Also, does summer before college count? Because I know a lot of those.

And, the last book of the series about Cyd Charrise (by Rachel Cohn), called Cupcake, is after she graduates from high school (though she’s not technically in college . . .)

First of all, Thank you everyone! I am writing all of these titles down, and once I finally find a job, I will buy them! haha

Second, I REFUSE to grow-up! Not really, but I don’t feel ADULT. I do after all live in a dorm with hundreds of other students, it’s like summer camp, not REAL life!

Anyways, as mary elizabeth said, I’ll just have to go write the great college american novel. s.e. hinton is afterall my favorite writer…!

thanks again, everyone!

Tam Lin, obviously.

A College of Magics, by Caroline Stevermer.

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, isn’t about college, but the heroine is 21 and it’s a lot of fun and the first year of university is where I learned to love it, so I throw it in here.

you might also try “a portrait of the artist as a young man,” which is written from the pov of the protag at each stage of his development from childhood through college, which is to say, that the writing matures along with the character.

Oh, and Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

And I have to agree about the lack of books for this age… at 23, I find I can still relate more to most YA protagonists than to those of adult novels!

I like to look in the YA section (aside from that I still read a lot of YA books) because the genres are thrown in together. I don’t have to decide whether I feel like browsing through fantasy or general fiction or whatever. Admittedly this isn’t the problem in libraries, but even then there is so much there that I don’t want to read – at the moment – that I find it hard to just… browse and find something which looks interesting…

But you are right, there isn’t a whole lot of reading specifically about this age group.

It’s Not About the Accent by Caridad Ferrer

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

Wurst Case Scenario by Catherine Clark – freshman year, but note that this is a sequel to Truth or Dairy, when she’s a senior in high school

Cupcake by Rachel Cohn – third in the CC trilogy, first Gingerbread, then Shrimp, then Cupcake

Some of the Simon Pulse Romantic Comedies – http://slayground.livejournal.com/135367.html – take place in college, others in high school

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen – the summer between high school and college

I have only seen the film adaptation, I must admit, but was alerted to it while browsing in a bookshop in Bristol when the author came in and signed some copies of his book on his way to a pre-release screening.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starter_for_Ten_%28novel%29

*http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1935567,00.html

err, not that I am a zombie, I’m just saying.

Maybe there’s only so much you can expect. YA books are marketed to 12- to 18-year-olds, and publishers expect 19-year-olds to migrate over to the adult section. I haven’t, but that’s because I just love the YA books to bits, regardless of (and sometimes becasuse of) the characters’ ages.

And you never know. Maybe as all these book-loving 15- and 16-year-olds grow into book-loving 19- and 20-year-olds, the YA genre will expand to include more books for that age group, too. Maybe you’ll even be the one to write them. (After all, isn’t that how the gap between children’s and adults’ books was filled in the first place?)

Okay, okay, rant over…

~Mary

Seconding The Secret History recommendation, too.

Also (a bit tangential, but hey) The History Man, Lucky Jim, and Decline and Fall.

Alma Alexander, why don’t you suggest some titles of some of the many “grown-up” books you refer to? I think all of us read a mix of YA and adult books, so suggestions are surely welcomed.

Liset is right – 18-21 is an awkward age, full of you-may-this but you-emphatically-may-not the other – but what it is, is mostly a waiting game now. For all intents and purposes you ARE an adult. And “first year of college” books are not a special YA imprint. The college years are dealt with in plenty of “grown up” books which may not deal SOLELY about the “first year in college” – but that isn’t because that isn’t interesting or valid or valuable but simply because college is not a boarding school and it is tangled up into all kinds of real-world grown up choices. It is not a destination; it is, in fact, when you start becoming aware that life isn’t a series of finite journeys which have definite end-stations but rather an on-going ride on trains planes and automobiles which often leaves you kicking your heels in some waiting room while the next conveyance arrives to take you onwards. But by 18 you have a driver’s licence. You can rent whatever car you choose.

Meg Powers is the president’s daughter. She was kidnapped and brutalized in her senior year of high school. Now she’s back in the white house and wants desperately to have a normal first year of college — but her old demons are hard to shake. This book is both terrific exploration of post-traumatic drama and a great first-year-of-college book. And it is long, but I personally ADORE Meg and didn’t want it to end.

Some other thoughts: Robin McKinley’s “Sunshine” and “Spindle’s End” (not college per se, but right age group); Matt Ruff’s “Fool on the Hill” (great cult college novel); Emma Bull’s “War for the Oaks” (again, not college but right sort of age group), and novels of Charles de Lint also sort of fit this. I see my rec’s are skewing very fantasy, perhaps that’s just what I happen to read. Another thought is sort of coming-of-age novels in the mode of literary adult fiction: Jonathan Lethem’s “The Fortress of Solitude”? And I MUST also recommend , in particular, one of the best novels I’ve read recently: Martin Millar’s “Lonely Werewolf Girl,” which has several VERY plausibly rendered university students as character!

I also really admire two university-set novels by May Sarton, THE SMALL ROOM and FAITHFUL ARE THE WOUNDS. Both are more from the perspective of young professors, but are very much about the student experience as well. Very complex and nuanced books about justice and what is “right” and bucking the status quo and etc.

A brand new series out this week is called SORORITY 101, by Kate Harmon. The first book is called ZETA OR OMEGA? and the second is called THE NEW SISTERS. Do not let the cutesy title fool you. HTough it is about girls who choose to join sororities, it covers all the usual “first time college student” struggles. One of the characters is a Boston brahmin trying to escape her parents’ “plans” for her, another is stuck in her hometown college while she dreams of going to the big city, a third is dealing with nasty roommates, a demanding scholarship, and too many time commitments to the marching band…

Another author who handles this period is Megan McCafferty. The third book in her “Sloppy Firsts” series, Charmed Thirds, deals with the protag going off to college.

I’m sure I can think of more.