Read on...

I love to read.

I absolutely love it.

What do I love to read?  Almost anything and everything.  In fact, reading online garbage is probably the number one cause of me posting my blog entries so late.  I must read Hollywood Life, Perez Hilton, and Entertainment Weekly before I do anything else.

But what I really love to read, more than anything, is YA fiction.  Specifically, dystopian YA fiction.

Yes, you read correctly: dystopian young adult fiction.  You know, all those books that tend to come in series form - The Hunger Games, Divergent, Uglies, The Host.  All those kinds of books.  I love them.  In fact, I more than love them, I devour them.  Seriously.  When I've found a book that I really like, or even one that I just kind of like, but I find strangely compelling, I can finish it in about three or four days.  Some of them are one day affairs, but those are shorter.

Why books set in messed up societies, and why books written for teens?  I've thought about that a lot, and I'm still not entirely sure.

I have found that YA books are much more simply written - more straightforward prose and simpler sentence structure, so it's easier to breeze through them without needing to put much thought or effort into it.  They also tend to have wider margins and larger font size.  I suspect it's so that reluctant readers will feel a greater sense of accomplishment for completing a 450-page book that's actually about 325 pages long were it formatted more conservatively.  Whatever.  I'm not in it for the page count.

I've always liked stories set in strange, messed up societies.  I don't know if it's because I've always felt like a misfit, or because the strict regimentation of these post-modern societies fascinates me.  Or horrifies me.  Or is strangely comforting.  I just know that when I start one of these novels, I can't read fast enough, and they are never long enough.  And their sequels are never written quickly enough.  Come on, authors, write faster!!!  I need to know what happens next!