I dislike it when people take certain words and concepts then twisting them for their own gain.  As a pet peeve, I usually reserve my true irritation for this practice as it applies to politics — specifically the abortion/murder debate.  Abortion is a medical procedure, or the killing of an unborn child is murder.  There is no middle ground because one is covered by patient-doctor confidentiality and the other is a federal offense.

However, this isn't my obsession of late.  I find the idea of a young adult genre to be unsettling.  It offends my engineering sensibilities to when people use a demographic like age to try to classify something already so hard to classify such as literature or movies.  Really, do we have to add to the complexity of what shelf to put something on?

It really chaps my ass when I hear people refer to Young Adult as a genre.  What are the basic conventions of the Young Adult genre?  High school?  Homework?  Hormones?  Drama, in general?

This makes no sense.  Young Adult should be about what age the novel is written for, not to classify subject matter.  I am really getting tired of seeing Young Adult getting a listing under genre when it doesn't belong there.

I don't mean to step on anyone's toes, but the rant must be committed sometimes.