And then there's this guy

[profbutters]

Adults Should Read Adult Books.  Discuss amongst yourselves!  I shouldn't be typing at all, since I just got a steroid shot to the wrist. Thank GOD I am not phobic about needles, but I still don't like it and it feels ikky.

Here's how the article starts:

"The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his

Comments

[regacylady]

The YA label is really unhelpful, I find. It's a really vague concept, and it gets to include stupid shit suitable for 12-year-olds right up through intense stuff like The Hunger Games, and then EVERYTHING in between. Lark is totally right about WHY things end up there, too. It's almost arbitrary, in my opinion.

Also, I fucking hate a lot of "grown up" literature. If there is a reason I will not go on to teach literature it will be because I am either massively afraid of having to work with and/or teach pretentious douchecanoes like THIS GUY, or having to teach REALLY DAMN BORING books.

My brain isn't making a great deal of sense right now so I should probably STFU, but basically: I agree, I disagree, and I need a chai latte ASAP.

[docnerd]

The bookstore I worked for had a subdivision in the YA section, for Independent Readers. That's where Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and Wimpy Kid ended up, while Twilight and The Outsiders and Pretty Little Liars and Hunger Games ended up in YA. It broke it down sort of into middle school and high school, which worked out pretty well. The older kids had their more mature reads in a few sections down, and the parents of the younger kids could pick stuff out that didn't have the sex and the violence.

[porkwithbones]

"There’s a reason my teachers didn’t assign me to go home and play three hours of Donkey Kong."

Snerk. My son has effectively had just that assignment, to aid in fine motor skills, which he was sorely lacking. (It also aided his logical problem-solving skills and helped him practice persistence, but who's counting?)

"Let’s have the decency to let tween girls have their own little world of vampires and child wizards and games you play when hungry."

Games you play when hungry? What shenanigans is this? This is the point at which I determined there was no chance of this being an earnest opinion article. So I checked out his site, linked from the article: "Joel Stein is desperate for attention." That's the first sentence in his self-written biography. He also repeatedly refers to his writing as humor writing.

I think this article would have better been published under a "Humor" heading, instead of "Opinion." I give it approximately a 0% chance of being the author's actual opinion.

[docnerd]

"Let’s have the decency to let tween girls have their own little world of vampires and child wizards and games you play when hungry."

The part of that sentence I have the most problems with is the "tween girls" bit. The thing that's really great about Harry Potter and the Hunger Games is that BOYS read those books--doubly impressive for Hunger Games, since the POV character is a girl! Those books are breaking all kinds of stereotypes about who reads what.