readings matters washes and dries my mind

I spent the day at the Reading Matters conference today. It was a weird day—I've been out of action for a couple of weeks and being elbow to elbow with other people all day was like being shoved into a washing machine. But, as always, I came away thinking hard and admiring harder.

1. YA. YA, YA, YA. How I love thee and loathe thee. (The construction of 'YA', not the books.)  I've just finished reading Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go. Spent all day banging on about it. I haven't been this scared or exhilarated, lost in a book since...I'm not sure actually, maybe never. This book is a big freaky sci-fi poem. The writing is exquisite—the voice is exquisite. Todd Hewitt is scared and his voice was so close around me I was terrified alongside him. The pace is breakneck. I basically ate the book. So today at Reading Matters, listening to all the amazingness going on onstage, I was depressed by the thought that if Patrick Ness was up there his audience would be limited to 300 enlightened readers who know that the writing going on in the 'YA' field kicks it. He, and many other 'YA' writers, should be speaking to stadiums of thousands. I know I'm being overly simplistic.

Frank Cottrell Boyce reviewed the book for the Guardian. (Read the full review here; I've pulled out a couple of paras that go to the heart of what I'm talking about.)

If I have one quibble, it is that I think it should be sitting proudly on the shelf next to these ['adult'] books, rather than being hidden away in the "young adult" ghetto. There's been a lot of fury among authors recently about the proposal to "age-band" children's books, but in a way they're too late. The real disaster has already happened. It's called "young adult" fiction. It used to be the case that you moved on from children's fiction to adult fiction, from The Owl Service, maybe, to Catcher in the Rye. There were, of course, some adult authors who were more fashionable with teenage readers than others - Salinger, Vonnegut, Maya Angelou. But these were chosen by teenagers themselves from the vast world of books. Some time ago, someone saw that trend and turned it into a demographic. Fortunes were made but something crucial was lost. We have already ghettoised teenagers' tastes in music, in clothes and - God forgive us - in food. Can't we at least let them share our reading? Is there anything more depressing than the sight of a "young adult" bookshelf in the corner of the shop. It's the literary equivalent of the "kids' menu" - something that says "please don't bother the grown-ups". If To Kill a Mockingbird were published today, that's where it would be placed, among the chicken nuggets.

This is not just a question of taste. It seems to me that the real purpose of stories and reading is to take you out of yourself and put you somewhere else. Anything that is made to be sold to a particular demographic, however, will always end up reflecting the superficial concerns of that demographic. I've lived through an era in which demographic-fixation murdered popular cinema and replaced a vibrant art form with a kind of digital holding-pen for teenage boys. I think we're in danger of doing the same to fiction. The best young adult fiction - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, A Swift Pure Cry, Noughts and Crosses and so on - strolls out of its category. I've no doubt at all that The Knife of Never Letting Go will do the same. Don't let the demographic exclude you.

2. Markus Zusak, reading from his new work, had this line describing character: 'They want the night to see them coming.' Beautiful.

3. Lili Wilkinson, who won the Ibby Ena Noel Award in 2010 for Scatterheart, received the award today. Congrats, Lili. I still think about Scatterheart often. Lili was also responsible for my favourite fashion of the day, worn by her mum, Carole Wilkinson—a necklace of felted circles that Lili sewed for her mum's birthday.

4. Cassandra Clare is hilarious. I can't wait to read her books, despite the spoiler, then the reverse spoiler! Are they or are they not brother and sister???

5. In a tangential way, looping back to the first point, I spent a lot of today wondering why I like reading about 16-year-olds. Is it because (as put out there by Kirsty Eager on the 'monsters' panel) from that point on our bodies are slowly dying? Is this a death thing?