If everybody's reading it, can it be that good?

I noticed in the, ahem, spirited discussion on why adults would read YA books that a few swipes are taken at commercially successful books.

Do you have a prejudice against commercially popular works?

Have you ever avoided a book that's lingered too long on a popularity list because you think that indicates it's probably pablum aimed at the lowest common denominator? Did you ever finally read the book and discover you were pleasantly surprised? (Remains of the Day for me.)

Or confirmed in your theory about best seller lists? (Mitford, IMO.)

Have you ever avoided a book you think has been hyped up too much because how can any book be THAT good? (Is anyone (like me) NOT reading, say, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle because it's too hot?)

Did you ever avoid a book because you felt you were being snookered into a contrived controversy that would make defenders and detractors rich at your expense? (Personal choice would be The DaVinci Code here.)

(Entry edited in an attempt to provide sufficient examples of views expressed while in no way attempting to offend any individual readers or groups of readers, we all have our guilty pleasures, I read Stephen King's Cell, on vacation once, just to make a full and free disclosure and confession.)

Great subject, nohrt!

I might have a prejudice against commercially popular works, but, if so, it would be part of a larger skepticism around swarming and group think (perhaps not the proper use of such words) and the communal "me too!" . That has everything to do with something in my personal history and not some larger cultural critique. I have read, for example, The Da Vinci Code,Water for Elephants and The Lovely Bones, but I read them prior to publication and hype (and the copy was free:-)

Usually hype puts me off a book. If everyone's reading it, I want to read something else. Certainly, there are a few readers whose recommendation of a book has the ability to rise above in the cacophony of voices and convince me to read it. I'm not sure I can come up with an example of being pleasantly surprised, would have to think about that. However, I have found myself disappointed (i.e. The Road). Sometimes I think hype threatens to rob me of my own experience of a book; maybe I don't like the pressure of the expectations to like the book . . . (that's it, tell Uncle Sigmund all about it).

So, yeah, the hype around Oscar Wao has curbed any interest I may have had in the book (which wasn't much to begin with). And while the hype over Bolano threatens to do the same, some of the voices plugging it are those aforementioned ones (you know who you are). So, maybe I'll get around to it.

For me it's personal hype or expectations that kills a book. Actually, reading critically it kills a book for me too. But popular hype doesn't bother me. I just assume that the best books will be obscure finds. The hyped books will be for general appeal, hence maybe very good, but usually not great. But, I like to read some of the hyped books because I like the social aspects around them and I like to be part of the conversation.

Award winners are different though. Their hype comes after they win the award ("The Road" being a notable exception). When I read these I do have some expectations with them. I try to force these expectations down and remind myself that the award-givers are looking for a book they like, which is not necessarily one I would like. However, I actively chase down some award winners (Pulitzer, IMPAC Dublin, Orange) and have enjoyed most of what I've read. If Wao hadn't won the Pulitzer I never would have read it. Before the award I had noted it sounded interesting and dropped it into my list of several hundred other equally interesting sounding books.

I used to try to read one bestseller a year, to see what the fuss was all about. It was usually quite fun and interesting to understand what others had been alluding to. I haven't done this since reading the da vinci code which I don't mind that much as a story, but do for the way it was written. I didn't pick up a book for a couple of weeks afterwards, I think it put me off, though I should probably have just got straight back on a horse knwoing other rides are different.

I also react a bit against the trend when things are being raved about - in film too. I have bought some Bolano recently though, not started it yet. I try not to read reviews or watch them of films.

I'll give anything at all a chance but I am extremely prejudiced against truly bad books (roll on up The DaVinci Code, that's a day of my life I'll never get back again!).

Award winners, hmm. I must admit, Booker for me has come to symbolise mediocrity of recent years so I am always pleasantly surprised when I read a Booker winner/nominee from the recent past and find it good but the fact that it has won and is popular won't make me automatically hate it. Orange, I've never managed to forgive for Zadie Smith who I abhor and find to be really quite shallow and mundane in her writing but who I strongly believe is a product of media hype (go ahead, beat up on me Zadie Smith fans, nothing's going to change my opinion, at least until she writes something half-way decent ;)).

That said, I read anything with a fairly fresh mind. I don't read reviews before I read a book so unless it's won awards or been majorly hyped, I pretty much make my own mind up. I'm just as likely to pick up a pile of books from whichever Waterstones display is in front of the door, so popularity is not something that 'puts me off' per se, but I have to be in the mood for what I'm reading so often 'hot potatoes' sit around on my bookshelves long past all the media discussion.

And I'm English, I love classics and I still hate Dickens and think him somewhat overrated so I'm a traitor to my ancestry too ;)

Sometimes - the Andromeda Strain long before the flic (pretty decent book, too).
I can't really browse my home library, since usually i check these books out from the public library if i'm gonna read 'em.
Enders Game(?)
Bourne Identity series,
All Le Carre, i think he's on the edge of "everybody" sometimes.
....
Are we talking #1 on the NYTimes bestseller or any book that was in the top 10?
I did have the davinci code forced upon me by a good friend whose judgment is generally good. ummm FAIL. i did finish

Stange and Norrell was hyped to me by usually trustworthy reading friends, pre LT. Couldn't finish it either.

I gave into the hype here at LT over Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

That won't happen again.

When a book becomes the hot discussion topic, I find myself wanting to set it aside until the frenzy dies down. It's not really for any of the reasons you list, nohrt4me. I guess the closest I can come to articulating it is that I dislike the "bandwagon" aspect.

For my part, an important part of reading a book is the experience of "finding" it. It doesn't have to be an unknown book...I don't mind a recommendation...but I like some sensation of, "now, this looks interesting." Somehow, when everyone is ballyhooing about it, that just disappears in a pre-digested selection process. I guess I'm not expressing this very clearly; I just lose some of the experience of the book.

This reaction is in effect right now—I received The Graveyard Book, Ella Minnow Pea and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for Christmas and am having trouble trying them. My hand keeps reaching for something else on the TBR pile.

>8 TadAD: I agree, Tad. For me also, discovering a book is part of the reading experience.

>3 dchaikin: I think "wanting to be part of the conversation" is probably why many readers respond to hype. A noble desire. With regard to books like HP and The Da Vinci Code, it became a desire to want to be part of the cultural experience.

I admit that I'm somewhat a snob about some of the commercially popular books that routinely top best seller lists, but I've certainly read and enjoyed some of them too, mostly mysteries of various sorts (and the aforementioned Le Carre.

After years of reading, I have a pretty well tuned sense of what books I'm going to enjoy, and thus am often suspicious of books that are hyped, "know" in advance that I won't like them, and avoid them (The Kite Runner, for example). In other cases, I will read and even finish hyped books, against my better judgment, because they sound interesting, but I have often been disappointed (e.g., The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, On Beauty.

And, in still other cases, I've been known to hype books myself, most notoriously Half of a Yellow Sun.

What I really rely on is who recommends a book and why he or she recommends it -- that's one of the reasons I love LT.

I must admit, I'm one of those that won't immediately read a book that seems to have too much hype. I'll also admit that I will sometimes end up reading it anyway, usually once it's been put out in paperback and is available on Border's buy one/get one half off table. Right now I am still very resistant to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Ella Minnow Pea. (The last two not only have been over-hyped, but have really cutsie titles, which will also tend to drive me off a book.)

There was a time when seeing Oprah's Book Club on a book would put me off, but no more - not after her year with Faulkner.

One of the best things about LT, though, is that my book choices no longer rely solely on hype. I read reviews here all the time, and I've gotten to "know" some people whose taste I trust.

I had sworn not to read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time, and The Shack, The Life of Pi...among others. This was due to the hype.

My plans to ignore were foiled however when Edgarand The Shack were given me to read. Hated Edgar, did not hate The Shack. Rather liked it.. Also liked Ruby ( no T-Stone) by Mary Summer Rain, which was not hyped, but The Shack reminds me of that book. I read and did not hate
Da Vinci Code. It doesn't rank as a favorite, but as I have said before, I am entertained by stories ( true or not true) of shenanigans at the Vatican. I most often read to be entertained. I found it entertaining. The next reason i read is curiosity, to find out, to learn. I do not tend to judge a book against other books, but I judge them by how they did what I expected of them...

Too much hype does leave a bad taste though.

