On the Topic Of...Contemporary Books

It shouldn't come as a surprise that I've always been a big reader. In first grade I was that kid that kept asking the teacher for more books until she didn't have any more to give me. But that's not really the point of this post. What I really want to talk about is contemporary books and my love for them. 

What really started me reading YA way back in middle school was Meg Cabot. After having seen the movie countless times, I decided one day that I wanted to read the Princess Diaries books. And once I read the first book, I just couldn't get through the rest fast enough...until I got to the point where I had to wait for the next one to come out. And that's when a friend turned me in the direction of Sarah Dessen. The first Sarah Dessen book I read was The Truth About Forever, and to this day it's still one of my favorite books. And, of course, after reading that first one I just kept going back to my library until I had read all the Sarah Dessen books in existence.

For a long time, pretty much all I read were contemporary books, and for the most part, I loved them. But then for whatever reason I started picking up more and more books that weren't contemporary and those contemporaries were sort of left behind. But when I starte blogging, I sort of rediscovered contemporary books, and I am more than happy to have done so. It's those books by Jennifer Echols and Simone Elkeles that reminded me of my love for contemporary books. And from there it wasn't long before I realized that I still love contemporary as much as I did in middle and high school. Yet for whatever reason, I still sometimes forget about those books.

But every so often I just get this urge to pick up a contemporary books and, for whatever reason, am always amazed by how much I end up loving the story. Because despite the fact that all are no supernatural elements to those stories, they are still stories that have so much to them. The realistic quality they have just gets to me in a way that other books can't. This most recently happened with Miranda Kenneally's next book, Things I Can't Forget. While I was reading I just got so wrapped up in the story, in a way that I can't seem to get with those other books. And that's not to say those other books aren't fantastic, because they really are--give some Cassandra Clare any day of the week and I will be perfectly happy. What I'm saying is that I just don't seem to find myself falling completely in love with the genre all over again like I do whenever I read contemporary books--I mean who can really resist the adorableness that are Stephanie Perkins' books (St. Clair & Cricket anyone?). So yeah, I love contemporary stories. 

When it comes to books and readings, I think contemporary is always going to be my first love and the genre I just will never get tired of reading. So what about you: Do you read a lot of contemporary? Do you have a genre that you just seem to always go back to and never get tired of? Let me know in the comments!