If my own tastes in reading are any indication, there’s less of a divide between those who read young adult and adult books than some might think. As a former Teen Services Librarian and current Adult Services Librarian, my reading is split about 50/50 between teen and adult books. Like macaroni and cheese, wine and cheese, pretty much anything and cheese, I think adult books are best paired with an accompanying YA book (and cheese). Here are a few suggestions!
At Lauren Groff’s recent event at SPL, she commented that her new book The Vaster Wilds is her telling of Jean Craighead George’s iconic My Side of the Mountain. George’s classic is about a young boy named Sam who, tired of his noisy life in the city, heads to the Catskill Mountains and spends a year living in the wilderness, working to fend for himself and recognizing his deeper needs for interdependence with other humans. In Groff’s latest, a servant girl escapes from an early colonial settlement in what later becomes the state of Virginia, struggling to survive in the depths of harsh winter. The juxtaposition of terror and beauty in both the natural world and that which humans create is highlighted throughout both books, inviting the reader to delve deeper into their own relationships with one another and with nature.
It only feels right that while reading Bryan Washington’s new book, Family Meal, I was reminded of one of my favorite YA books of all time, Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min. Both center gay characters of color redefining what family, connection, and expression mean for them individually and in community. Beating Heart Baby focuses on music and anime as connection points for Santi and Suwa, while Cam, TJ, and Kai bond through food and cooking in Family Meal, but the emphasis on co-creation as an act of love is evident in both. Read these if you want to be shattered by your books!
If you like your fantasy imbued with heists in gritty merchant cities, a ragtag group of unlikely allies, and a simmering queer romance in the background, I’ve got options for you in both YA and adult! Leigh Bardugo’s hugely popular Six of Crows, set in the Grishaverse established in Shadow and Bone, follows six outcasts who take on a dangerous job—to spring a prisoner from a notoriously secure facility so that the dangerous drug he developed doesn’t get into the wrong hands. You’ll fall in love with the thieves, con artists, and rebels, all with different motivations, who come together for a shared goal. After reading this, Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett might appeal to you, too. When talented thief Sancia steals a magical object (a sentient key named Clef) and discovers they have the power to communicate telepathically, it becomes clear that there’s a larger force that could destroy life in Tevanne. Sancia teams up with the most unexpected group, including a police captain, an eccentric scientist, and an incredibly talented scriver who knows how to manipulate the magic system, in order to pull off the heist of her life.
~posted by Jane S.
Shelf Talk 