Hmmm, more yes than no, I'm afraid. I've never been one to run or read with the pack. I find that nine times out of 10, if a book has been really hyped, I probably won't enjoy it, in part because I don't care for romances, mysteries, crime novels, fantasy, sci-fi, most "Southern" novels, or a particular type of women's novel that I can't quite classify (corny "sisterhood" novels--anything with a title resembling Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Many years ago I got sucked into reading what I still consider one of the worst books ever written in the English language: The Bridges of Madison County. Since then, I've been a lot more cautious about jumping on the bandwagon. (Oh, but there was that attempt to read the unbelievably putrid The Dante Club . . .)

I've never read a Harry Potter book, anything by Sue Monk Kidd, or DaVinci Code. Just not the kind of thing that interests me.

A few other highly-hyped books that didn't send me into raptures: The Birth of Venus, anything by Philippa Gregory, The Thirteenth Tale, The Meaning of Night.

Even though I may sound like a book snob, I'm not one of those who automatically rejects Oprah suggestions. I've read a number of them (but not along with the group), and some have been wonderful.

If a bestseller seems to be something I'd enjoy, I'll read it--but generally not until the hype has died down. Some examples: The Impressionist (still at the top of my contemporary favorites list), When the Emperor Was Divine, The English Patient, On Chesil Beach, The Accidental, Mister Pip, Sorry, The White Tiger. I read a lot of Stephen King years back and enjoyed most of those as well.

I also read a lot of classics--books that have EARNED their hype!

Everyone's posts have been really interesting and what a good topic, nohrt.

I like to find things or have them find me. I would read book reviews in the newspaper but tended to pick up books which looked interesting in the New Arrivals section of the library as my modus operandi. Until LT, where I have been picking up some excellent recommendations from reviews or from people whose literary opinions I trust, I would actually get uncomfortable when a friend would urge a book at me. You HAVE to read this, you'll LOVE it. And then I wouldn't, and they'd ask what I thought and so it would go.

Even now I have about two dozen books just sitting there waiting for the memory of the passionate recommendations to fade so that I can read them for myself.

Cariola~

I liked The Secret Life of Bees, Harry Potter, and totally agree with you about Bridges of Madison County, and Sisterhood type books. That is not to say that I have never enjoyed a chic lit type of book. While they are not my first choice most of the time, some are quite good.

I too have read some Oprah books, but not because, they were Oprah books. Many classics are favorites, and I am replenishing my library, as most have gone home with one or another of my kids..

(Secret Life of Bees, Ruby and The Shack all have a certain something in common. )

My experience is similar. I've been put off books by their hype, and I've read books I wouldn't otherwise have read because of their hype. A few examples:

* Harry Potter: Would have read the first book several years earlier but for the hype. When I finally did, I enjoyed it, and have enjoyed most of that series - particularly books 3, 5 and 7 (except for the over-extended camping trip in the latter).

* Mister Pip: Hugely hyped in NZ because of its awards success. Didn't read it until our book group decided on it. After I did, I felt that 4/5 of a very good novel was rather derailed by a final 1/5 that unnecessarily demolished the unity of the narrative.

* The Bone People. NZ's other big award-winning novel (1985 Booker). Have tried to read it twice and failed to get beyond the first hundred pages both times, but friends whose opinions I respect love it.

Cariola's idea that the classics are books that have earned their hype over time is one I like.

For me, it depends on WHOM the hype comes from. For example, based on previous experience, I have discovered that I do not like books recommended by Oprah. I don't know why that is; maybe there's something that appeals to that demographic which doesn't appeal to me. In any case, I have tried a few books based on her recommendations and hated them. I have read books that I hated, only to find out she later recommended them. So now, I see that little Oprah's book club symbol on a book and run in the other direction.

I generally read books that people on LibraryThing rave about. I've found a lot of good books this way, although of course you get the occasional flop. I just finished The Hour I First Believed and I'm so sorry that I did. I hated it. But my ratio of good books to bad ones has been pretty good for LT recommendations, so I'm sticking to it.

However, I also read a lot of books I've just come across at a bookstore and have heard nothing about. I'm not one to avoid a book just because other people are reading it. To me, that is just like reading a book just because other people are reading it. I don't base my decisions, reading or otherwise, solely or even primarily on what other people are doing. I read books because they sound interesting to me, bandwagon be damned. If I end up on it, so be it. If I don't, that's fine too.

Thought of another overly hyped book that I really hated: Gilead.

>18 Cariola: yeah, I couldn't get into The Sea or Gilead but it might be that I just find older men reminiscing over their lives to be a yawner.

Some of you must respond to the hyping of Virago titles, yes? It's out there (cue scary SF-like music). The gushing, the ooing and ahhing. There has to be a certain amount of hype in any subgroup of books:-)

I'm with those of you who say it depends on who recommends the book. There are a few people I trust to some extent and I appreciate the discussions and reviews here because so many people are good about saying why they like a book.

I've also learned I can't trust a certain member of my book club, who keeps suggesting books I've hated one after another, including The Mermaid's Chair and A Thousand Splendid Suns and Light on Snow, to name a few.

My sense about Oprah's books is that yes, there's Faulkner and Anna Karenina on that list, but a lot of the others have to do with that sort of "redemption through suffering" that just wears me out.

#13 - I read a lot of Stephen King years back and enjoyed most of those as well.
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Deborah -- No way. I did not know that about you. I used to be a huge King fan, year ago. You never fail to surprise and delight me in your reading tastes!

Excellent question, Nohrt4me. I actually saw your post when it first went up and planned to answer immediately but got distracted. I've just now had a chance to respond and I'm glad I was delayed . . . . the answer is YES! To move away from books to movies for a moment, I've really wanted to see Slum Dog Millionaire, but after watching the Oscars tonight, not so much. By the last part of the show if an award came up that didn't have a Slum Dog Millionaire nominee, we were still yelling at the TV in jest "Slum dog, Slum dog!" Did the movie get any worse because it won all the awards it was nominated for? Of course not. In fact, I'm thrilled that such a non-Hollywood film cleaned up. Good for them! It's great. But for some reason I'm now a little less interested in actually watching it. An odd reaction, isn't it? I can't explain it.

So, to answer your question: Do you have a prejudice against commercially popular works? Yes.

--Have you ever avoided a book that's lingered too long on a popularity list because you think that indicates it's probably pablum aimed at the lowest common denominator? Did you ever finally read the book and discover you were pleasantly surprised?

Yes, The Poisonwood Bible, to name one.

--Or confirmed in your theory about best seller lists? Yes, Tuesdays With Morrie and the DaVinci Code (although the first was a complete and total waste of time, I am still glad I read the second, for some reason. It's a book I love to hate, while Morrie was just a big nothing.) Oh, The Other Bolyn Girl definitely fits into this category too, but I made it through all six hundred something pages, so it must have had something.

--Have you ever avoided a book you think has been hyped up too much because how can any book be THAT good? (Is anyone (like me) NOT reading, say, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle because it's too hot?)

Yes, that would be one (although I must say I haven't actually seen that one at the book stores . . . I can't picture the title page, and I haven't picked it up to browse the cover. Is it really all that popular?)

I do defend some best seller / non-literary writers. I've spent enjoyable hours reading Michael Crichton, Maeve Binchy, Stephen King, and John Grisham, but then I wouldn't call any of them "literature" either. I read a lot of literature, but I also don't need to read it all the time. There are many things I look for in books. I can be snooty with the best of them, but I'm certainly not snooty all the time. (How boring is that?).

I also have fun ridiculing Oprah picks. In fact, I'm considering trademarking my phrase that sums most of them up: "A woman has a crappy life, a bunch of crappy things happen to her, and then there's a crappy ending." (trademark pending). But in truth, I've really liked some of the other Oprah books. AND, even if I didn't, Oprah's mission was to get women reading beyond Danielle Steele type books, and she did that. AND she also helped a handful of authors make a truckload of money that they wouldn't have otherwise earned. So good for them, and thank you Oprah. So us literary snobs can diss Oprah all we want, but really, she has done more than her share to promote books.

I have The Corrections sitting in my TBR pile, though not near the top. That was an Oprah pick, wasn't it? Do/did y'all hate that?

I definitely have a snobbish prejudice against any book that is advertised on the London underground.

