Literary Snubs

I judge people when I discover that their recreational reading habits are subpar. Nora Roberts? Deal-breaker. Tom Clancy? Right-wing Republican. Books written by Rita Mae Brown and her cat? I'm not returning your calls. What are your deal-breakers?

I decided this guy I was dating was not going to work out when I noticed he had one of those condensed versions of bestselling mysteries (put out by Random House? Readers Digest? I can't remember)
I mean, what, you can't handle a regular bestseller mystery? It's not like they are hard to read.

Anyone who can't even fill one shelf of a bookshelf -- regardless of content -- is probably not going to become fast friends with me.

Also, someone whose library consists of nothing but "Biblical stuff" and the occasional Left Behind book. I'd probably report them to the Department of Homeland Security before they firebomb an abortion clinic, gay bar, federal building, or attack a well-meaning Sikh.

On the other hand, I met my girlfriend (going on 5 years together) because we could discuss the Dune series at length and she knew who Dorothy Parker was.

It depends not so much on what they read as how react to it. If they read trash and know it's trash, then fine. If they not only defend trash as good, but then argue that good literature is elitist, unnecessary, "doesn't tell a good story", etc. - then their number gets deleted from the mobile phone...

I gotta agree with the bible stuff. My mother-in-law has nothing but Christian self-help and dieting books on her shelves, which are part of the entertainment center surrounding the t.v. The other shelves hold ceramic and glass angels. Needless to say, there's tension.

I've had numerous arguments with people about that same issue. It's hard to take people who defend Twilight by saying, "Well, at least kids are reading!"

Plus, what's wrong with being an elitist? Soldiers aspire to become part of Special Forces. Professionals want to become well-regarded and in-demand experts in their field. From what I gather, Harvard Law is a better law school than Liberty University's "law" "school." Being in the elite is good. I see elitism as an attitude, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Just look at right wing Christians as religious elitists, since they see themselves as The Chosen Ones, even after they head into the airport bathroom or share crystal meth with a male hooker. (Sometimes elitism makes people blind to neon-lit hypocrisy.) I see the same thing with the word "devout," which some people think means "morally bulletproof."

Here's Bill Maher being more eloquent than me:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/04/13/pat_robertson/

>3 kswolff: "anyone who can't fill a bookshelf..."

That reminds me of another litmus test: If someone is at my house for the first time and fails to inspect and comment on my bookshelves, they're crossed off! (Of course, comments like "You sure have a lot of books!" don't count.)

4: good Ian, you make me feel better - because I have read at least one book by each of the people in Scratch's list, but I knew they were crap - they were just available and I was in need of something to read.... I've been known to read the "Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990" if there was nothing else available.

7: I completely agree. Also someone who is new to PDX and not all excited about going to Powell's for the first time.

>5 mstrust:

BIBLE ONLY WORK OF FICTION IN FAMILY'S HOME

LAWRENCE, KS—After a weekend visit to the home of Gloria and Ben Kirchbauer, nephew James Fenderman, 26, said Monday that he was unable to locate a single work of fiction in the house. "I just wanted something to read before bed, but all my aunt and uncle had was a row of Time-Life how-to books, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, a yearbook, and Sincerely, Andy Rooney," Fenderman said. "The only book with any narrative whatsoever was the Good News Bible." Fenderman said he finally settled for a March 1995 issue of Prevention magazine that he'd found on a shelf with his aunt's cookbooks.

10: Is that from the Onion?

>8 anna_in_pdx: Present company excluded. I admire your honesty. Having started this snobby thread, I'm too embarrassed to admit my guilty pleasures.

ETA: Not the Onion, the New York Review of Books.

kswolf: Nothing wrong with wanting do be the best ... but where things get ugly, IMHO, is when people start looking down at others whose best might not be up to their level.

It might truly be an accomplishment to be in the Special Forces, but that doesn't make a "regular" soldier (or a non-soldier) a lesser person.

(Note: I don't mean to imply this is your attitude.)

And that being said, ever since I found out a co-worker was recommending that Prayer for Jabez stuff, I haven't been able to take her seriously.

I found a colleague of mine reading one of George MacDonald Fraser's "Flashman" books. He told me that he was working his way through the series in an attempt to improve his reading. He must have seen my sneer, for he opened the book pointed feverishly at the endnotes. "No, no, Mate, it's not what you think. It's real autobiography ." It almost broke my heart to disabuse him.

