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Inspired by William Boot’s column at The Daily Beast, I decided to start my own version of “Should I Read.” If you are unfamiliar with Boot’s column here is a quick explanation, each week Boot tackles a title from the New York Times Bestseller List. He weighs in on the book and let’s readers know if the book is worth the hype. Sometimes the book lives up to the hype and sometimes it doesn’t. I will be calling BookFinds version of Should I Read, “OFF THE LIST.” We will literally be pulling titles right “off the list” and letting you know if they are worth the read.

This week I chose LA CANDY by Lauren Conrad. This book is currently number one on the New York Times list for Children’s Books. LA CANDY is a quick read and an interesting story. Anyone who has ever watched a reality show (especially The Hills, Laguna Beach or The City on MTV) will love reading an insider’s take on what it’s really like to be taped all day, every day. Obviously, it’s not as glamorous as it appears. I went into this book expecting the absolute worst and in a way I think that helped Lauren Conrad’s cause because it wasn’t as awful as I expected. Now I know that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, but honestly, the book is a light, fun read and sometimes that is the perfect choice. Sometimes you want to sit back and get lost in a “fluffy” book. It ends on a cliff hanger to ensure that we all run out and buy SWEET LITTLE LIES. I’m not sure I will be picking up the sequel because I think I got all I could from the first book. For example, I never knew that the producers interact with the “cast” via text message during the shooting. Now I will have to pay closer attention to these MTV reality shows and see how many times they check their Blackberry.

So I would say, YES, read this book for the entertainment factor but don’t expect any great literary feat.

Your second helping of YIR coverage today comes care of Ypulse Youth Advisory Board Member Megan Reid, weighing in on what she thought were the best and worst in 2009 books… Best Catching Fire. Suzanne Collins’ second book in "The Hunger... Read the rest of this post

This interesting pairing in today's New York Times Magazine: the page 15 piece featuring Lauren Conrad's Y.A. book L.A. Candy, and the Carlo Rotella profile, on page 20, of "the greatest living writer of science fiction and fantasy," Jack Vance.

Conrad's book, as Virginia Heffernan writes, "chronicles the intriguingly solemn experience of a young provincial who moves to Los Angeles to become an event planner and achieves hollow fame." From the unabashed bestseller Heffernan shares such lines as these: He took out a piece of double-sided tape and began peeling the paper off one side. "Well, I'm gonna have you tape this microphone to the inside of the front of your bra and run the wire around your side, then I'll clip the mike pack on the back of you bra."

While Vance might also be categorized as a YA author, his work, Rotella writes, "leaves you with a sense of formality, of having been present at an occasion when, for all the jokiness and the fun of made-up words, the serious business of literary entertainment was transacted. And it teaches a lasting lesson about the writer's craft: Whatever's on the cover, you can always aim high." Vance, who has been blind for years, has been writing for six decades. He's won awards and he supported a family. But he has, in Rotella's words, "been hidden in plain sight for as along as he has been publishing." He has not gone onto MTV-quality fame and fortune from the stories he's imagined.

Nonetheless, it is Vance who has inspired a generation of writers—Neil Gaiman, for one, Michael Chabon, Rotella himself. Vance about whom Rotella writes powerfully:

Most of these writers were adolescents when they first read Vance, who awoke in them an appreciation for the artistic possibilities of language. When applied to literature, "adolescent" does not only have to mean pedestrain prose that evokes the strong feelings of emotionally inexperienced people. "Adolescent" can also mean writing that inspires the first conscious stirrings of literary sensibility. So, yes, Vance worked exclusively in adolescent genres—if under that heading we include the transformative experience of falling in love for the first time with a beautiful sentence.

We struggle all the time in this business to define YA literature. Rotella, I think, has just expanded our understanding.