The YA Lover's Guide to Classics

I mostly read YA. It's what I'm the most consistently interested in. Still, every once in a while, I dive into the admittedly intimidating world of classics. I definitely don't like every classic that I read - see my school reading list for just a few examples - but I've been surprised by more than a few books.

There are a lot of people who are like me in that they usually reach for YA. Some of those people have probably decided that they want to stick with YA, and that's completely fine! I will be the last person to ever judge you negatively based on your reading taste. But maybe some people want to branch out a bit more, and that's great, too! And if some of those people don't quite know where to start, I hope that this post will help. I picked a few YA books and found classics that remind me of them.

This post works the other way, too. If you're an avid classics reader who's somehow found your way onto my blog, maybe you'll want to try some YA! (Or not. As I said, sticking to one genre is totally cool.)

So, without further ado, consider this your guide to bridging a little bit of the gap between YA and classics.

If you like the Infernal Devices trilogy by Cassandra Clare, try A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

So maybe there's not a lot of direct correlation here. You won't find demons or Shadowhunters or anything paranormal in Dickens. But Dickens is referenced so many times in this trilogy that I had to draw the connection. A Tale of Two Cities is the only Dickens novel that I've read so far, but I found it just as engrossing as any of the Shadowhunter novels. Direct parallels include a love triangle that doesn't completely annoy me.

If you like the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, try The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles.

If you're like me, reading the Percy Jackson series sparked a long-lasting interest in Greek mythology. Why not go back to the source material? Considering Oedipus's circumstances, I'd be surprised if he's actually mentioned in any of Rick Riordan's Greek mythology books, but I like these plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) the most out of all the Greek classics I've read.

If you like any John Green book, try The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

This is a bit of a strange one, because I like John Green's books a lot more than I liked The Catcher in the Rye. Even so, I see a lot of similarities in their writing style. Slightly pretentious teenage main character fills the novel with his musings, which are sometimes annoying and sometimes world-shakingly profound, and goes on some kind of bizarre adventure. I wouldn't pick up The Catcher in the Rye if you're looking for an action-packed plot, but if you just want a slice of life, this might be your cup of tea.

If you like YA in general, try The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

Okay, so maybe I'm cheating a little bit with this one. But I couldn't think of a more modern YA to go with it, and it would have been a shame to leave it out. This is the perfect book to bring YA and classics together, because it's a YA classic! (Well, The Catcher in the Rye is probably a YA classic, too, but this one feels much more like YA to me.) If you're a YA reader who doesn't want something too different, or a classics reader looking for some YA that's still considered a classic, this is for you.

How often do you read classics? What are some of your favorites? Can you think of a more recent YA book to connect to The Outsiders? Tell me in the comments!