13: I feel kind of depressed when I hear that a friend who is otherwise pretty sensible is into one of those fad pseudo-religious self-help things like "The Secret". I don't ditch the friend, though, but it is a topic I avoid.

>14 huffward: - why were you sneering at George MacDonald Fraser? He's a clever witty writer.

Yes, I perked up at that one too.

The FLASHMAN books are certainly not trash. Buy that co-worker a single malt glass of scotch by way of apology!

Cliff, you have to tell us your dealbreakers since you're here.

13: I didn't mean to imply that. And this isn't about what people are doing now, but what they strive for. What is their aspiration, their MacBeth-like ambition. Why do you think the Army recently adopted the black beret as the fashion accoutrement for even the lowliest, uninspired buck private? Is this inspiring soldiers to be their best? Or is it dragging the Green Berets down to their level? Luckily, not all decisions in the US Armed Forces are based on fashion accessorizing. Then again, the US Armed Forces is notorious for its gay witch hunts. Winning the War on Terror the only way they know how -- by firing any gay translator who knows Arabic they can get their heteronormative hands on. I don't know, that's just silly (and stupid and bigoted and idiotic and putting us in greater danger from bad guys who also hate gays).

I once had a high school English teacher explain to me why it was important, nay, CRUCIAL for Canadian children to read W.O. Mitchell and it was the greatest feat of esophageal self-control I have ever endured. Just no handy potted plants to discreetly barf into.

I had someone highly recommend Edward Rutherford's doorstopper SARUM and backed away from them with my hands held out, universal sign language for "geddafuggawayfromme".

Adults who are as entranced by the HARRY POTTER and TWILIGHT books as their tween offspring.

People who read 8 or 10 book series.

Anyone who calls Kevin J. Anderson a "master storyteller".

Anyone who calls Asimov a "master stylist".

I could go on but you get the pitcha...

Cliff, you wouldn't fit in in any Minnesota-based science fiction writing groups ;)

Heinlein tells some good stories -- when he's not being obscenely talky or performing a multipage authorial filibuster. I'd consider him an anti-stylist. Burying noteworthy concepts and stories under chunks of beige boring workmanlike prose.

I like name-dropping Pynchon and Beckett as reputable sci fi authors to the fanatical Harry Potter-ite parental units, then watching their brains explode.

I also find a challenge when these same philistine hordes dismiss Pynchon, Beckett, etc. as "empty stylists." As if Pynchon's hyperintellectual esoteric fictions were just "stylistic fluff." Whatevs, dude. Go back to reading your Extruded Star Wars Product(TM) and let the adults talk.

Explaining the false dichotomy of "style vs. substance" with these same people who embrace the bland, beige, anonymous prose of Bestseller Land.

I'm reading The Horus Heresy which is part of a projected 12-part series. Then again, I consider any Warhammer 40K product as the literary equivalent of a Spinal Tap song.

Plus, I like finding people who read a variety of things. High art to cheap trash and everything in between. Somebody whose library reveals they spent too long in any section of the bookstore is a potential deal-breaker.

My girlfriend is a big Heinlein fan, but after all my complaining about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- a literary style reminiscent of minutes from a Brezhnev-era Politburo committee meeting -- she hasn't pushed any more Heinlein on me. I did like Stranger in a Strange Land, but the critiques on organized religion were "near beer" for me. Since I read my share of DAF Sade, my reaction was, "How was this ever controversial?" But she gives me guff for reading Warhammer books, so it breaks even ;)

#16 - 17

Fair enough. Humour, of course, is tricky; you either like it or hate it. I must confess that I've read a couple of Flashman books on recommendation and loathed them.

I've had mixed results with Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker" and "Restaurant" were good; the others dropped off in quality.

#22: But you didn't find the writing TERRIBLE, did you? Maybe the humour didn't appeal but Fraser knows how to construct a sentence and compose dialogue, doncha think? Some of the other people we're namedropping here write as if they're plucking random words out of a hat...

dealbreaker? "I don't like reading."

>25 bencritchley:

Makes my stomach churn when I hear that.

Twenty or thirty years ago Rita Mae Brown was cited in a book called The Portable Curmudgeon. I went out and bought a stack of her books in mass market paperback. They should still be here. Would you folks think it ill of me if I ever got around to reading them.

