A writing blog I follow posted about the generational shifts in what is considered YA. YA wasn’t even a genre when I was a kid, to my knowledge.
My response: As pop culture phenoms, I read Twilight and Harry Potter to see all the fuss, and I couldn’t put either down, though I stopped at the first one of each. I’ll probably do the Hunger Games too for the same reason.
A friend passed on the Book Thief to me as I was writing part of my own book about WWII Germany. I didn’t know it was classified YA while I was reading it but it was brilliant.
Old school: I remember peers reading Sweet Valley High but I didn’t. Is Judy Blume just Y and not YA? Go Ask Alice and The Outsiders were up there for me. Oh, and when I was 17 and a lifeguard at a pool with no swimmers my summer before college, I read many Danielle Steel “novels.”
I’m reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles now. Is that YAish?