I tend to ignore hype and evaluate a book by my own tastes. Since I like fantasy, I picked up a Harry Potter book and eventually bought and read the entire series. I was particularly fond of vampire fiction for a while, so I read Twilight. I found it a bit average and I'm still divided on whether to read the sequels. I added Anathem to my watchlist because I like sci-fi but have yet to actually get to it. On the other hand, I'll probably never read The Da Vince Code or 2666 because the premises just don't sound interesting. I don't care who recommends them to me. Then there's a middle area--books that sound kind of interesting and are recommend by people whose opinion I value. For example, I bought my grandmother The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society last Christmas because it was well-rated on LT and sounded like her kind of book (we have pretty different tastes). She now wants to pass the book on to me to read and I probably will read it. Left to my own devices, would I ever read it? Mostly likely not. But I respect her opinion enough to give it a try. So generic media hype mostly passes me by unless it's something that sounds very interesting to me anyway, but a personal recommendation for a book will get some attention.

Long long ago in a classroom far away… I read Harry Potter aloud to a group of innocent 12 year olds. I loved it they loved it and the world has not quite been the same since. Now if HP had been handed to me to read personally as a YA experience one summer deck chair’s day before the hype hit well I do believe I would have said ‘that’s very nice’ and forgotten about it. As it is the context of the read (sharing aloud – and the book really does read well out loud-) and doing so just before the hype hit America but knowing the word on the British streets was humming; there was a promise of magic and sure enough I will never forget (and neither have several returning students-college graduates now-) that experience as being something …dare I say, magical!

The Da Vinci Code left me wondering how to tell raving friends that “This really is rather bad” in a nice way, no, not nice, no, no, in a way that didn’t have me standing there like an elitist book snob. I finally settled for “Yes it is a bit of page turner isn’t it?!” which only led to some body putting “Angels and Demons” in my Mailbox an act of Goodwill for Goodwill.

“Three Cups Of Tea” had me suspiciously avoiding my wife’s engaging remarks “Lets buy several copies to give to our friends…” but when I did finally say ‘OK lets do this thing’ I was completely hooked. It is an inspiring story.

On the other side of the spectrum I have just finished Albert Camus “The Fall” having picked it up think ohh Camus…must be good. Now I except that more erudite readers than I and all of the top notch reviewers find this work stylish and thought provoking in the most original of ways but personally I have had more enjoyment with a wet fish on a cracked plate.

I don’t believe I’d change my reading in hindsight, there is something about working you’re way through dross (not that Camus is dross) that adds to the texture of you’re overall reading life. I mean I’m human, I have that quality, what is it called? Experimentation? No; unpredictability? ‘irrational book choice’? I kind of like having my stock of bad reads it defines my sense of importance and so justifies all that money I keep spending on books. I mean without the bad there is no good. Whoops I think Camus is catching up with me.

Now I except that more erudite readers than I and all of the top notch reviewers find this work stylish and thought provoking in the most original of ways but personally I have had more enjoyment with a wet fish on a cracked plate.

HaHa! BeesleSR, you've just summed up my reaction to Michel Houellebecq better than I ever could ... I'm going to chortle all the way through my coffee break now ...

#13 Even though I haven't read any kind of horror story in many years, there's no doubt that King is a very good writer. That's the problem I have with many of these hyped books: they have some kind of clever or gimmicky or sappy storyline that sells them, but the writing is dreadful. So many of the people whose opinions I respect have complained about how poorly written The DaVinci Code is that I know I'll never pick it up.

I've also never read The Poisonwood Bible, nor anything else by Kingsolver, for that matter. I actually had a copy in my TBR stacks, but after about a year, I gave it away, knowing I'd never read it.

#18 I was equally unimpressed with The Sea. I wanted to like it, some passages were beautifully written, but it was a real snoozer.

#23 I started reading The Corrections but hated it. That was about the time I finally realized that I didn't owe it to the author to finish a book that I wasn't enjoying. Franzen started a big controversy by refusing to appear on Oprah's show after his book was selected.

Another highly author whose work I'll never touch: Nicholas Sparks. Can't say much about the writing (as I've never read one) but he churns them out formulaically and depends upon sappy sentimentalism.

>20 ejj1955: ejj1955, I'm with you, it's not just the person recommending the book, it's the 'why' factor.

>10 rebeccanyc: yes, and rebeccanyc happens to be the one who got me to pull Half of a Yellow Sun from my TBR pile (I had read Adichie's first book) and I'm afraid I added to the hype.

I think there is hype with a small 'h' - the natural kind, one recommendation snowballing as others read and enjoy the book. And then there is Hype with a capital "H" - the kind that is fueled not just by recommendations but has some entity/media behind it (i.e. Oprah, Prize nominations, advertisement). The LT hype of Half of a Yellow Sun preceded her winning any prizes for it (and now she has won a MacArthur Genius Grant!).

Hype can work both ways - it certainly gets people reading a book but it can also put off other potential readers. With the first group, the hype can then backfire because expectations are too high (the more hype, the higher the expectations, hence more disappointment) but often people want to read the 'in' books because of their cultural impact - it's a case of belonging to the 'cool gang'. This is why books like HP and The Da Vinci Code stop being mere books and become 'events': they are closer to High School Musical or Michael Jackson's Thriller or The Dark Knight than to the majority of other books.
With the second group, there is a reaction against being told what is good or 'cool' - so they can never read book with an open mind.

The truth is that most very successful books are not going to be brilliant - they are aimed at the middle-brow market: any challenging or unusual will normally not find a large-scale audience. (It's the same with films or music).

What disturbs me is the snowball effect of critically hyped books. There are average books, such as Everything is Illuminated (a decent enough first novel with some serious flaws), that have quotes from all the major literary pages stating it the work is a 'masterpiece' our 'instant classic' plastered all over the cover. You end up wondering whether the critics don't want to disagree with each other, or whether they all know the author, or whether have the quotes have been taken out of context.

The truth is that most very successful books are not going to be brilliant
I really wanted to prove you wrong on that one jargoneer, but you know what, I've just tried to think of any very commercially successful books that I would describe as 'brilliant' and I've come up blank.

What disturbs me is the snowball effect of critically hyped books
I totally agree, it's sometimes as if the critics themselves are caught up in the hype. I'm often sceptical about critics anyway. Too many times when I used to read reviews, did it seem that the review was more about making the critic look/sound clever than a fair assessment of a work. I wonder whether a 'brilliant' book even should be highly commercially popular. Often the innovation and edge that makes a work particularly stand-out is what alienates a portion of the readership and polarises opinion. For me, some of the greatest books are hated as much as they are loved members of the literary canon - it's a testament to their power that very few are able to sit on the fence (so to speak).

#31 klarusu - I've just tried to think of any very commercially successful books that I would describe as 'brilliant' and I've come up blank.

I think that must really depend on what "brilliant" means to you. For some people brilliant must mean academically or intellectually brilliant. Others don't care about that; brilliant means it got to them personally in some important way, whether academic of not.

Looking through my 5-star books I found six I would consider having been super-hyped books, with a super-sized capital H in "Hyped." Are they brilliant? Well they worked for me.

Two books that I really enjoyed and that had to be forced on me because I had avoided them because of the hype were Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and Empire Falls by Richard Russo.

Interesting comments, all.

I have to admit my original post was prompted by musing about the changing nature of readership and the function of literature.

As late as 50 years ago, there were still modern authors most literate people in the English-speaking world read as a matter of course--Salinger, Graham Greene, Updike, ex.

And, while I'd agree with arguments that too many of those authors were white and male, I'd also say that literature functioned as a kind of binding agent, keeping the "tribe" together.

When fewer of us trust the critics and the hype, eschew books because they're popular, and rely on a much smaller and less "official" group of recommenders to guide our reading, it strikes me that the "tribe" is splintering into many tribes.

Is that good or bad?

Just askin'.

#33 rnyc - I agree regarding Bel Canto - although I didn't see it as super-hyped. Maybe I'm just clueless, I found it via LT suggestions. For me, it's The Time Traveler's Wife stands out as a really nice book which I held off on despite the recommendations, and then later gave in. It's a favorite now.

I go both ways. There was a time when I was turned off by hype, but these days I am much less likely to not read something because “everybody else is reading it.”

The change has something to do with me taking good look at WHY I read. At this point in my life, there’s no bones about it, I am reading for pleasure, to be entertained. Now, because I have been a bookworm for most of my life, I felt for a good while that as an adult I needed to be some great reader of great works, and it took me some time to get over that. A lot of the time, when I pick up a book, I am not looking for profound insight, or some grand intellectual challenge, I want someone to tell me a story. I had to wrestle with that for a while before I decided that there was nothing wrong with it.