Back upon a time (decades ago) when I still thought I might correct myself and become sociable enough to marry and have children, I had a girlfriend. She was a PhD. candidate in Chemistry and perhaps the smartest person I had ever known personally. She read trash on the bus, and when I rubbed it in she grew resentful. She read closely all day in the laboratory. On the bus, she wanted fluff. It was marvelous talking with her; I didn't need to explain myself. That the relationship didn't work out was my loss.

What got me actually to put pen to paper here though was Cliff in 20. I took 8 or 10 books to be synechdoche or metonymy or whatever, and recalling that I am devastated that I cannot just buy all of the books of the Mahabharata in one good English series, I felt I had been dismissed. I have heard, relevantly, that The Human Comedy bears reading.

I think a comment like, "You don't need all these books," would make me think, and act on, "I don't need you."

Robert

I got hooked on Warhammer 40K books when I was a grad student in history. After force-feeding yourself Foucault and stuff written by academics for academics, it's nice to read a novel about chainsword-wielding supersoldiers fighting alien zombies and space demons.

Now that I'm in the "real world" and don't have to read deconstructionist whatever, I like to enrich my reading beyond Warhammer fluff. Now I have the time and the passion to indulge my curiosity and dig into some of the Canon I never got around to reading. What others see as elitist or a drudgery or Dead White Guys (Celine, Balzac, Henry James, Nabokov, etc.), I see as a pleasure, just as pleasurable as supersoldiers and space demons. Warhammer 40K is a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon; Balzac is a nice quirky microbrew; Marcel Proust is Johnny Walker Blue. We all have to eat to survive, but it is nice to indulge the senses and have a really damn fine meal. Man doesn't live on bread (and bestsellers) alone. And Dan Brown is Wonderbread, which isn't even food.

28: Care to suggest a good Warhammer 40K book to start with? One of my cousins was into the tabletop game when we were young, and I always liked the art in the stat books. Now all your drum-banging has piqued my interest.

On topic, I have known *way* too many people who cite Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead as their "favorite book". Anyone who tells me this is immediately shelved under "intellectual lightweight". I don't care how many redeeming qualities you have: you can never quite redeem that opinion. At best, you have abysmal taste in writing, even if you don't buy into objectivism. At worst, you're a thoughtless, careless nutjob.

... or a greedy shortsighted prick who knows less about capitalism than a dying Irish setter.

Warhammer books, eh? Try the Eisenhorn trilogy by uber-prolific Dan Abnett. There's also "The Inquisitor Wars" by Ian Watson The latter reads like Huysmans on a bad acid trip ... in space. Over-the-top, tongue in cheek, and very British. Quality Space Gothic with plenty of Lovecraft-inspired horror.

Here's my review of a Warhammer 40K book:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/03/20/043817.php

Many thanks. I think I'm going to shoehorn Eisenhorn (I tried to come up with a clever pun, but no dice) into my queue as soon as I can manage. I'll let you know what I think.

Theoretical literary deal-breaker: A friend of mine who works in finance was recently telling me that no fewer than *three* coworkers (yes, these were purportedly *adults*) were going around recommending the Twilight series to everyone in the office. I've never had to work in an office environment, but it's looking more and more likely that that's going to change in the near future. If I experience that same nonsense, the private judgments will be quick and pitiless.

#26 I have met people who think Battlefield Earth is the best sf novel ever written. And they're not Scientologists. Just stupid.

I guess I am truly fortunate to work in an environment where you can have good discussions about Chris Wickham and his Inheritance of Rome and Twilight is snubbed (even though I will read it just to see what the fuss is all about). If someone reads Twilight or Harry Potter I will say, "At least they are reading". In my family, my mother and brother do not read books, so I think it was very good when my brother picked up HP.
And on the other hand, I cannot stand people who read 'must-read' books that they would never enjoy simply because they must be read. My time is precious, and like mentioned before, next to reading for work and study, I read trash. That relaxes me, and when the choice is between sleeping on the train or trash, I'll take trash ;).
I guess it all comes down to the way people perceive the books they read. If they say Harry Potter, or Twilight or Dan Brown or whatever else are the most brilliant books they ever read and they believe half the stuff in the books, I lose respect. If they simply read them for fun, let them have fun.

Oh, and the comment about Tom Clancy and Republicans made me laugh, I am sure this is based on the posters experience, but my dad had all Tom Clancy's books, and yet he was a big socialist (we're dutch ;)).

