Reads Dune
“It’s just a soap opera”
YA fiction isn’t irredemable. My biggest problem with it is that they’re trying to write in danger, but there are limits to what they can put in. So you often end up with this ‘implied danger’ that has plotholes a mile wide, while they try to make your fear for the character. There was this one book, somewhere in paritals, where the heroine was somehow stuck between two lab machines, and one of them wasn’t grounded correctly, so she kept getting intermittently shocked, and as she tried to escape, she would get shocked again. It felt like an entire chapter, but it was likely only a few paragraphs. amounted to, she’s stuck, she got a little shocked, she got out.
As with literally everything else, there’s good YA and bad YA.
Check out Brandon Sanderson’s “Mistborn” or “Skyward”. I’d say they’re both the “good YA” kind where danger is real (as much as any danger towards the protagonist before the very end of the book, obviously they won’t get killed off in the first chapter) and the story relatively original. The world-building is excellent, though.
I’ll have to check those out. Thanks for the suggestions!
Its a weird take. Appropriate books? Da fuck? That is already covered by the 18+ sticker on them for the porn books?
Might be a religion thing? The Twilight author is mormon iirc so she stays within the lines of what’s okay there. So the dad might have considered non-mormon behavior to be inappropriate, even if the book isn’t 18+?
Different parents have different sensibilities i guess, and different books have different contexts. I’m not very well read in this field at all, but at the beginning of one of the Tiffany Aching series of Discworld books, a subseries wrote specifically for young adults, a 13 year old side character gets beaten by her drunken father into a miscarriage after he found out she had a boyfriend and the main character has to bury the remains and saves the father from hanging himself.
Most of the series are Harry Potter level magic and adventure, but that was pretty shocking and I’d be a bit wary letting my 12 year old read that.
subseries wrote specifically for young adults
but that was pretty shocking and I’d be a bit wary letting my 12 year old read that.
While I do think that letting children read dark books (as long the “darkness” isn’t because the author’s edgy) is not only ok, but necessary for them to be able to handle darker emotions, I want to mention that 12 is teen, or pre-teen, but definitely not a young adult.
Such a noble sacrifice won’t be forgotten
Weird and bad.
I remember one holiday with my mum and dad in a cottage in the hills. They had a DVD player and dvds on the shelf in the little living room We put Gone Girl on because it was relatively recent and I’d heard of it, and about 10 minutes in my dad was like “oh wait, I’ve read this book…it’s shite.”
I insisted we watch the whole thing because I cant stand watching a bit of something I find I dont like, voice my opinion on it, and then get told that if I didn’t watch 'til the end, then how can I know?
Anyway, he was correct.
Your dad? Ben Affleck. Your mom? Neil Patrick Harris.
“I-I’m only reading the Twilight Saga to know if it’s appropriate for my daughter *sweats profusely* I-I don’t have a shrine to Edward in my closet!”
Sounds like this sweaty man has a shrine of every Twilight character, other than Edward, in his closet.
Donald Trump was unironically obsessed with Edward Pattinson and Kristen Stewart’s relationships. Had multiple crashouts on Twitter about it.
https://ew.com/news/2017/02/05/donald-trump-kristen-stewart-tweets/
Lol Robert Pattinson, you mean
Considering he’s been heavily involved in the romantic relationships of many teenagers, it’s just par for the course for him.
Dad was team Jacob all the way until the last book.
All adults I know are Team “Get Fucking Therapy You’re Like 100 Years Older Than Her Or A Dog.”
Stephenie Meyer writing Jacob in the last book:
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
SSS+ Guardianship.
As a kid I read a book about a school with 30 rooms built sideways, so an oopsie tower, where each chapter is about a student or the teacher.
Sammy, the odd student from chapter 14, is a dead rat in many raincoats, and being a dead rat, Sammy is thrown in the trash.
Twilight is weirder than this?
Different kind of weird. Sideways Stories are goofy kids stories.
Twilight is fanfic with ageless vampires that choose to creep on high schoolers, and werewolves that fall in love with newborn infants.
Ah, ok, so it’s gross-weird?
I have a non consensual relationship with twilight lore drops like this
Hey, Sideways Stories From Wayside School is great! And weird, but good weird. Twilight was the first thing I thought of when the COVID toilet paper crisis hit.
It’s amazing, and Sammy’s story has stuck with me for decades for this very reason. I probably read the book a dozen times as a kid.
I loved those books as a kid! Probably my introduction to surrealism
Haruki Murakami would approve
What about a sentient bowl of petunias that is falling to its “death”, again, and is the reincarnation of a rabbit, whale, fly, and cow? Or an android monk believing everything was the same shade of pink, making it too early to move from the spot it was on for fear of falling off a cliff, so it sat on the back of the (manufactured, organic) horse it was riding?
Yes, there can be multiple books that are weird or have weird stories. It doesn’t have the be the weirdest one to still be weird.
Way to sideline things.
