Last month I sent my best friend Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. I love that book and thought he’d love it, too. But these things are always a gamble. I’m happy to report he enjoyed the book, and it sparked a great conversation. He’s got Dune next in his stack of books to read, but I just sent him Ender’s Game. It would be a great excuse to re-read that book and talk to him about it.

Interestingly, all three of these books qualify as YA. The difference is that these books feature a protagonist who is a young adult while the books are just complex and profound as the best literature. YA as a genre, however, are books marketed to young adults with young adults as the protagonists but nowhere as rich and dense as the novels I mentioned.

I envy my friend. I wish I could read these books again for the first time.