My deal breakers would be books like The Secret and A new earth. Oh, and Erich von Daniken...

Nothing wrong with Erich von Däniken... unless you actually believe his daft theories.

Ah yes, the "Harry Potter at least they're reading" defence. Except in most cases all they're bloody reading is Harry Potter. One friend tried that one me, declaring happily that at least his son was now reading. I asked what he read when he finished the Rowling books. Apparently he started them all over again...

If someone has all the books by Däniken (and there are way too many), then I am inclined to believe it is more than just curiosity.

With regards to the "at least they are reading" comment, what would you rather have: them reading just HP (or any other trash) or not reading at all. Because lets face it, some people just do not like reading. I hate sports, and I think it's just a matter of personal preference. Of course they'd be better of reading and informing themselves, but for some people that is really too much to ask (think of dyslectics. Not saying they never read, but it is an extra hurdle). I guess you can't win 'em all, and should be happy with small victories, which is the way I feel when my brother at least picks up something to read...

Well, ok, owning all of von Däniken's books is daft.

Reading HP over and over again is not reading. At least if they're not reading, there's a chance they might start.

True, over and over again is not reading. But starting with HP and learning that reading can be fun is a good thing :)

A lot of this discussion depends on a person's attitude towards a book. Sometimes it is dependent on irony. I enjoy Tom Clancy as simple techno-thrillery entertainment, although his novels give more personality to the weapons systems than the actual people.

Do you enjoy trash ironically?

I have a couple von Daniken books at home. Then again, I also have Donna Kossy's Kooks and Strange Creations, all about nutjob theories.

I also rationalize reading trash by calling them "palate cleansers." After reading Beckett's "Trilogy," Golden Compass was a nice change of pace. His Dark Materials is not trash, but I definitely do not read YA books ... or put them on the same level as Great Literature. I shudder when I discover people reading Harry Potter and not much else. Adults primarily reading "Harry Potter" (for whatever reason, kids or no kids) is kind of sad. No wonder we make such bad money, economic, and foreign policy decisions in this country. Our average literary intelligence is still at the 8th grade level. No wonder our culture is so infantile.

I have several books about flying saucers, Nazi and otherwise. It amuses how feeble their arguments are, and I'm astonished on reading them that there are people who actually believe it all. So, it's not reading so much ironically as reading with a sense of superiority....

There's been a bit of fuss recently over the Hugo best novel shortlist, and accusations that some of the books are YA and that YA books are not as good as adult novels. If YA novels were every bit as sophisticated as adult novels, there wouldn't need to be a YA label.

"Somebody whose library reveals they spent too long in any section of the bookstore is a potential deal-breaker."

Very nicely put.

"Do you enjoy trash ironically?"

I call bullshit on that. Someone who claims they read trash "because it's funny" or something like that is just too embarrassed or "hip" to admit to just ... liking it.

40: Oh yeah. Come on. Guilty pleasure, OK. Ironic, no. I read trash and I know it's trash but I also enjoy it or I would not waste my time. The only thing I could say I read "ironically" is trash I really hate (like Dan Brown) where I really am reading it solely to mock it.

I want to read Battlefield Earth and Atlas Shrugged, but I'm going to need a Heaping Dose of Irony just to get through them. Since I detest both authors as misguided egomaniacs who espouse crackpot idiot theories, I can safely say I'm not hiding behind any hipster posturing.

I like laughing at trash, especially when it's badly done and the writer takes his or herself too seriously. Probably why I don't go for religious writing. I'd put the Bible up with Dan Brown as badly written trash. But I'm probably going to Hell anyway, along with the Jewish stand-up comedians, Gandhi, and those evil pagan Catholics ;) Which is fine by me. "Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." -- Mark Twain

42: Then why do you want to read them? Dan Brown took me one wasted evening, but it would take more of my time than I really want to waste to get through an Ayn Rand tome.

Morbid curiosity. If I can get through Juliette by Sade, I should be able to stomach Ayn Rand. Needless to say, both Battlefield Earth and Atlas Shrugged aren't on the top of my reading queue. I have more than enough good stuff to read first.

james patterson is killing the rain forest. must we waste more paper on him every month...

Maybe Greenpeace could ram his house?

My dealbreaker: people who have a bookcase of perfectly matched books, and when you ask what they thought of them they tell you, without shame, that they never read...the books are just for decoration.