It’s a genuine question. I’m only familiar with Twilight as a few clips from the movies with RiffTrax comments over them. And I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer and read most of the Season 8 comic, so the “weird stuff + vampires” bar for me is already set high.
I assumed you were referring to Wayside School, so I made a comment using the words “way” and “side.” I didn’t doubt your intentions at all, but I understand my comment sounded like I did.
I considered preemptively adding something to indicate I wasn’t being critical of you, but thought it might detract from whatever humor might be derived. Hopefully I haven’t ruined your opinion of me.
Ahhhh, ok. Thanks. Sorry for not picking it up. FWIW, “sideline” as a single word, and seeing this prior to having enough coffee to resume normal brain activity, is what threw me. Also, not being smart probably played a role.
It sounds kind of ridiculous but this is actually pretty smart. I’d prefer to know what my kids are diving into and maybe set up guardrails or at least warnings if something they were interested in was funky.
I mean if they’re reading books in the first place you’re probably already in the clear
What would be a “funky” book for you?
Too hard to grasp, like an advanced book for a 11 yo I understand, but I wonder what other people would forbid and why.
These are the types who make websites where Christian parents can warn other Christian parents that a popular kids book has gay people in it, and it’s treated as normal.
I remember reading a book when I was around 10 that was about an apocalypse and only two teenagers survived it. I think they were brother and sister but unsure. At some point they were discussing that they should have children and that they would also need to have children with their children to ensure survival of the human race. It was really weird and my parents wouldn’t have let me read it if they knew about that. They also had it moved from the kids section of the library.
Mein Kampf
I doubt you need to read it to know.
I thought the question was, what would be a funky book and not what do I have to read to know whether its a funky book or not. In that case I certainly don’t know the answer since I would need to read it to know.
A book that I got as part of a birthday present when I was in middle school had a passage where a man’s long-lost sister (who was part monster, but was painstakingly described as very attractive) told him that either he had to impregnate her the old-fashioned way, or she would simply get a syringe, extract sperm from his testicles, and impregnate herself that way to create, if I remember correctly, a monster that would end the world or something. It was labeled as “Young Adult” level.
So, like, probably something like that.
You just gave someone a new fetish.
Urethra tainted spooge? Nay, let thine jism be immaculate!! Bypass your curmudgeonly delivery mechanism, and my receiver, so that the first rapture related to our progeny is one that it brought about!
Good old “don’t judge a book by its cover”
Some books have names that don’t evocate much, a tame cover and end up being smut books. Quick search brings up “Normal people”. Unassuming title and cover, you might guess romance, but quoting an article mentioning it “The sex scenes in this one really do jump off the page”.
You might not want your 10-13 y/o reading about that just yet…Some other might have toxic ideas, graphic depiction of violence, or lots of things you might want a teen to not read just yet.
Also there are way to many violent sex scenes in dark romance books, for kids who are just starting to grasp what sec can be. Nothing wrong with people liking brutal sex, but that’s not beginner level friendly and might set wrong expectations.
I read Tatham Mound when I was 12, and it kind of blew my mind. I wouldn’t say it was appropriate at that age, but I also don’t think it did any harm. The violence was explicit, and there were numerous sex scenes, but they were placed in a cultural context.
Oh yeah piers Anthony introduced a young me to some real kinky ideas long before I otherwise would have had exposure to them. I don’t think any harm was done though.
I was specifically thinking of books with sexual violence, suicide, or promoting toxic behavior, and even then it does go down to the book’s context.
I wish I had will smith’s speech on his target of choice when interviewing in MIB. It would of been the perfect response to “an advanced book for a 11 yo”
Same here. Olympians passed easily, Hunger game barely, and Twilight not at all.
Lets all take a moment and realize this same author wrote about space jelly dragons with silver ribbon sentient parasites.
Honestly that sounds better than teenage angst and sparkly vampires.
Its a love story about the alien parasite being enamored by humanity, joining their side, and falling in love all while inhabiting the body of an unwilling host whose mind refuses to fade like the rest. Not bad, but definitely still a tween romance novel.
No, it’s an existential horror novel about having your body stolen so some alien can get laid. It just has romantic tie-ins with the alien trying to get laid.
The movie should have leaned into that instead of, uh, whatever it was doing.
Wait there’s a movie? Please link me a wiki page lmao
Fair warning: its as bad as the Percy Jackson movie, same vibe
Holy shit, just reading the plot from the wiki page I can tell it was bad. Honestly the way you described it initially made it sound way more interesting, as if there was only the one alien struggling to navigate human society as it falls in love with a human.
Instead it’s full of post-societal Armageddon survivor main-character tropes that could only have been written by the same person that decided vampires sparkle instead of smolder in the sun.
Pretty sure they’re referring to The Host and… yeah, it’s actually not bad.
That sounds much better!
It is better
If I didn’t know which author you were talking about id be sold on that description.
I mean… I liked it. It was strange. But that was the point. Strange and somewhat fresh.
If reading fucked up shit in a book fucks your kid up, there was already going to be something wrong with them.
