All YA Love: The Accidental YA Reader, Pt.2 – The People Have Spoken…

Filed in All YA Love , The Obsessed Lover Posted on November 10, 2010 @ 7:00 am 5 comments
Courtesy of: Chester

…And the results are in! 

Finally in, I should say because WOW that was a lot of votes to count!!! As you can see from the picture at left, the counting volunteers were so exhausted they kept falling asleep right on top of their laptops! A round of applause goes out to our wonderful Book Lovers Inc readers for ‘Rocking the Vote!’ The response to my seemingly innocent little poll was mind-blowing. Rest assured your voices have been heard. The votes were counted and re-counted, I live in Florida and as anyone in our US readership will tell you that’s how we do it down here. =) *ahem*  Not only have your votes been tallied but after reading everyone’s comments debating whether or not the Study Trilogy is really a YA series or not, I’ve done some further research on the topic.

Before we revisit the Study Trilogy, let’s find out which books made the top three…

#3- Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, tied for third place with… 
  
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick with a very respectable showing at 17 votes each.

#2- Coming in just 15 votes shy of the winning number, to take second place is…

 City of Bones by Cassandra Clare with at grand total of 30 votes!!!

 At this point I am pretty sure most of you already know the name of the winning book, so why don’t you all say it with me? 

#1- And the winner for the first YA Book The Obsessed Book Lover will read with full knowledge and consent is…. 

(Can we get a drum-roll, please?)

 ~~~~~~~**DRUM-ROLL**~~~~~~~

 THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins with 45 votes!!!!!!
(And The Crowd Goes Wild!!!) 

There you have it, in LARGE print – I will be reading THE HUNGER GAMES this month. As stated above, I willingly, and with full knowledge of the genre it belongs to, agree to read the book the majority has chosen for me. I hope for all of your sake that I like this book, because I will be returning with a review and a post discussing my feelings about this book you have so highly recommended. All I can say is be careful what you wish for. (or vote for as the case may be) 
Just a couple more things before I move onto what I discovered about the Study Trilogy. First off, I want to reassure everyone who either voted for City of Bones or couldn’t decide between it and THE HUNGER GAMES, that I will be reading City of Bones for next month’s Accidental YA Reader selection. After that one I haven’t yet decided how to proceed. As soon as I do, you will be the first to know! The second thing is that I want to acknowledge everyone who rightfully pointed out that Beautiful Creatures must be read before Beautiful Darkness. It should have said Beautiful Creatures, NOT Beautiful Darkness on the list of options.I thought I had corrected it prior to the post going live but, alas it did not take for some reason. Due to this, the votes for both of these books were tallied and combined. Had Beautiful Darkness won, I would have read Beautiful Creatures first. Thank you all for keeping me honest and making sure I don’t skip a book in a series. That is very important information!  =)
NOW, onto the question of GENRE…

I had no idea I would create such a stir by calling the Study Trilogy a YA series. Many of you stated point blank that it is NOT a YA series. Then others said they were surprised to find out from my post that the books were considered YA. There were also those who agreed with me, by saying they found out after they had read all three books. In the first camp, those who deny it is YA mostly said they were sure because of where the books are stocked in their book stores. Like I said above, all of the conflicting comments made me curious and so I went genre hunting. And this is what I found…

Here’s the deal:
The Study Trilogy has been release as both YA and Adult Fantasy! Each book in the trilogy was release under the banner of each genre. First they were released as Adult Fantasy, then a year later re-released as YA – WITH a different cover!! There are actually three different covers for each book in the US alone. The third cover is just a re-release cover and the most commonly found in store now – regardless of the shelf it calls home. This third cover style (seen below) was put out just before the YA, Storm Glass was released, so they could add “New York Times Bestseller” to the covers. So there you have it…we were all right. I suppose it comes down to which versions each bookseller decides to stock, as to what genre people will think it is. 

NYT Bestseller Cover
Makes you stop and think though doesn’t it? How important is genre, really? Look how easily we have been put over by the publisher, with just a few “costume changes.” To be honest, it bothers me. It makes me feel like the publishers or marketing department doesn’t think to much of us; because they are essentially saying – ‘content doesn’t matter as much as shiny packaging.’ In this case we proved them wrong, but how often are they right?

How do you feel about it? Is genre important? 
What does sub-genre mean to you?

Until next month…

Open Roads & Great Reads! 

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5 Comments

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  • RKCharron November 10, 2010 at 7:06 am

    I'm sure you will love Hunger Games.
    Genre, sub-genre, sub-sub-genre is not important to me at all. Just the story. The only two genres I really care about are Fiction and Non-Fiction. And I prefer Fiction.
    🙂
    All the best,
    RKCharron

  • Blodeuedd November 10, 2010 at 10:48 am

    Wohoo Hunger Games!!

    Well The study books are so YA, ok book 1 I loved but it was still YA. Book 2 and 3 was almost MG. How I can go on and on how they disappointed me

  • Rosey November 10, 2010 at 2:40 pm

    I have read the Glass series and IMO it could go either way. The main character is 19-20 but that doesn't mean it should be YA. There are adult fiction novels with the main character as a young boy or girl. To me, it seems all about font size. The Study series, at my local Borders, is in the adult fantasy and in YA, but the Glass series is just in the adult fantasy section. Another good example of this is Michelle Sagara's Cast series. That is another that could go either way.

    Have fun reading The Hunger Games!

  • draconismoi November 10, 2010 at 3:06 pm

    Genre is important to me in that there are certain genres I prefer reading. SF/F/H being my favorite.

    I'll read books that come with exceptional recommendations outside my preferred genre, but generally I stick the speculative fiction arena. So much more to love. 🙂

    Which means I get extremely irate when books that are plainly speculative get shelved as literature (Margaret Atwood is the worst perpetrator of this offense). It's as though the author/publisher is telling me they will use all the genre conventions I love, but consider themselves superior to me and my fandom. Scowl.

    Subgenres? Meh. They're a bigger deal in YA, since that genre basically just means coming-of-age stories. But in the adult categories, subgenres really just exist for recommendation purposes. And even then authors eventually blur lines between the subgenres, and spark off a whole new section. Once-upon-a-time paranormal romance didn't exist – and now it's practically devoured the entire fiction section.

  • draconismoi November 10, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    Genre is important to me in that there are certain genres I prefer reading. SF/F/H being my favorite.

    I'll read books that come with exceptional recommendations outside my preferred genre, but generally I stick the speculative fiction arena. So much more to love. 🙂

    Which means I get extremely irate when books that are plainly speculative get shelved as literature (Margaret Atwood is the worst perpetrator of this offense). It's as though the author/publisher is telling me they will use all the genre conventions I love, but consider themselves superior to me and my fandom. Scowl.

    Subgenres? Meh. They're a bigger deal in YA, since that genre basically just means coming-of-age stories. But in the adult categories, subgenres really just exist for recommendation purposes. And even then authors eventually blur lines between the subgenres, and spark off a whole new section. Once-upon-a-time paranormal romance didn't exist – and now it's practically devoured the entire fiction section.

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