Image via Wikipedia I have to admit, when it comes to books I can be a complete snob. When I find people who don't read, and I mean quite literate adults who choose not to read, I have to wonder what I have in common with them, if anything. But today I want to praise an area of literature that I believe too many adults overlook as not worth their time, YA novels. "YA" is shorthand in bookstores and libraries for "Young Adult" and covers the novels written to appeal to a teen audience. So many of them are outstanding, and adults who don't seek them out are doing themselves a disservice. Today I read A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson , and I adored it. I laughed, I cried, I was totally enraptured by the characters and their tale. Russian emigre Anna, with her commitment to being an excellent housemaid at an English estate, was a heroine in the mold of Cluny Brown , another favorite of mine. Despite the loss of almost everything in her short life
