Upgrade Your Books, Please Because your bookshelf stuck in teen fiction needs a glow-up
“TELL me what your favorite book is, and I’ll tell you who you are.” It’s a popular quote among the literati. But allow me to offer a minor revision: “Tell me what your favorite book still is, and I’ll tell you you’ve stopped evolving.”
Before you throw a bookmark at me, hear me out.
We all started somewhere. I grew up on Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys — gateway books into mysteries, adventure, and the childhood thrill of finishing a chapter before bedtime. Then came Sweet Dreams and Mills & Boon, which, in hindsight, taught me little about real relationships but a lot about shirtless men on covers.
That’s when my father noticed my reading stack and said, “Her taste improved.” I had graduated to detective novels — the kind passed down by my Papa and Tito Emmy. The kind where someone dies before Chapter Four, and no one ends up swooning over the man who mocked them on page three.
As I grew older, so did my books. I dabbled in magical realism, swam through poetry, trudged through the classics, and sank into the kind of literature that demands rereading — and reflection. These days, my shelf holds memoirs, essays, political biographies, and literary fiction — the sort that doesn’t always sell millions but lingers in the mind long after the final page.
And let’s not even get started on book clubs. My Tito Emmy used to host what he called a “book review” at our home in Nazareth — not the kind with wine pairings and barely-read bestsellers, but actual conversations about books people had finished.
I remember each of his friends bringing something they had read, then sharing the plots and their thoughts with gusto. It was a wonderfully odd mix: an insurance marketing executive, an English lit professor, a real estate lessor, and a businessperson. Different worlds, one shared obsession — books. No one tried to sound smarter than they were. No one faked having read the book. They simply came to learn from one another — and show off a little, sure — but mostly, to keep their minds growing. I hope.
And yet, there are people my age still clutching their worn-out Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steel paperbacks like sacred texts. Don’t get me wrong — those books had their time and place. But if you’re still reading them exclusively in adulthood, that’s not a reading preference — it’s literary arrested development.
Reading should be like wine, cheese, or conversation — it matures with age. You don’t go to a reunion acting like its prom night. So why should your bookshelf look like it’s stuck in 1986?
Now, I’m no literary snob. I still read e-books while waiting at clinics or in airports. That’s where I allow myself the brain candy — the fast-paced, low-investment stories that don’t require underlining or a second read for clarity. But at home, nothing beats a good, hard copy. I love the smell of paper. I love flipping actual pages. I love underlining like a madwoman. E-books are for passing the time. Real books are for passing wisdom.
So yes, judge me by my bookshelf — and I’ll judge you back. If you’re still stuck on young adult vampire romance at 45, we might have to talk. If your last five reads were all about billionaires falling for their secretaries, consider branching out — unless you’re secretly doing research for a lawsuit.
We grow older. We (hopefully) get wiser. Shouldn’t our reading habits follow suit?
Go ahead — revisit your childhood favorites, but don’t stop there. Read up, think deeper, and — for the love of literature — upgrade your taste the way you upgrade your wardrobe. You can’t keep dressing your brain in teen fiction forever.
Still brewing thoughts — no sugarcoating, just stories steeped in truth.
