Young Adult Literature

5 Signs You Are Reading Too Much YA

Brenna Clarke Gray

Staff Writer

Part muppet and part college faculty member, Brenna Clarke Gray holds a PhD in Canadian Literature while simultaneously holding two cats named Chaucer and Swift. It's a juggling act. Raised in small-town Ontario, Brenna has since been transported by school to the Atlantic provinces and by work to the Vancouver area, where she now lives with her stylish cyclist/webgeek husband and the aforementioned cats. When not posing by day as a forserious academic, she can be found painting her nails and watching Degrassi (through the critical lens of awesomeness). She posts about graphic narratives at Graphixia, and occasionally she remembers to update her own blog, Not That Kind of Doctor. Blog: Not That Kind of Doctor Twitter: @brennacgray

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To celebrate Book Riot’s second birthday on Monday, we’re running some of our favorite posts from our first two years. This post originally ran October 15, 2011.

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I read a lot of young adult literature, as previous posts at Book Riot might suggest. But this semester, I’m also teaching Children’s Literature in addition to reading YA for pleasure. It’s starting to feel like I have a YA novel in hand every waking moment, and I think it’s starting to skew my perceptions of reality. If you’re like me, you may hear echoes of yourself in this list.

Here are my top five signs you’re reading too much young adult literature.

      1. You keep a spreadsheet to try to determine whether you exist in a utopia or a dystopia. (Corporate ownership of media? Dystopia. New Muppet movie on the horizon? Utopia.) You secretly hope it turns out to be a dystopia so you can demonstrate your awesomeness in some world-liberating way.
      2. You wonder how your relationship triangle is going to shake out. Will it be the moody, wild rebel who taught you about passion, or the sweet, gentle artist who taught you about love? (If you’re still waiting for the candidates to show themselves, you may be spending entirely too much time eyeing up your colleagues.)
      3. You take to expressing yourself metaphorically through objects. You position a dying plant, a talisman, and a notebook of doodles on the corner of your desk. When people ask how you are doing, you gesture knowingly at the objects and keep silent. They’ll figure it out.
      4. You phone your parents hoping for either any angry blow-out of epic proportions or a disinterested silence that will reaffirm your worldly malaise. Disappointingly, they just want to tell you they love you and chat about your day.
      5. Between Hunger and Ender, you’ve become quite suspicious of the concept of games. When a colleague suggests a round of charades before the end of a dinner party, you arm yourself with a steak knife and take refuge behind the largest armchair. You’re developing a reputation at baby showers.

I know clever Rioters will be able to add to this list brilliantly. Any other signs of YA-overload?

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