For example: When I read The DaVinci Code I was working close to 70 hours a week. Was I entertained? Yes, and I am not ashamed to admit it. Could I have handled Ulysses in its place? Certainly not. Still, would I recommend Dan Brown to my more seriously literary friends? Laughable.

Now, of course it’s not all black and white. Some “great works” are VERY entertaining, and some of the hype has pointed me towards books that I just did not enjoy at all. (To those considering it: put down The Corrections step away, and be thankful that you have those hours back to spend in more fulfilling ways, like the contemplation of your navel.) But some of the hype has led me wonderfully right. I adored The Life of Pi, The Time Traveler's Wife The Poisonwood Bible, and I Know This Much Is True.

I think that the art lies in knowing yourself well enough to be able to guess which of the hype fits what you want and which doesn’t. I don’t need to turn a page to know that I can leave Jodi Picoult and Nicholas Sparks on the shelf and not miss a thing. On the whole, about half of Oprah’s books sound interesting, and the other half I can leave behind. I know that I like Stephen King’s short stories very much, and that I loved The Dark Tower, but I don’t feel the need to pick up The Stand. And on and on.

If you are just reading for the experience of great literature, certainly the hype will often lead the astray. But maybe that’s not all that each of us is looking for when we open the covers of a new book.

#34 nohrt4me - sorry for the digression in my post above.

I think we need to be careful not to confuse the critics with the hype. The quality of the criticism is important. (I read Sawtelle because a Houston Chronicle reviewer said it was the best book she'd ever reviewed in ~14 years reviewing. I have no idea what she was thinking, or what kind of books she reviewed, or maybe she just says that for all the books she likes. Personally I regret having read it.)

The literary potential is always wider than the critical line-of-sight. I think it's important that we branch out beyond the critics. So, yes, it's good thing.

>35 dchaikin:, 36

Now I'll be moving The Time Traveler's Wife up on my TBR pile--I've wanted to read it, or I wouldn't have it, but your recommendations make me want to read it soon!

>34 nohrt4me: - culture has changed since the 1950s: culture then meant serious books, classical music or the less commerical jazz, a few films, etc. There was also working class culture, which was more popular with the masses but that was usually just patronised by serious commentators. What has happened since is that this popular culture has become almost completely dominant - this is why people says that society has dumbed down.

Discussions have become less serious in reaction to this change in values: books are now rated for their entertainment value, or emotional content, rather than any serious intent. Authors like Ann Patchett and Audrey Niffenegger are technically mediocre novelists but they are able to deliver an emotional punch for many people; in some ways they are the fictional equivalents of misery memoirs. This is not to say they are bad - they do what they say on the tin. Most people don't want to think when they are reading or watching a film, they want an emotional kick.

>39 Jargoneer:

Yes! Astutely analyzed. Add Anita Shreve and (ugh) Jodi Picoult and Sue Monk Kidd and many other authors suggested by my book club to this list. Fictional "misery memoirs" exactly describes them.

#39 jargoneer, I imagine you will ruffle some feathers with that post. I'm trying to think through your perspective, maybe you can explain where your coming from. I would like to know how you define "serious."

Also, I'm trying to think about what Checkhov does that Niffenegger doesn't. (assuming Checkhov is serious).

#39 Jargoneer

In the '40's & '50's authors like Louis Bromfield, Pearl Buck, Robert Penn Warren ect. were considered "Serious" Some of their work The rains came the good earth all the king's men are considered classics today. 50 years from now, quite a few of today's popular authors will be considered classical. I think we will have to wait to see what has withstood the test of time.
BTW, when I was in school in the '50's, the biggest put-down you could say about a piece of music, art or writing was that it was too "Commercial" to call an artist "commercial" was a real insult.

I like hearing about the hype because then it gives me more books to run through my personal filter. Some make it, some don't.

Love HP, hate the idea of Edgar Sawtelle. Hate Sue Monk Kidd with a virulence that surprises me. I read about 30 pages of A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore then put it and another one of his up on BookMooch. Blech. Never read Stephen King and don't want to.

ejj1955 - I was glad to read on another thread that your nemesis in your bookclub was sick or just missed the book picking meeting recently and you got some better books in for the coming year that aren't "weepy chick lit" as you put it.

A problem I have more than following hype is following suggestions of people at independent book stores. They like obscure esoteric stuff, talk me into buying it, then I either hate it and put it down or don't even bother reading it (The Car Thief is a recent example that I bought quite a few years ago then decided to finally get rid of this week.) No more listening to recommendations by people at bookstores! I prefer the recommendations here on LT.

>43 karenmarie: Thanks; yes, we managed to sneak a couple of classics into the mix! People also enjoyed The Wedding Officer, one that I seconded the recommendation of. It's not particularly profound, just a nice enjoyable story without all the angst that characterizes so much of what we've read and I've hated. Real life has plenty of angst, I don't need to wallow in it while reading.

Also recently read Three Cups of Tea, which I enjoyed. Nice change of pace for the group, too.

>39 Jargoneer: well, you have aptly summarized some bits from a book I read for a popular culture class called Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America - about the decline of the 'gatekeepers' - the people who once told us what was good and what wasn't - and the rise of populism. A fascinating book whether you agree with all of it or not. Also another interesting book is Why We Read What We Read: A Delightfully Opinionated Journey Through Bestselling Books. While the authors are not academics, they do provide some interesting analyzes.

I wish I had the time to dig them out and transcribe a few excerpts, or even remember some of the more interesting bits but unfortunately my brain is filled with early New England literature and history at the moment. . .

>43 karenmarie: as a former independent bookseller, I would suggest that you 'take what you want and leave the rest" from the recommendations of booksellers or anyone for that matter. A good handseller will either know your tastes from previous visits or will question you profusely about your tastes before making a recommendation (it's an art, imo). Books of any kind are not a one size fits all.

well - despite my admitted fondness for YA lit - i'm pretty sure i'll not be getting into Twilight..Only mentioned because the book critic on "Fresh Air" pretty much raved about the first two volumes on our ride home from work this evening. She also said that Drood started out fine but went on for far too gruesomely long.

>41 dchaikin: - the difference between Niffenegger and Chekhov is intent - Chekhov's fiction may include a love story, or more likely a lost love story, but it also has a philosophical aspect and discusses the important issues in Russia: Niffenegger could have done that using the central concept of a love story through time but decided to do nothing but the love story - we know virtually nothing about society, the implications of time travel, etc. (She could also have done with an editor, and reduced the book by 150 pages, but that is increasingly true about a lot of books published now). At the same time, I think by concentrating on a 'troubled' romance Niffenegger created a bestseller - it appeals to the emotions rather than any intellectual criteria.

>42 MarianV: - I don't really understand your point - all the authors you listed were 'serious' novelists so why wouldn't their works become classics? It is more difficult for a middle-brow author to attain classic status than it is for a serious novelist to lose critical cache.

Everything comes down to the concept of artistic value. If books are just for enjoyment then this isn't a problem - all books are equal. If we accept books can be works of art then we* are left with the fundamental question - how do we decide what is "good"?

* by 'we' I mean society in general.

#45 avaland - I wasn't trying to put down independent booksellers in general - I was thinking of a particular bookstore with particular people. I've gone in there enough over the years that I should know better and just trust my own judgment. They very rarely ask any questions much less question me profusely. They just throw the things they like. It's my problem that I've usually gone along and actually purchased what they recommend.

I looked back at my post and saw how general it was when I really was thinking about one bookstore.

I don't think that popular culture has taken over. I think what has happened is that the volume of what is available to people has increased exponentially and I think that individuals have more disposable income and more access to written works than in decades past. I think artistic talent of a high order is rare in any generation. Marketing, the current volume of work published and the rise of the bookstore conglomerates has led to a huge volume of work available, more so I believe than in the 40s and 50s. Amongst that volume are rare works of genius, of serious intent, that really make you think. I don't think that they are fewer than in the past but I think that the peripheral canon of popular work is larger. I think that houses have more books in them than in the past. Probably the so-called 'serious readership' have the same amount of 'serious lit' as in they would have had if they had been born a generation or two earlier, I just think that for those that are interested in more 'disposable' works, there's a greater choice and accessibility. None of this is a bad thing. I don't read fewer 'significant' novels because more writing is easily affordable and accessible. I don't watch less stimulating television because there are more channels. Genius is rare and I would expect no less than that. I don't believe that popular culture is drawing people away from more 'serious' endeavours. (I use inverted commas to indicate that I'm applying these terms with a real pinch of salt, so to speak - I don't judge people by what they choose to read, I'm very interested in what people think of the books I read but have absolutely no interest at all in what people think of me because of the books I read).

wow #49

Wonderful, insightful and well said.. I agree completely~

>46 bobmcconnaughey: Bob, I heard that review also. Maureen Corrigan reviewed the Twilight books (she admits to being on of the 'bitten and smitten') and Drood by Dan Simmons (which I think she didn't like). For those that didn't hear it, she does mention that abstinence is a theme in the book, and vampirism, as presented, is a stand-in for sex, but she believes the real theme in the book is the "I want", the yearning itself (and not necessarily with sex being the object). Correct me if I'm remembered something wrongly here, Bob. Interesting review but not any books I feel the need to read:-)

49 - as a fellow Brit can you explain to me where I can hear or see a decent discussion on literature?* Can you explain why the books pages in the serious papers have been reduced over the last 5 years? On the other hand, I can see and listen to wall-to-wall coverage about the latest Hollywood blockbuster - the release of Revolutionary Road has led to non-stop coverage of Kate Winslet and maybe one article on Richard Yates.

