#or other tone deaf no reading comprehension takes like that
Recently in literature circles there has been a big pushback against people who, in the eyes of some people, are reading the ‘wrong’ kind of books. Mostly, I’ve seen absolutely undue amounts of apathy targeted at readers of romance and/or ya books. They are told they need to read ‘real books’ or read the classics or whatever because the stories they enjoy are not ‘real literature’
I find this holier-than-thou line of thinking incredibly frustrating. Classics are not inherently better than contemporary books just because they’re classics. Plus, most classics are classics because they were *gasp* popular fiction when they were first written. For example, Anna Karenina, Phantom of the Opera, andThe Count of Monte Cristo (among many others) were all originally published as newspaper serials and achieved popularity partially because they were available to poorer readers. When Victor Hugo died he was mourned by literally millions of French people. The argument that people shouldn’t read/enjoy popular fiction/romance/ya/whatever because it’s trashy or what have you is elitist and historically inaccurate. Oftentimes, stories are popular with the masses because they’re good!
That’s all to say nothing of the fact that ya and romance as genres are dominated both by woman writers and woman readers- a clear double-standard. I have never seen anyone tell men to read something other than mysteries or war novels. Plus- ya is one of the easiest genres (if not THE easiest) to find diversity and representation. The bookstore I work at puts little rainbow flag stickies on the LBGT+ books and there’s like four times as many rainbows on the ya shelf than anywhere else.
Finally, I think some people are forgetting that reading, for many people, is foremost a form of entertainment. Sometimes people just want a cheesy romance book to read on the beach- not to struggle with a dense centuries old text. You can argue till you’re blue in the face over whether or not that’s a good thing, but it’s just the truth.
