There are lots of sites online that offer up regular reviews exclusively limited to the genre of YA.Well... sort of.
Here's something that happened this week:
ONLINE REVIEWER:(to readers) Hey! You can help me out by picking the next book from my "To Be Read" shelf and I will review it!!!!!
[ASIDE: Have I ever told you how much I loathe the exclamation point, especially when used in multiples?]
ME: (posting) Oooh! Oooh! Pick the one written by a woman, about that girl!!!!
[Yeah, I pretty much hate myself]
ONLINE REVIEWER: Uh... But... all the books on my "To Be Read" shelf are written by women. And... uh... they're all about girls, too. But... hey!!! If you pick one, I'll read it and review it!!!
Okay. I know my friend the English professor has already railed about my misogyny in Ghost Medicine, and he just now sent me an aha!-I-caught-you-again-you-misogynistic-bastard email about in the path of falling objects, but let me make this clear:
You're wrong.
That assumption would validate a belief that all men are like Mitch, from in the path of falling objects, or are alcoholics, like Carl from Ghost Medicine.
The bottom line is, and I'll post it again for the thousandth-and-first time: It is not true that boys don't read and won't spend their money on books, it's just that they are product-placed out of the market. When they go into bookstores, or read online sites about YA fiction, they get the general impression that it's about 90% geared toward girl issues.
So, what do you expect them to do?