This is an interesting article from Australia - When everyone's an author - it appears that everyone now wants to be a writer but not study literature.

*I complained to the BBC about the coverage of literature on Newsnight Review and they replied that they tried to cover literature when appropriate but they also had to cover all aspects of culture, and because television, film, even the visual arts, were more popular they got more coverage. When did that become the BBC's view? Why can't they put a decent books programme on BBC4?

#47 "If we accept books can be works of art then we are left with the fundamental question - how do we decide what is "good"?"

the same way we decide if any other form of art is good. Through personal opinion. You know something's good when you see/read it, because it appeals to you on whatever level you use as an indicator of good.

You might look at a Pollack, and go wow entranced. I just see squiggles. Hence to you it's good art, and to me modern rubbish without a sense of depth, message or proportion.

So to answer the OP, "can it be good", yes, if your opinon is frequently in line with everyone else's it's likely to be. If it isn't it, isn't likely but could still be.

Now are all opinions equal?
A tougher question, yes they are at an individual level, but you might want to giv emore weight to other people whose experiences match those that you enjoy.

I agree that personal experience and opinion are the way we finally come to some determination of what's "good," though what's REALLY "good" is probably determined by time and whether a work hangs around because people need or want it.

I'd add that I don't think all opinions are equally valuable. My ability to judge literature and how it reflects life are better than my 13-year-old's.

However, I would say that the more my 13-year-old reads, the better his discriminatory powers will become. And he'll probably have to read a lot of mediocre or just plain bad stuff before he gets there.

I thought Daphne DuMaurier was the livin' end when I was 13. I still like reading her, but I also know that Rebecca is not Anna Karenina.

Isn't it London's Martin Eden that follows the development of the title character's critical taste as he has more experience with the world? It's an interesting, if somewhat obvious and heavy-handed read. He was better at what he called his "goddam dog stories."

While I tend to be suspicious of hype and try to pick critics judiciously, I admit a certain curiosity about best-sellers.

avaland suggested that people who mostly read what everyone else does want to be part of the social experience. That's an interesting observation, and I'm not sure that that's such a bad thing. But, then, I go to demolition derbies and monster truck rallies just to see what they're about.

But, of course, I take one of my highbrow books in case I get bored :-)

#51 - Avaland - You got Corrigan's review exactly; except that I thought she believes that Simmons' book was overkill rather than being intrinsically bad. If Simmons had stopped at 400 pages say she probably would've liked it a good deal (which is a problem with Simmons' other books as well) - and left out a bunch of superfluous gore.

There's a similar discussion in the thread about science fiction vs. "proper" literature, so I won't go on and on about my belief that there are some objective standards about what is good, it's not simply a matter of opinion or popularity. Despite its great popularity, The Da Vinci Code isn't particularly well written, and Anna Karenina is, whether anyone is reading it these days or not.

>53 reading_fox: - personal opinion DOESN'T define what is 'generally' good - it only defines what someone thinks is good. On some level there are general criteria that decrees Tolstoy is better than Dan Brown - despite more people reading Brown and claiming he is better. When defining these criteria personal opinion shouldn't be involved - they should be able to be debated objectively. An opinion that states "I like this" or "I hate this" means nothing to anyone other than the originator of the quote.

Are opinions are equal? No, they are not. The problem with books, and the arts in general, is that people THINK all opinions are equal because everyone can read (or see or hear). A Professor of Literature should read better than a lay reader because that's their job. (By better, I mean on a more sophisticated level: plot construction, literary techniques, intertextual references, etc) - if they don't, they should be sacked.

>57 ejj1955:: ejj1955, where is that thread?

Here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/32202

Back in the early 1990s when I was in grad school, I would have been excommunicated for saying that I thought that some literature was better than other literature. (Okay, a bit of an exaggeration but not much, I don't think.) At that time - and maybe now, I don't know - there was an idea that a work was representative of its place in culture, and no matter how poorly written, it was a reflection of what was happening at the time and as such, it was just as worthy of study as anything else. These ideas, which grew through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are in direct opposition to the idealism inherent in some of modernism (that is, the placing on a pedestal of particular writers and/or types of writers), along with a reaction to the 'Great Books' idea that was at its height by about the 1950s. There's a lot more to this, but my husband - the scholar of literary history - would have to jump in about now and tell you more about it. In any case, as part of the natural ebb and flow of critical thought, some ideas rise in opposition to what came before. So, by the time I was in grad school, post-modernism was king, and cultural studies were queen. (Awkward metaphor, that, but I'm typing fast before I leave for the grocery store.)

Given that, though, I would still argue that - as jargoneer argues in #58 - there are criteria that can be used to determine whether one work of art is 'great' and another not. BUT - and this is a big but - who determines that criteria? Where does it come from? Yes, scholars have different skills that a lay person, but they are also human and have likes and dislikes. One quick example is Robert Frost. Almost from the beginning, he was a popular poet with 'regular' people (for lack of a better way to put it). However, Frost was writing during the High Modernist period, at least at the beginning. During the 1910s, 20s, 30s, critics and scholars placed a high value on poets like Eliot and Pound - poets who used lots of oftentimes obscure allusion and who used language in a certain way. Frost mostly did neither, and was not as highly valued as a poet by the literary powers that be of the time. Does that make him a poor poet? No, it just means that he wasn't fashionable then.

One problems with the whole 'Great Books' idea is related. Once there is a canon and standards are codified, what happens with artistic works that don't fit that mold? This was especially true as more non-Western literature - and women's literature - was read and came to be seen as 'worthy' of being taught. I have more thoughts on this, but I need to gather them, I think.

The trend toward the democratization of art has both good and bad in it. On the one hand, looking at art through a cultural lens allows the looker to learn more about the society from which that art came. It allows for the inclusion of art that might have otherwise been excluded. But, at the same time, it flattens standards, too. People don't feel they need to learn about how fiction or poetry (or music or art) work because they just know what they like or don't like. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. I personally don't like Dickens. However, because I understand a bit about literary history, theory and composition, I understand why Dickens has the place he does in the canon of Western literature. So, even though I don't personally like Dickens, I can say that I think he's a better writer than, say, Harriet Beecher Stowe (to pick a novelist from the 19th century almost at random).

This is an incredibly interesting discussion. I really hope some of the academics in the group will respond to jargoneer's comment in #58: A Professor of Literature should read better than a lay reader because that's their job. (By better, I mean on a more sophisticated level: plot construction, literary techniques, intertextual references, etc) - if they don't, they should be sacked."

I happen to agree with jargoneer's comment, but it just opens the door to a discussion, again, of what "better" means in this context and who judges that.

>60 ejj1955:: ejj1955...thanks for the link to that discussion.

I came away from reading it feeling that there is certainly a fair amount of intolerance for other viewpoints going on there. Perhaps some of the posters have direct lines to God; I'm not sure. ;-)

>57 ejj1955:, 63 That topic has cycled through the SF group at least three times since I've been on LT. Many Fans (capital F) have difficulty looking critically at the literature they love. I like it, it's good and that's that. There has been some thoughtful posts from time to time. I think we could have a much better discussion on any SF here in Club Read because many of the readers here who read SF, do not limit themselves to just the genre.

>58 Jargoneer: thanks for saying that, so I don't have to:-)
>61 Talbin: More, please! Wonderfully thoughtful.

