Changes... Let's Embrace Them!

Okay, peeps, today I wanna talk about two things that have been bugging me since almost the beginning of the year. Those are my reading tastes and my rating patterns. I wanna start with the latter first because it is what made me realize about the former.

Last year I did a post about how I rated my books, and that way of rating is still the one I use (you can go to my Rating System and have a look if you like ^^). However, I’ve noticed an increase on my 3-star rating these past couple of months. There is nothing bad about a 3 star book. That means I like the book, it was enjoyable. It is something I could recommend. What is interesting though is that it appears 3 stars are now my most frequent rating instead of 4 or 5 stars, which were my most common ratings before.

Looking at my last year's statistics you can see 4 and 5 stars are my most used ratings and now, I'm all for the 3-star rating – yes, I’m aware that we aren’t done with 2015 yet but you can tell the difference is quite big. I also feel like don’t giving 5 stars to all the books I highly enjoy, you know? From now on, I want to save that rating to stories that blow my mind. In a way, giving 4 stars will be like what 5 stars used to be. This isn’t necessarily bad, true, but it means either my tastes are changing or I’ve become pickier about the books I read… or both. And here is when the scary part comes into the picture.

This change has affected YA books the most. Last year, the majority of books I read got a nice rating and now, that is not the case. Again, giving books a bad rating doesn’t mean they’re bad, it means my feelings toward them are shifting. I’m reading a YA novel right now and I’m not even halfway through it but I know it won't get a high rating (probably 2.5 stars if there are no surprises). It’s funny if you think about it because it seems like a pattern: I see a lot of faults within the books and the characters annoy me due to immaturity 99% of the time, which is hilarious since I adore reading middle-grade books. But I guess I know I’m going to find immature characters whenever I read middle-grade whereas I expect YA characters to be more mature.

I normally don’t get why (adult) people say: ‘I can’t read YA because I’m an adult’ and I’m like ‘dude, you were a teen once… you should know the feeling, right?’ Sadly, I’m beginning to feel like the YA books I read don’t represent my teen years. To explain it a little bit better: they don’t represent my experiences, mentally speaking I mean. I find their train of thoughts and actions to be immensely irksome and in some ways, I feel bad about it. Why, 6 months ago, I had fewer problems with it and now I just can’t stand most YA characters? My other problem is the detachment with the story itself and therefore, not caring one bit about the characters and what they are going through.

Now, the proper question here would be: Could I be outgrowing YA books? It’s a very reasonable possibility and it terrifies me… half my unread books are YA, you know? I love reading reviews about YA books and I love knowing which new titles are coming out but before, I used to get so excited about a lot of them and now, I just add those that seem more adult-ish.

I'm gravitating towards adult books and classics. Since I was a teen (15/16 years old) I’ve read adult books but mixing them with YA. Now all the books I buy or plan to in the future are adult titles or classics (my latest book hauls are a good example) and every time I have to pick up a book from my shelves I go for my latest purchases because I don’t wanna pick YA. Yes, there are still YA titles that interest me a lot but the way I feel right now is a problem. What shall I do, forget about some of the YA books in my shelves and give them away? Or read them and come what may? Also, this changes my blog because I wanna read and review more adult titles and I don’t know if you are interested in those so long story short, this whole thing is frightening.

I apologise since this post is long and all over the place and I don’t know if I’m making sense. I don’t know how to express myself better. My ideas were nicely structured in my head but writing them down wasn’t easy.

How do you feel about this? Have you noticed any changes on your reading as well? Would you mind if I review more adult-ish things? I won’t stop reviewing YA altogether, you know, but it would be lovely to know if you don’t mind a few adult/classic titles here and there :)