#58 Young Adult Porn

Emperial on April 5, 2007

I actually like reading YA novels because as a kid, I read at an adult level, so I read lots of adult-length novels and sort of skipped all the YA stuff. It wasn't until a few years ago that I actually bothered to take a look. There's some good stuff in there. And it's so easy to read, too. I can get through an entire YA series just sitting in the bookstore, so I don't actually have to buy any of the books! That means I can go spend my money on really long books, like China Mieville stuff.

I don't feel guilty about it because the market for YA novels is huge. Parents are always trying to find age appropriate reading materials. Meanwhile, there's never enough China Mieville! I go into bookstores and some of them… DON'T HAVE HIS BOOKS. It makes me want to smack the booksellers! Young adult novels published fifty years ago? Yeah, we have those! China Mieville's new book? No! Not here! We didn't order any! Or if they have the new one, they don't have any of the older ones!

If I ruled the world, I would make a law that all bookstores had to carry at least two copies of all of Mieville's books. And as many Asimov books as they can reasonably fit. And that Asimov be reanimated from the dead so he and Mieville could collaborate on something. (I'm not sure this collaboration would ever work, but I'd be interested to see what results.)