I feel that adults feel more need to be objective when justifying their feelings regarding a book, to themselves and others. This instills a critical attitude towards books, which prevents an adult from really passionately liking a book in a multitude of ways: 'it's too emo and not realistic enough', 'it's not politically correct, I shouldn't like it', 'it's too geeky for me to exhibit passionate feelings about it'. For a kid/young adult, a book can be good for more personal/frank/random reasons 'oooh, I really fell in love with Julian's sapphire eyes and pale in L.J. Smith's The Forbidden Game books', or 'they turn into ferocious animals in The Animorphs!! and icky bugs too!", or "Draco Malfoy is such a snarky brat, much love!" As an adult, I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I used to like vampire books... it's cool for a kid to like adult books, but it's kinda uncool for an adult to admit they like young adult books like Point Horror and vampire books, you know? Immaturity is so under-rated :p
I also feel that some adults read books only because they want to appear cultured and up-to-date with the literary world (the main reason I think the Da Vinci Code is so popular), while kids tend to read more obscure books as a means of defining their identity as unique. Being passionate about something helps them stick out, be more of an individual. Adults, having gone through the teenage phase, seem to want to conform...?
I guess in general it is not that cool for an adult to be 'obsessive' about anything, as it implies an unstable/one-tracked-mind individual? Also, I guess adults have less time to be passionate in terms of ficcing/making webpages about their fave books/etc?
On the other hand, I do find a lot of adult books very bland. Roald Dahl mentioned that it was harder to write books for kids because every sentence had to be exciting cos kids have shorter attention span. Hm...
I also feel that some adults read books only because they want to appear cultured and up-to-date with the literary world (the main reason I think the Da Vinci Code is so popular), while kids tend to read more obscure books as a means of defining their identity as unique. Being passionate about something helps them stick out, be more of an individual. Adults, having gone through the teenage phase, seem to want to conform...?
I guess in general it is not that cool for an adult to be 'obsessive' about anything, as it implies an unstable/one-tracked-mind individual? Also, I guess adults have less time to be passionate in terms of ficcing/making webpages about their fave books/etc?
On the other hand, I do find a lot of adult books very bland. Roald Dahl mentioned that it was harder to write books for kids because every sentence had to be exciting cos kids have shorter attention span. Hm...
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