#63 only Cyops dials direct. (one has to have the gumption to skim through the most rapidly growing thread on LT, at least that i've seen. One poster, likely the author of what looks to be a rather awful self published sci-fi/thriller, has worked out the art of garnering an awful lot of attention by being..himself, i guess. A lawyer and a historian have been spending a lot of effort trying to point of the innumerable flaws in his postings, to little avail. Actually some of the rebuttals are very informative in re US constitutional history, so i keep skimming the 600+ post thread every now and again.

#61, I am not an academic, but I would like to respond to the question Talbin posed about jargoneer's comment in #58: A Professor of Literature should read better than a lay reader because that's their job. (By better, I mean on a more sophisticated level: plot construction, literary techniques, intertextual references, etc) - if they don't, they should be sacked."

It is true that literature professors can do all those things, and some of it is even interesting to their students (I used to be one of those). But I believe books should be accessible to readers who haven't studied literature in depth. By that I don't mean that they should be pablum, or require no work on the part of the reader, nor do I mean that a deeper understanding couldn't be achieved by a deeper analysis. What I mean is that if a serious, but non-academically trained, reader can't understand a book on a meaningful level, in my opinion the author hasn't done his or her job.

>64 avaland:: "I like it, it's good and that's that."

I think the difficulty lies in the use of the word "good". When we say, "This is hotter," it's fairly unambiguous. Regardless of whether we're using Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin, we all agree we're talking about a monotonically increasing measure of heat and "hot" is thataway on the scale.

However, when we say, "this is better," it's really not the same thing. The scale is not atomic (many components go into "good") and most people don't agree on what the components are—even if they do, their relative weighting differs. Unfortunately, those arguing do not stop to realize that Person A is thinking "good=enjoy", while Person B is thinking "good=well-constructed prose" and Person C is thinking "good=makes me think". I couldn't help but notice that people who started off in agreement because they both felt that there was a abstraction of good beyond personal opinion, eventually fell out over the question of whether "good" had transparent language or language that made you take notice.

Personally, I do feel that there is a somewhat abstract standard of merit in literature. I also feel that, while all people's opinions are equally valid as statements of personal preference, they are not equal in any way meaningful to me. And, finally, I think that public opinion defines a books "popularity" but not necessarily its merit. However, establishing the common ground to discuss this abstract standard of "goodness" impersonally would probably take more time than I can imagine...so the discussion tends to remain in the intellectual, rather than practical, realm for me.

And, in the end, I find myself running aground on the shoal that Talbin mentions: who decides? If I cede that decision to anyone other than myself and people whose opinions I've judged to be worth my attention, it runs the risk of becoming totally irrelevant to me.

I'm thinking about nohrt4me's (nohrt4me: no matter how badly I word this, it is not a criticism! *smile*) comment above where she says, "My ability to judge literature and how it reflects life are better than my 13-year-old's." I think that, if we accept her framing viewpoint, this is correct. However, we have to acknowledge that the statement is defined by a standard that says that the adult viewpoint is superior to that of the child, and the standards employed by adults are more "true". I don't have a problem with that...I would probably make the same statement—but we have to acknowledge the postulates just as we can't say "triangles have 180°" without acknowledging we mean "in Euclidian geometry."

However, if we extend that conceptual ranking of viewpoints onward, it's easy to see that an educated critic might say, "My viewpoint is superior to that of the non-critic because I'm more familiar with the body of art." Fair enough. Unfortunately for me, it leads to the situation where some music critic...absolutely satiated in 20th century tonalities...judges Schoenberg's ground breaking music to be the logical move beyond Wagner and, therefore, great, while something like Respighi's is derivative and, therefore, not great. If we put "non-derivative" in a standard of merit—and I probably would—from his viewpoint he might be correct. However, it loses all relevance for me because, quite frankly, I cannot stand to listen to Schoenberg and enjoy Respighi quite a bit. The abstract standard may exist, but ceases to have relevance for me and, thus, I'm back to square one.

Edited because I can't quite believe I said "more superior".

OK, Literature Professor taking a rather shaky step in here, in response to Talbin's comment on jargoneer's comment: I really hope some of the academics in the group will respond to jargoneer's comment in #58: A Professor of Literature should read better than a lay reader because that's their job. (By better, I mean on a more sophisticated level: plot construction, literary techniques, intertextual references, etc) - if they don't, they should be sacked."

Even among academics, there's no agreement on what is "good" or "worthy." If we're looking at so-called classics, most of them have passed the test of time because they are:

1. well written (and it would take forever to describe what qualifies as well-written).
2. innovative in some way (language, character, plot, structure, narrative voice, etc.).
3. have some kind of value (I hesitate to use the words "message," "lesson," or "insight," although the last would be the best) that either transcends time and place or speaks for it.
4. make a connection to the human heart and/or mind that isn't necessarily tied to a specific time or place; in other words, it bridges the time gap because it relates to and excites readers on a personal level.
5. continue to be open to new interpretations and insights.
6. give pleasure to the reader--whether that pleasure is simple entertainment, empathy, or intellectual stimulation.

This isn't anyone else's definition--just my personal off-the-cuff summary.

But even for academics, taste plays a strong role. I have some colleagues who truly believe that anything written before, say, the first World War is probably worthless because it isn't relevant to the world today. Some even want to remove the Shakespeare requirement for English majors--a scary proposition, to my mind--because they believe that contemporary writers like Toni Morrison, Martin Amis, Jeffrey Eugenides, etc., are more "relevant" and therefore "more important." And there are so-called "good" authors that I would never care to teach or read/reread. Charles Dickens, for example, who I don't consider an especially "good" writer, just a very prolific and popular one. Most of his books were not originally "books" but serialized magazine stories read by ordinary folks (not just critics and academics). I'll give him credit for branding a certain type of story and for giving us a detailed picture of the best and worst of his times.

I would say that we literature professors have the tools at hand and that we probably are better critical readers than MOST lay readers, MOST of the time. However, even after almost 20 years of teaching at the college level, I still learn new things from my perceptive students.

Which makes me ask: why is it that my students--and this is a general education class I'm speaking of, not a majors course--still got excited by Doctor Faustus and Frankenstein? I would say that whatever we are defining as "good," these works have it, and these students, many of whom initially said they never read unless they have to, recognize it.

Back later for more comments--have to write a midterm exam.

I just erased my post after thinking about this too much.

>67 TadAD:

I don't think it's just that an adult viewpoint is assumed to be better than the 13-year-old child's, but that experience is assumed to give you critical skills that inexperience does not. If you've only read a few books or children's books, you don't have the same framework for comparison that having read widely gives you. If you have, for example, read both Faulkner and Dan Brown, you have some basis for saying Faulkner is better. And if you've read a lot of other authors, too, you can formulate a basis for understanding--such as the list Cariola posts--that helps you evaluate each new work you read.

68 - Even among academics, there's no agreement on what is "good" or "worthy."
-------------------

That's certainly true. A few years ago I had an amazing prof who taught me how to really read, and he had no use for Virginia Woolf. Said she was overrated. This term I have a different prof who is also teaching me a lot, and he thinks Virginia Woolf is brilliant. Is one of these guys an idiot? Of course not. They have different opinions, and they can justify them.

Deborah -- it's very depressing to hear that university level English lit profs don't see the relevance of Shakespeare or other pre-WWI writers. That is just sad.

#67 TadAD, no feathers ruffled on me at all.

My critical opinion is superior to my 13-year-old's because I a) have read more widely, b) have higher expectations than entertainment from literature--though I'll settle for that--and c) have wider life experiences.

Thanks to Cariola, #68, for going out there on a limb as a real-live lit prof (and good luck with that mid-term). Great list!

I am IN academia (M.A. in lit, but always worked and taught in journalism) but not OF academia (my proletariat roots start to show after a few hours acquaintance, and I'm sure that shows through on LT as well).

I'd agree with #58, the always blunt and provocative jargoneer, that a lit prof who hasn't developed Hume's "delicacy of taste" isn't work his salt.

But I'd add that decades ago, when I was in grad school, most of my profs were fairly insulated white males without much experience with the broad swath of humanity. I usually ended up talking with the wives at mixers, and, my God, some of these guys couldn't dress themselves. As far as I was concerned, this stunted their critical creds.

Oops, in danger of hogging my own thread now.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone. I appreciate the increasing depth the thread taking and participation of all.

As I said in #53 "Now are all opinions equal?
A tougher question, yes they are at an individual level, but you might want to giv emore weight to other people whose experiences match those that you enjoy.

