book lists
21 Sep 2013

three kinds of realism

I spent a little time knee-deep in my Goodreads account this week, taking a gander at what I’ve read so far at 2013. I know I decided to read more YA, but really, I’ve read a TON of YA this year. Way more YA than any other genres. Pat on the back. Not everything I’ve read has been great – which is probably why I still feel like I need to read more YA – but not too shabby.

So in the interest of better selecting titles to fill the last few months of the year, I took a look at what stuck out to me from what I’ve already read. I made a list of The Bulk of My Reading: the YA contemporary realism titles that didn’t make me roll my eyes.

Then, I started to sort.

This highly scientific organization effort revealed that my most recent tastes in realism fall in one of the following three categories:

Realism in which the protagonist learns life lessons while pursuing romance.

This category should surprise nobody. I was surprised, however, that so many of the books I didn’t think were life-lessony-romances were definitely life-lessony-romances. The romances may not have the structure of a romance (see this rambly review of the lastest Dessen for more on that) and they may not all end well, but for the most part, these books are largely about love and growing up.

Humorous, voice-heavy realism in which the progatonist learns life lessons while pursuing romance

See above, except these books are just much lighter in tone; even the stories that deal with heavier issues (depression, sexuality, violence) do so with more humor than the books in category one. Also, the narrators here are much voicier than those above.

Realism not otherwise specified

The miscellaneous ends. The works of realism that were doing something entirely different, something that just didn’t fit in the other two categories. Should I be reading more of these? I think yes. This list includes my all time fave Frankie and has the best book covers.

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