Being A Y.A. Returner: Being Y.A. Returned

A while back I talked a bit about Being An Adult In Y.A./Being A Y.A. Returner so today I want to talk further into some observations about my y.a. reading.

Here are a couple of things that I have noticed about my young adult reading.

• Own Voices/diverse books are the majority

A. Young adult is more diverse (or at least there is a community to push up the diversity happening)

B. Young adult that talks about so many different things that past y.a. did not

This could be a post in itself but I just enjoy so much about reading diverse books.

• #1 Genre Read = Realistic Contemporary

Diverse books are mostly in the realistic contemporary genre (what I would give for a good fluffy contemporary). It will be interesting in 2018 with more genre expansion and particularly sff for diverse books how that will affect my reading.

• Unknowns are my favorites

Most of the books I liked/loved I did not plan to read. On the opposite end some of the books I got really excited about I did not like or finish.

• Mainstream ≠ me

A. Diverse books do not necessarily become mainstream (which actually sucks now that I am thinking on it).

B. It is a weird thing where I am into y.a. but not extremely into it. In the past I have described it as being a guest, coming into y.a. to read certain books then leaving out.

• Nothing later than 2010’s or Future/Present YA is my realm

Anything not between 2015-17 seems to not be for me. Sometimes this can be awesome because everything I am reading is pretty new. On the other hand it can be annoying waiting on the newest book to come out.

Overall, I am just excited about being back. I did not expect after everything that I would be back but I am enjoying it.

Since it has been troublesome deciding what post to do next in this series I need your help.

Analyzing Book Covers

Quick catch-up: after a mostly great months reading novels I’m in a not slump but everything that I’m reading is okay.  They are in that ugh middle ground of being neither bad or amazing. Bummer.

So a couple of days ago I randomly analyzed a book cover which was really fun so now I want to do more. All of these are from my goodreads to read shelf so I know at least a little bit about them making this not a just based on cover alone thing.

Monday’s Not Coming

First thoughts: The cover is atmospheric the red color makes me think of an alarm blaring. Look at her facial expression and body language. She doesn’t have her hands around her knees but it still looks hectic with the color.

Second Viewing: A couple of things I did not notice or know how to pinpoint- I did not notice that the red is not just a background that the character is sitting on top of it is lighting her skin, shoes, and clothes (I know there is a word to describe what the red is doing to her but I can’t think of this exact word/wording).The red lighting makes the white  words stand out even more. I did not notice that the words are basically white chalk.

Further into her facial expression which I couldn’t pinpoint. Looking at it now it seems like she is distracted, her mind is somewhere else. This probably ties into her being distracted thinking about her missing friend.

Princeless Short Stories Vol. 1

Black girl riding a light pink/purple dragon in the air. She looks like she is ready to go into battle seeing as she has her knife out in the air. She and the dragon are not going angry or sadly into battle but happy. The warrior princess is very in line with the Princeless series.

Babysitter IV

Tagline: Her life is still on the line…

She is obviously in the kitchen on the phone. This is the fourth Babysitter but she has the window opened…drapes opened…(Or the blinds are those type of drapes that cannot be closed).  Also, she has her back turned to the window with all the aforementioned things… Definitely can tell it is the 80s-90s because she is on a cordless phone (side comment: some people say the cellphone killed a lot of horror trappings). It is midday about to turn to the darkness of nighttime so she is doing all of this when it is about to be dark out.
Her face is scared and she is holding the cord on the phone tightly. It makes me think of Scream since I sampled (but did not finish) the script and saw the movie trailer. I feel like a scary movie character wore the exact outfit the main character wears on the cover but I have not seen enough scary movies to really tell.

Tooth And Talon

Don’t remember what this is about so this is going to be interesting?

The main character has a high tech suit in a forest. What does that mean? Is the forest she is going into dangerous? There are red leaves that look like feathers so is the “Talon” referring to a bird she is trying to get to? Look at how huge the leaves are they are almost taller or are taller than her. What is the blue-ish bulbs on the leaves?

The woman pictured has a look of searching that blank what is going on look.

The Legend of Shadow High

Tagline: Ever After High meets Monster High!

Mirror: The broken window in the middle I’m assuming signifies the portal between the worlds. In the mirror is the forest which is usually something you see in Ever After High than Monster High.

Sides: From monster high there is Frankie Stein and Draculaura, from ever after high Raven Queen and Apple White (these are  usually the spokesman from both worlds which ugh since I don’t like Draculaura and Frankie Stein but that is another conversation)

Anyway, the emblems around the mirror incorporates monster high skull (bottom) and ever after high girl with hood (top). On the top above the ever after high emblem is the two skull crests leaning on each other. All of the emblems and lining around mirror are in gold and black.

Background: There is a grey symbol that starts off big then gets smaller. The symbol is distinguishable at the top until it all bunches all in together at the bottom.

The overall style is something that Ever After High first series by Shannon Hale does which makes sense seeing how the story is set in Ever After High and written by Hale.

It would be interesting next time analyzing covers of books I know absolutely nothing about or have already read.