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Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Best Y.A. Series (Poll Results)

What is the best Young Adult series?  

The readers of Writing About Writing have spoken and, it was definitely a strange one. Usually the classics have a good showing until the final round and end up down at the second half of the poll, but this time they were the running champions.

I've also never ever ever seen Harry Potter do so badly in any poll its been on. Ever. Usually if it gets nominated, it's going to win (or at least come in second).

The Hunger Games got crushed. CRUSHED!! It's unusual for the books with popular, contemporary movies not to do as well as others. But Hunger Games is a smear along the road of this poll. (I blame the horror of prose that was Mockingjay, personally.) I guess people really listened when I said to base votes on the books and not the awesome that is Donald Sutherland.

We also got 510 votes, which I believe is a new record (not including the Terry Pratchett fan invasion earlier this year). So thank you to everyone who took the time to participate.


Tomorrow I'll open the nominations for December's poll, which will be Young Adult Authors, so think about all the writers who have had multiple Y.A. series or stand alone books.

6 comments:

  1. I think when you're talking YA it's just a surer bet that a lot of readers have read then AND read them when they were actual YAs themselves and as such are filtering then through the rosy nostalgia lens.

    But that's just an offhand guess as to an explanation.

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  3. I think people judging YA novels from the standpoint of being a YA or having been a YA is an extremely valid one. I don't know why remembering myself as a YA reading these series for the first time should be dismissed as a filter through rosy nostalgia. As it happens, I looked at the series both through the memory of what they did for me growing up and again as an adult re-reading them. Judging by conversations at lit conventions, a great many adults revisit these old treasures even as adults. That they speak to us meaningfully both as kids and as adults provides additional validity to their vaunted status in western literature.

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    1. I am confused as to why "rosy nostalgia lens" counts as a dismissal. I was EXPLAINING, not dismissing :P Geez.

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    2. The word choices of your explanation evoked a sense of dismissal in me. For example, the phrase, rosy nostalgia lens, sounds like a rework of the phrase, rose-colored glasses. I can understand that you did not intend to dismiss, and I ask that you understand why I felt that your phrasing dismissed.

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    3. I don't understand - rose-colored glasses are a GOOD thing - they represent happiness and optimism. Nostalgia, also a good thing. The description was based on how I myself answered the poll and I felt positively about doing so - I voted for two sets of classics I loved as a kid and have not reread and don't plan to, but I look back on them with great happiness. Like I said, it was just my personal guess as to why the poll went the way it did. Obviously you had a different reason for answering how you did, which is totally legitimate.

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