Hence a 13yo's expereince will lead them to rate things as 'good' that I and other non-13 yo's would not. But to assume the reverse, that what I with my more experience deem good, is therefore also good for a 13yo is equally wrong. As clearly demonstrated by the professors described above.

There is no absolute good art - or at least no-one on this thread has yest managed to describe it. Wider experience certainly opens you to comprehending a greater range of works, and to extracting deeper levels of meaning from them. But it doesn't make those works "better" any more than a professor of emtomology is better than a bricklayer. One knows more than the other about certain facets of life is all.

>74 reading_fox:
Your last paragraph is the best thing I've read in this thread so far.

>74 reading_fox: - no-one is saying that any piece of art will be appreciated by everyone, that is impossibility. However, while there are many people on LT that don't like Dickens there are very few who would say he is a writer without merit.

The logical conclusion from your argument is that there is no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' novels, since good is 'better' than bad: there are now only novels. Therefore the statement, "i think this novel is good", is no longer relevant; someone can only say "this is a novel I preferred to some other novels". Likewise, there can no longer be such thing as good or bad writers, only writers.

By logical extropolation therefore - Jeffrey Archer is the equal to Charles Dickens; C. M. Coolidge ('dogs playing poker') is the equal to Picasso; William McGonagall the equal to Shakespeare, and so on.

I'd differentiate between "good = I liked it" and "good = I think it has literary merit." I've found some of Mercedes Lackey's books good in the first sense but wouldn't argue for them in the second; likewise, I recognize that Joseph Conrad may have literary merit but that doesn't mean I could get through one of his books; I found the attempts excruciating.

>74 reading_fox: But it doesn't make those works "better" any more than a professor of emtomology is better than a bricklayer. One knows more than the other about certain facets of life is all.

This is what I believe rhetoricians would call a false analogy - comparing apples to oranges.

I would reframe the question: Is Bob the Bricklayer a better bricklayer than Bill the Bricklayer? Now you can put some standards to it, and now you can actually come up with a yes or no answer.

Edited to sound a little less like I'm on the attack, which I'm not. ;-)

>70 ejj1955: & 73: ejj1955 and nohrt4me

I don't agree with this analysis of the underlying framework. It still pre-supposes the adult value system is better—and I'm deliberately using that word because it was used in the original quote—than that of the child. Each of your criteria is predicated on an adult value system. Putting it more simply: is Ulysses or The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle a better book as far as the values of a 10 year old are concerned? If you say Ulysses, I'm going to say "Rubbish!" However, though it's quite poorly written from an adult perspective, the latter book has proven to be quite meaningful to kids.

I don't disagree that we are, in general, talking about adult sensibilities. My point is not that Relativism is all that can be assumed.

My point was that we tend to impose a hierarchy of judgment without realizing it...as shown by that quote...and that, once we do so, we run the risk of "better" judgments becoming irrelevant to us as individuals.

While I'm not generally disposed towards hierarchies of taste, the fact that there are some books that I dislike or do not find interesting, but which I still acknowledge to be good books, suggests to me that I have internalised some critical standards independent of my own preferences. I find this most often with poetry: there are some poets whose work leaves me cold, i.e. unengaged, yet whom I can recognise as technically proficient and accomplished.

When I was in my teens, all I cared about in fiction was story. Characterisation, imagery, even the ability to write a shapely, or grammatical, sentence: none of those concerned me. If the author could provide me with at least one character I could identify with, and a storyline that gripped my attention, I was richly satisfied.

I still love story - narrative is not dead in this household - but now my enjoyment is lessened by false notes struck in the other aspects of writing, unless I make a deliberate decision to ignore them.

My son is 12, and he is just as story-oriented as I was at that age. It will be interesting to see whether he remains that way.

#76 "The logical conclusion from your argument is that there is no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' novels, since good is 'better' than bad: there are now only novels. Therefore the statement, "i think this novel is good", is no longer relevant; someone can only say "this is a novel I preferred to some other novels". Likewise, there can no longer be such thing as good or bad writers, only writers.
"

yes, that was precisely my point.

If you state that there are good writers, you have to agree on what makes a writer universally good. And as we've already discussed upthread we can't agree.

#78 those "standards" face the same problem we can't agree on them.

As you've said what's good for a 13yo isn't good for an adult, and for one adult, not so for another.

>68 Cariola: thank you for your thoughtful post. I particularly liked your list of reasons why classics have stood the test of time. Those very things are the reasons why I enjoy reading so many different kinds of fiction.

>80 timjones: I still love story - narrative is not dead in this household - but now my enjoyment is lessened by false notes struck in the other aspects of writing, unless I make a deliberate decision to ignore them.

Yes, this has happened to me also.

#79 Of course there is relative value when we are talking about comparing apples to oranges or adult reading to children's reading.

Let's turn your argument around. If you ask most adults if Charlotte's Web is a "good" book for six year-olds, most would say "Yes." But you wouldn't get the same response if you asked a 12-year old if The Great Gatsby or The Brothers Karamzov are "good" books. They simply don't have enough world or reading experience to judge these books.

It sounds as though you're assuming that most adult readers consider children's books "rubbish." I don't think that's so. In fact, we have the benefit of experience--of having been children ourselves--to apply. And most adults recognize that it's necessary for kids to cultivate reading as a pleasure, which is why we hope that there are exciting, interesting books out there for them--and that hopefully children are also gaining benefits like vocabulary, and learning a bit about character, tone, and structure as well as plot and whatever the content of their reading may be.

The reasons that I don't read children's books or YA novels are many; but it's not because I think they are bad. Kids have to grow into adults who read well, and that comes from reading quality books as kids.

On the other hand, if we are comapring books for adult to one another, I think it would generally be agreed by most adults that Anna Karenina has more qualities of a "good" (if not more fun) book than The DaVinci Code.

#80 TimJones: When I was in my teens, all I cared about in fiction was story. Characterisation, imagery, even the ability to write a shapely, or grammatical, sentence: none of those concerned me. If the author could provide me with at least one character I could identify with, and a storyline that gripped my attention, I was richly satisfied.

I still love story - narrative is not dead in this household - but now my enjoyment is lessened by false notes struck in the other aspects of writing, unless I make a deliberate decision to ignore them.

My son is 12, and he is just as story-oriented as I was at that age. It will be interesting to see whether he remains that way.

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I totally agree, but wouldn't have said it so eloquently. Interestingly, my 12 year old daughter, who is a much better writer than I was at that age, recently had a story returned with the comment "not enough plot." I laughed and thought her teacher sure hadn't been reading the stuff I've been reading lately! And he's obviously educated, so he would have gone through university reading texts with no plot. But I guess at the grade 7 level, they're still teaching kids to look for plot. Which makes it challenging when one is suddenly asked to read a text that lacks a plot. No wonder so many students balk and complain.

#84: Interesting comments, Nickelini. I wonder whether the teacher really meant "not enough stuff happens"? I don't think that's quite the same as plot.

I like fiction where stuff happens, and to me, this doesn't make a story or novel any more contrived than one in which very little happens outside the characters' heads. In the real world, stuff happens. Our lives are full of plot - or at least incident - even if we don't always realise it at the time.

(None of the above is meant as a criticism of your daughter's story!)

I like to have hype because it alerts me to something I might want to read. Then I make my own opinions. Alot of times the majority gets it right and a book is fabulous even if everyone is reading it, after all isn't that what is supposed to happen with a book? If the majority is wrong, which in my experience is not often, then you get the satisfaction of knowing as much and the reasons.

>83 Cariola:: Cariola,

Edit: I had a long re-explanation here involved John Cage's 4'33", various logic systems, etc., but it doesn't seem to be important.

The bottom line is that my example was not logically commutative with regard to the point I was making; I've not made the slightest assumption that adults think children's books are rubbish.

I believe that people are assuming objectivity when it doesn't exist and, by not examining their premises, failing to recognize that. The very controversy in your original post #68 supports this, imo. There's not a thing wrong with assuming some postulates when making an argument, but I feel there is something wrong with failing to recognize that's what's being done. Don't jump down my throat, the fact that I cite your post does not mean I'm referring to you.

However, I seem to be making no headway and more and more things are being read into what I said, so I'll just bow out.

TadAD, if you're still here, and I hope you won't go away mad, I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the distinction you're making. But I don't think we disagree.

I would agree that there are no objective standards for judging literature (as a journalist, I believe the notion of objectivity is a myth; best you can hope for is fairness and balance).

