u/Progress_Always_Wins

I'm a YA Librarian. I often get requests for biographies on rock bands from the 90's/2000's. Bands like Linkin Park, Korn, Limp Bizkit, My Chemical Romance, Weezer etc. But I have to turn patrons away empty handed because we only have books on Classic Rock bands from the 60's and 70's like Queen, The Beatles, Janis Joplin etc or modern Rap and Pop groups like Eminem, Billie Eilish, Chappel Roan, etc. There seems to be a gap in the publishing industry of rock groups from 20-30 years ago in the YA demographic.

I'm making this post to share my frustration but also to let people in the publishing industry that might frequent this subreddit know that there is a demand for these kinds of books out there.

Also, if these books exist and were recently published and I'm just failing to find them, please feel free to recommend some titles!

So I often see discussions of what to call no/low spice books. For a while people were calling them clean reads but more recently there has been a backlash to that (I think rightly) because it implies that other books are dirty.

Wholesome reads gets used sometimes but I think it has the same problem. It implies that other books are the opposite, or unwholesome. Wholesome being something that promotes health, well-being, and soundness and unwholesome being detrimental to those things.

I've also seen Gentle Reads bandied about. Which implies other books are harsh, rough, and violent?

Cozy Reads is becoming common terminology, but it is wider than referring to romance. You can have a "low stakes, comforting read designed to feel like a warm hug, focusing on relatable characters, charming settings, and gentle plots without graphic violence or intense, anxiety-inducing suspense" with no romance whatsoever.

I like the idea of calling them Sweet Reads. Spicy reads bring the heat, sweet reads bring the saccharine. Both are books worth gobbling up.

Edit: I am a YA Librarian. Librarians make short themed lists for patrons. Currently, one list sometimes made is "clean reads." It's made of romance books you could hand to a patron who comes in complaining not just of explicit sex in YA, but the type of patron that wouldn't want anything beyond chaste first kisses. But it is a common complaint amongst professionals that calling those books clean implies other books are dirty, which is a problem, so we often bandy about other options. A lot of responses are saying "If you just mean non explicit, just say non explicit" but that's NOT what this list would mean. I am not advocating to never use the terms spicy, explicit, etc in general conversation. I am talking about calling a specific kind of romance sweet instead of clean, because clean is problematic. I probably should have just posted this in r/library instead of r/YA.