47: Anne Fadiman in Confessions of a common reader wrote about an interior decorator that stayed at someone's house and when the people returned they found that he had organized their books all by color and height. Later, he died in a train accident or something, and these people and all their friends felt guilty for not feeling particularly bad about it.

Not a snub, but odd:

When my girlfriend's grandmother asks, "Have you read all your books?" (I have a half dozen bookcases chock-full of books.)

My grandmother asks me the same question and I'm not sure what it means? Curiosity, genial humor, back-handed compliment, or a surgical strike of grandmotherly guilt? (Bonus points: She grew up during the Depression, yet is a diehard "Greed is Good" Republican loyalist. So should I be ashamed of my worldly possessions? Or is my conspicuous consumption the hallmark of a good free-market-lovin' capitalist?)

I usually just smile and give a harmless laugh before my brain explodes.

{completely off topic}

To kswolff, I have lost track of the threads that were discussing Ayn Rand but has anyone brought up this quote?

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

That's hilarious! I could imagine Groucho Marx saying that to a bewildered Margaret Dumont.

I think you'd be better off giving the 14-year old some pot and a Rush album. That would do less damage and Geddy Lee is far less annoying than Ayn Rand. It worked for Jason Segel in the TV show "Freaks and Geeks."

My beloved high school "philosophy" teacher (it was an advanced "discussion seminar" called "Challenge") told me I should read The Fountainhead I was impressed by Howard Roark's stubborn individualism. This led me to read Also Sprach Zarathustra and to hate Reagan and other jackbooted conservative thugs. Probably not the intended consequence. Then again, I was raised Lutheran and have taken Luther's bombastic iconoclasm to heart, even if I did abandon the faith like a cobra shedding its skin.

It's OK for the young and impressionable to read Ayn Rand, so long as it is a diet tempered with equal doses of MAD Magazine and The Simpsons A teenager with a healthy distrust in the status quo, and corporate and government elites will save this nation and civilization in general.

I also think orcs have gotten the raw end of things. They deserve better, especially since high fantasy treat them with the dismissive inhumanity one usually finds in John Wayne westerns and Jew Suss

#51:
(At the Ayn Rand School for Tots)
Marge: Maggie is allergic to strained pears and she likes a bottle of warm milk before nap time.

Ayn Rand-ish Woman: A bottle? Mrs. Simpson, do you know what a baby's saying when she reaches for a bottle?

Marge: "Ba-ba?"

Ayn Rand-ish Woman: She's saying, "I am a leech." Our aim here is to develop the bottle within.

>48 anna_in_pdx::

I organized my books by spine color once. It was pretty wonderful and made me think about my book collection in new ways. Right now I have individual shelves organized by height while I try to come up with a median between how beautiful the books looked organized by color and something practical. The biggest difficulty is how to keep the books in order when they're spread over a few different rooms.

I sometimes arrange my books chronologically, especially if it is an author I have a lot of. I did that with my Burke books (by Andrew Vachss), Cerebus, and William S. Burroughs I'm wonky like that.

53 and 54: I guess organizing by appearance is a method that could work for some people, and of course it is definitely more attractive. The people in question had a much bigger library than I do, and they had already gotten it organized the way they wanted it, which is why they were peeved.

Mine aren't organized in any particular way, except that I have the paperback mysteries in my bedroom and the nicer more highbrow books downstairs, and I have tried to group similar categories (all the poetry on this side of the shelf, the global warming books together, etc). Of course, you have to put the big coffee table books together because there is usually only one shelf they fit on.

Color spectrum decorating would drive me nuts, but it does look cool. Here's a sample: http://www.flickr.com/photos/santos/1704875109/in/pool-96822943@N00

We did a Read Street post on how people shelve books and I was amazed at the variety. Some were fairly routine: alphabetical, by genre. But others shelved by size, Read/Not Read, hardback/paperback, and this: I chose a first book at random and the next book's title had to start (excluding a and the) with the last letter of the previous book's title and so on.

At present, those books that are shelved are shelved randomly with the exception of my LOA stuff which is by spine color, mostly as a way of keeping subjects together. Fully half of my 1000+ books (some are not yet catalogued) are in a pile on the floor of the den.

57: LOA stuff?

Library of America. Sorry.

56: Wow, it DOES look cool.

