Are degenerates betraying Civilization when they read the wrong books?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Experts differ.

Comments

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Reading that people actually do rather than reading that the educated elite think they should do: threat or menace?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Off topic, nuked.

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

Let's see, some would-be intellectual is portentously deploring how the hoi polloi are reading something besides tedious, navel-gazing "literary" fiction. They pop up and opine the usual nonsense whenever something is wildly popular that isn't mainstream or literary fiction. If it isn't YA they are complaining about, it's romance or sci-fi or fantasy or westerns or thrillers or any other genre fiction.

*Yawn*

Obviously, someone has column inches to pad out and nothing important to write about, so they ran this.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

They'll run the latest version of "Bang! Pow! Comics aren't just for kids any more!" next month.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

… or mention how literary fiction is necessarily tedious and navel-gazing.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Or shockingly proclaim that the current generation of teenagers/twenty-somethings are the Most Selfish Ever!

[raycun.livejournal.com]

Its amusing that they lead the story by talking about how 'Fault in Our Stars' was more successful at the box office than the grown-up Tom Cruise movie. That movie being 'Edge of Tomorrow'.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

The book that Cruise's movie was based on was quite good. I haven't seen the movie, but I'll note that the track record of book --> movie conversions is not great.

[raycun.livejournal.com]

sure, but it's not a subtitled Japanese version of Waiting for Godot :)
Its rare that the leading box office movie could not be filed as YA

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

If it's rated PG-13, it probably has way less cussin' in it than (the English translation of) All You Need Is Kill.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown-up."--C.S. Lewis

[thunderflyer.livejournal.com]

The critics, instead of celebrating that reading is done for pleasure to the point that technology was invented to facilitate the passtime, are bemoaning what is being read?

I don't give a flying monkey chuckle what genre is hot right now. I am just tickled pink that reading and writing is no longer an elite occupation.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

I am just tickled pink that reading and writing is no longer an elite occupation.

That's probably precisely what's upsetting some of the critics.

[raycun.livejournal.com]

reading an elite occupation?
Have you just stepped out of a time machine?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Riding time machines, alas, remains an elite occupation.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

I'm reasonably sure I'm not one of the people catastrophizing about the hoi polloi dooming society with their choices of reading material.

[raycun.livejournal.com]

I think the current panic about reading is that people don't do it any more.
"the great unwashed are getting their filthy hands on books?!?!" used to be an issue for some people, back around the advent of mass literacy

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

"...let's consider The Book Thief, a YA title at first glance but also a story that deals with typically non-YA themes of mortality and the imminence of death."

Maybe I read the wrong books, but I think a preoccupation with death and mortality as the quintessential themes of a YA novel. Adult novels are about failure and self-knowledge, children's books are about adventure or achievement, novels for all ages are about interpersonal relationships. But teen novels confront births and deaths so very frequently.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

The accusation that YA novels are more black and white than "adult" fiction is BS. Plenty of black and white morality tales aren't YA, either.

[rosefox]

Here, have a present. (MPR MPR MPR)

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

Kinda refreshing to see a post where the comments are vastly more intelligent and sensible than the blog content, though.