adult-friendly.  It’s YA.  You need to suck it up, endure the funny looks, and head over into that section yourself.  And that can take some balls.  If you’re like me, you don’t give a shit who sees you because the numbers support the fact that more adults are buying YA than the teens themselves.  Plus it helps that I still look like an older teen.  Bonus points there.  But for many, they don’t really want to be caught in the “kids” section.

To that I say get over it.  If you want a book that’ll thoroughly entertain you without all the fat that those contemporary books have, you’ll head over to the YA section and damn the people that look at you funny.  Hey, Twimoms have no shame.  Or tact.  Or class.  Or much of sanity.  And they don’t mind.

But there is nothing wrong with it.  Don’t think of it as a guilty pleasure.  Unless it’s Twilight.  There’s nothing wrong with enjoying plot.  I have to disagree with that article that says our lives are plotless.  Our lives are one giant plot with a bunch of subplots thrown in.  We are certainly with plot.  It’s the literary that wanted to take that away.  And most YA books don’t come full circle and end all nice and neatly.  Except Twilight.  Just like life, one issue ends but there are still a bunch of others that are in existence.

Plot is awesome.  Plot is fun.  It allows me to escape from the real world and enjoy myself.  Yes, how embarrassed I must be for keeping my imagination alive.