However, I think that those who read widely and have done so longer, those who have more experience with life, those with greater insights into the human condition make better critics.

What heartens me about this conversation is that we're moving away from a kind of facile rejection of popular literature because we don't want to "run with the herd" and toward thinking more critically about why we read as individuals and why having common literary bonds in a society matters (or doesn't).

In message #42 I pointed out that in the late '30's. '40's & early '50's, when books like The Good Earth by Pearl Buck All the King's men by Robert Penn Warren & The rains came by Louis Bromfield just to use a few examples, all these books were very popular. They were #1 on the best seller lists. They were Book-of-the-month club selections. They were made into movies.
Today, we consider these books classics. Not everything they wrote endured into "classical" status. Pearl Buck had several novels appear as serials in the "Ladies Home Journal" Both Warren, Bromfield, Faulkner & Fitzgerald wrote stories for the "Saturday Evening Post", a very popular magazine.
The point I am making is that one of the definitions of a "Classic" is that it has withstood the test of time.
It is quite possible that some books very popular today will be read 50, 100 years from now. Others won't. And very few authors write all "classics." Some books are usually better than others. Just because we refer to an author as "serious" doesn't mean everything they write is a classic.

>89 MarianV: - I think we have all acknowledged that point about 'classics' unless you believe that there is no such thing as a 'good' book, therefore there can be no classics.

The point I take from your post is different - the fact that the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal published those writers shows that the gap between Literature and the popular was much smaller in pre-pop culture days.

i think jargoneer is right - in one sense the reading public has expanded greatly in terms of sheer numbers and in book choices. But the assumptions of authors and publishers of books meant for "middle class" readers - very gross generalization - when books became a major commercial enterprise in the 19th C and on into the mid 20th was a fairly extensive background in general knowledge and the gap between Lit and pop was at least assumed not to be all that great. (Not counting penny dreadfuls, proto SF (steam man of the plains) and the like).

The Saturday Review was in every doctor's / dentist office growing up, iirc. I don't recall if women's mags featured articles about sex tips on their covers quite so frequently back in the 50s-60s

#90
Do you believe that the most popular books today have a very slim chance of becoming classics?

Another point, very few public schools today have Shakespeare on their reading list. In our system, Romeo& Juliet was required for 9the grade, Merchant of Venice for 10th Hamlet for 11 & Macbeth for senior.
There was also a "track" for Trade school students but that included Apprentice & on-the-job training instead of advanced literature. Our school also had a weekly student run newspaper & a monthly "Literary Journal" which received a lot of poetry contributions & quite a few of them came from the "trade" students. There was also a 4 year foreign language requirement for those on the college bound track as many colleges required taking a profiency exam in a foreign language. We were also required to take 2 years of Latin (plus the "modern" language.)

By the time my children entered High School, most of these requirements had been dropped. Which may help to explain why TV guide, National Enquirer & People are in my Dr.'s office instead of the Saturday Review

Your Shakespeare list is similar to mine. Romeo & Juliet and Merchant of Venice in 9th grade, Julius Ceasar in 10th. 11th was American Lit, so we had no Shakespeare that year, but 12th was MacBeth as a class + another. Each class was broken up into smaller groups who read an additional play, and presented it to the class. My group did Hamlet. Other groups in my class did As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Anthony and Cleopatra and Othello. That was a really fun project(s).

>92 MarianV: - considering the list of bestselling novels in the US since 2000 is dominated by John Grisham, Dan Brown, Mitch Alborn, Stephen King & the Left Behind novels I find it doubtful that any classics will be found.
Compare the 1930's list with the list since 2000. The former contains Nobel Prize winners, fiction in translation, and even Virginia Woolf!

>94 Jargoneer:

I looked at the lists for various decades, hoping to be able to point to at least a couple of books that had sneaked through in recent decades that I though might become classics, but, depressingly, you are right. Certainly one thing that struck me was the shrinking of variety--in recent decades, the same names show up over and over, and some years Danielle Steel, for example, has three of the top ten best sellers. Sorry: no classics there.

I'm not sure how to formulate this, but I'm wondering if maybe more people are reading, but reading dreck, and the good books are out there, but garnering a smaller audience? I wonder what the absolute numbers are for best-selling books then versus now?

>95 ejj1955: I'll be kind enough to say that not all of what reaches the bestseller lists is "drek" (Stephen King, for one, writes very well, even if his subject matter may not be to everyone's taste). But I don't think most of them will become classics either.

One thing that I think has greatly influenced today's readers is simply the pace of life--particularly for younger people. Anything that takes too much time or concentration is often considered not worth the time and concentration. We/they want it fast so that we/they can move on to the next new thing, and one can't read Dostoevsky at the pace of a Grisham.

Many of the students I see on a daily basis are constantly on the move and constantly looking for a way to do it--anything--faster. Technology is a great thing in some ways, but I also think it has something to do with the lack of patience, concentration, and imagination that I see more and more of these days. A lot of information and entertainment gets handed to them visually via television, video, and the internet; reading, in comparison, is hard work, so when they do read, they want something entertaining that they can read while multi-tasking, something that they don't have to think about too much. I think that's one reason that so many bestsellers are--well, not exactly drek in all cases, but perhaps the better word is superficial.

jargoneer, #94,
The local K-Mart sells best sellers at a discount, 35% off. There is no "literary" fiction on the shelves. I'm wondering whether the people who buy their books at supermarkets form a new market. Is it possible that the rate of purchase of literary fiction has changed little over the years and that the overall book-buying rate has increased?

Here are the bestseller lists from yesterday's Melbourne Age. The National Bestseller list is based on all books sold, whereas the Independent list is based on books sold by independent booksellers.

National
1 - 4 Stephanie Meyer titles.
5. Underbelly: Tale of Two Cities The stories behind the new TV series.
6. The Associate
7. The Host More Steph.
8. Twilight A special edition.
9. He's Just Not That Into You
10. Run for Your Life James Patterson

Independent
1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
2 - 4 Stephanie Meyer
5. Dreams from My Father Barack Obama
6. The Slap Christos Tsiolkas
7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
8. The White Tiger
9. The Girl Who Played with Fire
10. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

While there are no Nobel prize winners in the Independent list, at least there are a few books that you wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen reading on the tram.

ETA
Is book discounting skewing the best-seller lists?

being a smart alecky guy i didn't bother w/ suchlike, but before my wife went off to dook in 1969 she'd gotten hold of some list of 100 books every student should have read before college. I know the summer before college was when she read (among much else) several of the classic (and v. long) Russian novels. I'd love to find that list - i'll see what she remembers.

Of course it also included a bunch of Hemingway which didn't appeal to her nearly as much.

And also see

http://www.librarything.com/topic/58702

Most of us agree that the list is flawed in various ways, but it's still fun to measure one's reading against it and also, perhaps, be reminded of some books one would like to read.

>94 Jargoneer: It has been my observation that 'good books' fare better on the paperback list, than the hardcover lists. Not much, but better. This week's NYTimes lists as an example: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/bestseller/ (one does have to look beyond the top five though:-)

>96 Cariola: One would think that such a pace of life would adapt naturally to reading more short fiction, but I don't think that has happened.

>89 MarianV: & others; If one thinks about various adult classic novels and ponders what it is about them that might have carried them through the years (beyond the generic statement 'it has stood the test of time', that is), could one than postulate or predict future classics? So, for example, if we consider what has made To Kill a Mockingbird, Madame Bovary, Ulysses, Silas Marner, and Great Expectations will we be able to come up with a formula?

I like hype. It doesn't always lead me to a good book but it does help inform me about books that I normally wouldn't come across. However in saying that I do resist some hyped up books sometimes only to discover that I really enjoyed them.

Harry Potter I decided to read after the 6th one was released and only because I was unemployed, feeling sorry for myself, and spent a few weeks reading books like it was a full time job - I really enjoyed that series. Twilight I read because a friend lent me the whole series and after 4 months I decided I better read them or give them back. I started the first one expecting to hate it and instead read it straight through to the end and missed dinner.

Current hype I'm resisting: Shopaholic and Baby and others in that series. I got so many emails form Borders about that one leading up to its release last year and I have never even bothered to pick it up.

Hype I believed and was disappointed: The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Gathering by Anne Enright.

Wonderful reads are found in different places for different people.
We are bound to red some we don't like on our way, but that's okay too.
Different reads are treasures for different folks, remember. Goddess save me from ever being a book snob..

Goddess save me from ever being a book snob..

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Amen!