My dealbreaker is when I show someone my bookshelves at home, and their reaction is "it takes up so much space!," or "I'd like to read books someday," or anything similar.

"I'd like to read books someday"???? That makes it sound like they are working on magazines first, or something.

What bothers me almost as much as someone who barely reads is someone who has plenty of books, but never reads them.
I know someone with quite a few interesting books on her shelf, but I don't think she's read more than a few pages or chapters of any of them. I think she buys them because of their status or because they add to her pseudo-intellectual bohemian image or whatever. My boyfriend once borrowed one of her books and never returned it. She never mentioned it, and I doubt she even knows it's gone.

>63 inkspot: It might have been Oscar Wilde or H. L. Mencken who said (paraphrase): The great majority of people confuse the buying of books with the reading of them. Or maybe it was my darling Sinclair Lewis.

63: Sounds like the same type of people who have kids as interior design accessories.

Dealbreaker? "Why do you keep all these books? You've read them, you know what happens."

Or the man who asked me to marry him - who had 5 Guinness Books of Records and John Buchan's Greenmantle. If it had only been the last, I might well have considered him.

But what about those pics of the World's Fattest Twins? Have you no common decency? ;)

My girlfriend and I differ radically on book buying habits. She refuses to buy fiction, whereas that's usually what I buy. I also like keeping books around that I've read as a resource. (This may change when confronted to move, since books are heavy and I have 2500+.)

"Why read them, you know what happens." Do these people making that criticism own versions of the Bible in their home? Pot. Kettle. Black.

Jesus throws the one ring into Mount Doom and he defeats the orcs and Sauron. I've read the Bible, con sarnit! I know what happens. Or was that Aslan defeating the Uru-khai?

you think you know what happens, and yet you read them.

Is that a question or an accusation? I can't really respond unless it's phrased better.

Yikes, harsh room....

I too spend most days reading scientific papers for work and school... and I might mention that some are only bearable with a glass of scotch and some groucho glasses.... so I sometimes like some trash during my downtime. It doesn't require 4 or 5 readings to determine what the author was actually TRYING to say. Some of the philosophers I've had to wade through this week really and truly need to embrace the phrase "economy of expression". Reading Bentham is like going from San Francisco to Los Angeles by way of Tokyo and Sydney.

That being said I still read mostly non-fiction but I do adore HP, LOT, and every post-apocalyptic s.f. I can find. I even have, yes, I say it loud and proud, Buffy the Vampire Slayer books. I like to think of them as a way to stay in touch with my inner and junior high schooler and give my tiny little brain a bit of a vacation. Because really, if you can't have fun and play in the mud sometimes, what is the point really? God forbid someone should mistake me for a stuffy academic. I would rather be thought of as strange and eccentric.

My deal breaker is someone like my uncle who, I kid you not, bought the contents of a used book store because he always wanted a library. Not to actually READ the books mind you, but just to HAVE. Sick bastard. We don't speak. As for people who wish they had "time" to read or who just don't... well, I just feel sorry for them. Such sad sad little lives.

So Fishpants, what do you think of "Dollhouse"?

Yeah, we're a bit harsh here sometimes. Just put on the asbestos suit and carry a flame thrower. You should be fine ;)

I enjoy Warhammer 40K novels with fanboyish enthusiasm. Then again, I'm not a purist. Purity being a rather overrated attribute in our messed-up, sanctimonious, utterly hypocritical society. ("Don't do drugs! -- Brought to you by Budweiser, King of Beers") I enjoy my Bill Hicks, George Carlin, and Antonin Artaud

Buying an entire bookstore just to own the books? Yeesh. Does he own the world's fattest thoroughbred and a stained-glass bathrobe too?

That's such an awful waste of books :(

I recall a slightly similar incident when I was working at a bookshop. Some guy came in and bought the entire Asterix collection. We tried to chat to him about it but he hadn't read more than one or two at most, he wasn't planning to read any of them, and he wasn't buying them for a child. He just wanted a collection of something. I wanted to throttle him.

72: But he may end up loaning them out. I have a friend who collected Asterix and he has loaned them to my kids. With a lot of warnings of dire things happening if they get them dirty or bend the pages or anything. Aren't collectors weird?

