I happened upon an article in Slate that basically says adults should read books for adults and should be embarrassed about reading young adult (i.e. children's) books. I understand this sentiment, but I enjoy a fair amount of books written for young adults. I am thus somewhat torn when I pick up something like the Hunger Games because I have a nagging feeling like I should not be reading it. I should say I used to feel that way, I have evolved to not give a shit about what I should or should not be reading. I read whatever I think I will enjoy, regardless of who is the target audience. My bigger issue is that books for children have become popular recently so when I go look for books to read or look at lists of books I don't usually find "adult" books. So I went looking for adult books to read and it was hard to just find something that was specfically for adults. This is clear in retrospect because a book is for whoever can read it, digest it, comprehend the meaning. Shakespeare could be for children because they can certainly read it, but it takes a bit of maturity to really comprehend and digest what is going on. After all that, I found a mention of the author Megan Abbott in the aforementioned Slate article which led me to pick up her book Die a Little.

Die a Little reminds me of film noir, which apparently is a genre known as hardboiled fiction. I found this to be a good book, better than a lot of other crap out there, but nowhere near the great category. The characters in this book were developed just enough to be understood but not too much to be boring. The narrative moved along at a reasonable pace weaving enough twists and turns along the way to make it hard to put down. Overall it was a short, page turner that falls into that category of women being abused by men and crimes involving women that I keep falling into reading. I really have reasons to pick these up and they just happen to fall into that category.

I may pick up another book by Megan Abbott later as she apparently has others which are better, but I am going to steer clear of that genre for at least one or two books.