Craig Ferguson does authors often -- I'll miss that when he's gone in December.

Most of my favorite novels are young adult or even children's books.

/don't care that I'm setting myself up with that... they're great books.

Please don't give this sappy hetero normative schlock any more attention.

As I've returned to heavy reading mostly due to the ease and low cost of acquiring Kindle books, I have regained my love of fiction.

Oh, there is a lot of things I have to wend my way through -- like novels about young people living in cities, or novels about young people living in cities who are writers, or novels where a historical figure intervenes in modern times, or novels where a character in a famous novel suddenly become the main character, or....well, yes, after sifting through 99% of modern (and a good deal of classic) fiction there are these gems. And there is nothing as immersive as well written fiction.

Lancelot by Walker Percy
Hollywood by Charles Bukowski
Galápagos (Kurt Vonnegut Series Book 6) by Kurt Vonnegut
Under the Volcano: A Novel (Open Road) by Malcolm Lowry

Have my Top Of Mind

I did read

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

And while it was set during his high school years, I'm not sure why it would be a Young Adult novel. The character, like Holden Caulfield, was old beyond his years. That's why real young people shouldn't read some of these things. The only mind that can handle it is one that knows what jaded means.

John Green and his brother are the best people on the internet. But I'm not reading a book about kids with cancer. My depression doesn't interact well with that shit.

Hey-hey, the embedded video from Comedy Central actually worked this time!

Colbert didn't mention that Vlog Brothers isn't the Green brothers' only online presence. Crash Course and Mental Floss are two of the best channels on YouTube. I recommend both often and enthusiastically. (Though the latter auto-plays videos, so I'll have to include that warning in future recommendations.)

@5: Boy, I would hope that most young adults would know what "jaded" means. I was lucky enough to grow up with Calvin & Hobbes expanding my vocabulary at least once a week, but maybe things are different now. Or maybe you're being true to form and giving further support to Slog's favorite new acronym.

@5 Jaded? Isn't that a synonym for teenager?

Maybe not every teenager is as jaded as I was, but me and my jaded friends would hang around being seriously jaded. I remember my guidance counselor giving me a lecture on how there'd be plenty of time for that later, in my 60s. This was before being emo was a thing, or goths, so all we had was pure unadulterated jadedness.

Anyway, the guidance counselor was wrong. I don't really have time to be jaded now, and it served me pretty well at the time.