i shouldn’t like teenagers to feel that there are age prescriptions on books (besides every avid reader has had at least one teenage moment of stumbling on and devouring something excellent which they however intuit that an adult (for inscrutable grown up reasons) would not consider appropriate and which, however dimly they understood what they were reading, understood better than any grown-up might have given them credit for without such deleterious effect they might imagine. (also recalling jim n. who found out, years later, that his daugher had read the story of o when she was in middle school — it is alwasy the adults who are more scandalised than the children.) and it is precisely because i have an inner genre theorist that i don’t mind the library shelving yp and genre fiction with “literature”– inter-permeability of categories and all that, you know.but a democratic shelving system, while of little impact in a small neighbourhood library, in a large one like jurong or orchard where each call number can span several shelves frequently leads to inconvenience and consternation. i came in for something extremely respectable like knausgaard i am greatly nonplussed to be confronted with rows and ruddy rows of somebody called knaak, who apparently writes these lurid world of warcraft franchise books!
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