I find the whole "Young Adult" category strange. In film, most people don't automatically look down on movies just because they're not rated R or NC-17. Any book without blatantly adult-only content (which includes the majority of books) could reasonably be read by "Young Adults".

I think the problem is that "Young Adult" encompasses a wide level of maturity, and authors may tailor their works towards vastly different levels of maturity, that the quality can vary quite a bit. Some works are targeted for young readers, but are rather mature in their execution (well explained, well reasoned character motivations and plot, etc), while others bank on the possibly lower expectations of the young and inexperienced reader. I've picked up some horrendous young adult fiction before and read it (I'm looking at you, James Patterson!). That doesn't keep me from reading it, but it does make me wary...

I've found word of mouth and reviews to help out with that. But its not 100% proof alright.

Categories are about marketing. "Young Adult" categorization is part of a decision to market primarily to the YA demographic, not a content-based description that the book can "reasonably by read by" young adults in a way that doesn't apply to most other books in a bookstore.

It certainly makes sense from a marketing point of view, though even there it's possible to market a book to YA without making it a classification. I just don't think the distinction makes sense as a top-level classification.

The two purpose top-level classifications serve is (1) identifying where to look for retail customers, and (2) discussing distinct business market segments.

I think it makes pretty good sense from both of those perspectives.

It probably doesn't from the point of view that classifications should fit some neat content-description role, but that's never been the function that they actually serve except insofar as content descriptions have utility to the other purposes mentioned.

(2) could be solved by marketing the same book differently. I agree that (1) has value, and (2) has some value when classifying customers.

However, this thread started because many adult sci-fi and fantasy readers look down on YA books. That's the purpose for which I'd suggest that the distinction doesn't make much sense.

There's some really good YA genre fiction out there, but I think one of the defining aspects of the genre is it's written about teenage protagonists with a number of very teenage problems, which I find increasingly tedious the further I get into my twenties.

That said, Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles (to pick a somewhat less known example) are pretty excellent sci-fi, if you can get past the annoying teenage romances of the protagonists.

Fair enough. I do very quickly skip stories that seem like a sitcom with fantasy elements thrown in. Then again, there are a lot of non-YA fantasy novels about broken people (teenage or adult) with highly non-fantastic problems; that seems to be a defining element of bad fiction for all ages, that it can't manage to escape the mundane. I have zero interest in reading about the everyday problems and situations of twentysomethings or thirtysomethings either.

Another good example of YA fantasy I've enjoyed that manages to dodge the trope: Diane Duane's Wizards series ("So you want to be a Wizard", "Deep Wizardry", "High Wizardry"), which seems to mostly stay away from typical teenager problems. The premise is not that novel, but in this case I found the execution quite satisfying, particularly in the second and third books. Without providing spoilers, I would note that the second book manages to avert one of the single most common tropes of YA fantasy novels (and of other series that avert it, most do so far later in a series). I'm also a big fan of "sufficiently descriptive language as magic" and "sufficiently analyzed magic", both of which these have quite a lot of.

(Note that I have not read the "updated" editions of these books that attempt to make some of the technology references less dated.)

I tend to see a disdain for YA books in the SFF community. Which is sad, since many in the community still remember the (not-so-distant) past, when all of SFF was looked down upon by those who only read "real" literature. Romance, too, seems to get this attitude.

Personally my disdain for them is that currently they are mostly telling the same basic story with different window dressing.

Worth checking out Cory Doctorow's YA novels... they tend to be more varied than the typical fare - a good example of what you can do with the genre.

Yes, there's a "coming of age", "figuring out what you want to do with your life" common element to them - but then one might argue that many alleged adults in today's world have not actually come of age yet. Maybe we need more of this stuff in our literature.

Yes, if you can stand Doctorow's breast beating over EFF type themes of autonomy, government, security, etc... Which might be just your thing ;)

He's not breast-beating, just making a clear, compelling, well argued and well illustrated case...

Or, you're right, it might well be my thing :-P

Fair enough, lol. The only reason I call it breast beating is because it's such a clear departure from his very early work.

There are bad YA novels, and bad non-YA novels, in all genres, including fantasy. I've seen plenty of cookie-cutter fantasy stories in the standard fantasy section as well.

And on the flip side, there are a lot of excellent fantasy novels squirreled away in the YA section where many people will overlook them.

What's the basic story? (bonus point if you link to tvtropes.)

People have been saying this about the fantasy and sci-fi genres for decades.

Yeah, that attitude is odd. My strategy is to be intentionally clueless as to why anyone would have a problem with 28-year-old-me reading The Hunger Games.

This is getting to be less and less true with the success of series like Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent etc. Many of the books listed on that Goodreads link are parts of larger series themselves.