A few months back, The Guardian wondered which book marked your transition from child to adult? Oh boy, are these cats making me feel uncultured. I definitely made my way to Catcher in the Rye and Animal Farm, but not before taking a little detour to the land of Oprah’s Book Club.

By middle school, I grew out of The Baby-Sitters Club feeling very lost and vaguely remember asking teachers and librarians what to read. Though YA in the mid-90’s wasn’t anything like it is today, I know they led me toward authors like Caroline B. Cooney, who I devoured pretty thoroughly. I still felt somewhat babied and frustrated by the reading, but didn’t really know how to pick out a “grown up” book. Enter Oprah!

BookRiot‘s Rebecca Schinsky mentioned this phenomenon in a podcast episode, and it seems I too fell into the bubble of readers transitioning out of middle grade just as Oprah’s Book Club took off. I’m not sure how I ended up with a copy of Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone, but assume I grabbed it from an overflowing shelf and my parents (who never restricted my reading) bought it for me. While I can’t call it the most ideal book for a thirteen year old, it definitely reignited my curiosity in reading…among other things. I followed that up with more titles from Oprah’s list, like Where the Heart Is and White Oleander, and don’t think I ever looked back.

I do wonder how this impacted my reading life. Is it why I’m more attracted to confronting reads? If so, thanks Oprah!

What book or books marked your transition to adult reading? How do you think that impacted your reading life?

I think most of us find it frustrating when a review or discussion outlines a book’s entire plot without fair warning of spoilers, but what about the spoilers that aren’t really spoilers? You know, the the little bits of information that can change your reading experience without revealing the plot. What do I mean?

There’s A Twist!

This was actually a major discussion on an episode of Books on the Nightstand not too long ago. I fall somewhere in the middle on the issue, usually depending on the hype of the book. I don’t mind if it’s just a blurb or jacket copy that mentions a twist, but if all the talk around the book begins to blow that out of proportion it will likely have an impact on my reading. I read We Were Liars several months before it was published, with little more information outside a few recommendations and the jacket copy to go by, and really enjoyed it. But I think I would have been really frustrated had I read it once hype began focus so much on the novel’s twist.

This Year’s (That Book)

Now, I think we all know that by this point calling a book “This Year’s Gone Girl!” can mean a dozen different things, but in some cases a comparison can enter the spoiler zone. Some read-alikes and recommendations are so close that similarities make themselves clear within a few pages and…well, you know how the other book ended, right?

The Unreliable Narrator

I’m a huge, huge fan of unreliable narrators, but I don’t want to know about them before I pick up a book. Where’s the fun? Instead of trusting the tale being told, I’ll turn my attention to picking apart the story. There’s a book that’s had quite a bit of attention lately and almost every mention touches on the unreliable narrator. It’s definitely made me shy away from reading. Does anyone really want to know their narrator can’t be trusted from the get-go?

This isn’t meant to be a post about the right or wrong way to blog, since those of us who do all have different audiences and purposes. Instead, it’s just curiosity about the tolerance of spoilers and what exactly we consider them to be.

So, what do you consider a sneaky spoiler?