While I do occasionally have "completist" buying jags -- like with Evelyn Waugh and Honore de Balzac and Vollmann -- I resolutely plan to read them

The guy might have bought the Asterix books to "flip them" -- resell them at an obscene mark-up, since "complete sets" will garner a higher price. That just seems crass. Literary Snobs should make a "Books are for reading, stupid!" t-shirt and sell it on Cafepress.com. And then Literary Snobs: the Breakfast Cereal, Literary Snobs: the Lunchbox, and Literary Snobs: the Flame-thrower. The kids will love it!

I once offered a copy of Eugenides' Middlesex to a coworker and she looked at the back cover and said, "I don't read hard books." Deal breaker!

A flame-thrower, hmmm. That'd come in handy for any encounter with a particular pale-skinned Mary-Sue, and her even paler boyfriend, neither of whom should ever have seen daylight, but should have burst into flame when they did.

But anyway, it would have been nice for that guy to lend out the Asterix comics to kids, though it's more likely he'd sell them in a few years time. It is terribly crass.

Middlesex as a "hard book"? What books does this rube normally read? And do they have cardboard pages? It's not like you handed this person V. or Finnegans Wake

# 71

Dollhouse...yes. We actually have the t.v. locked since my son does not, as we tactfully say in my house, "make good television choices" and so everyone, including us moms, "reserve" t.v. time so we don't overdo it. We watch "House" as a family because all of us in this family are snarky and have minimal social skills, so House feels familiar to us, like macaroni and cheese or warm socks. And I reserve Deadliest Catch when it's on because I'm just geek enough to try and identify cases of Hematodinium in the catch of crabs as they slide by on the screen. But Dollhouse is my guilty t.v. pleasure. I just love it. Then again I just love Joss Whedon. I own all of the Buffy and Firefly episodes and have been known to fall on the couch with some popcorn and beer and make an entire day of it.

#78 House and anything by Whedon? My family's kind of TV.

House is the only program I watch on TV right now. GMTA.

>75 JoseBuendia:. Jeezus god. Just sit back and ponder the fate of our nation for a sec.

I don't want to! Just give me my Whedonesque opiate and let me not ponder universal stupidity and the impending economic apocalypse.

I just wish House would be stumped unto death at least once. Jeez, the show has become so formulaic in it's presentation the only thing left is asking "How rude, inconsiderate, and generally pathetic can Gregory House become?"

Stephen Fry needs to make an appearance and hit Hugh Laurie square in the chest. The gag worked great in A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Soupy twist!

Formula only works when it isn't predictable. Unfortunately, some producers see shows as cookie-cutters and Industrialized Product (Law and Order? CSI? Hello!) Great shows like Six Feet Under, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Sopranos were memorable because they occasionally went "off book" and did some crazy experimentation. Buffy had the musical episode and the 2-episode Dream Sequence when Tony Soprano was in a coma are two examples.

The same goes for literature. More people would rather read the latest Nora Roberts romance than Laura Workaholic -- a novel overflowing with experimentalism, verbal fireworks, and joyous misanthropy.

83: My son and I have it all figured out - he has to have a brainwave about 5 to 10 minutes before the end of the show, based on a random free association on some throwaway comment someone made or something he saw out of the corner of his eye, and suddenly he has made *the* diagnosis.

There have to be at least 3 and usually >5 mstrust: false or misleading diagnoses per episode before House's brainwave.

He has to ruin someone else's idealistic attitude about something or other *at least once* per episode (many episodes involve him destroying the idealism of both a team member and a patient or two)

Yet for some reason we keep watching. We may get tired of it eventually, of course. I have mystery genre tropes all figured out yet I keep reading them....

You're right about House, Anna, but it's just a tweak on the classic detective trope in Poirot etc., n'est-ce pas? The stumped little Belgian picks up on some casually inane remark by Hastings (or Watson, or Lewis, you name 'em): "But Hastings, of course, 'ow could I 'ave been so stupeed?" And Bob's your uncle.

#84 - Thanks to you I now have the chorus "They goooot the mustard OUT!" repeating endlessly in my head. AND i'm missing Six Feet Under.

Members of Literary Snobs watch television? Y'all are losing serious snob points.

I don't see you posting on this thread using cuneiform or smoke signals.

Vi emotse med stort intresse Eder förfrågan om de järn och ståldetaljer, vilka specificerats för byggnadskomplexet i fråga.

Oh damn.... I would join in with a snappy response but I have to go watch Bret Michael's "Rock of Love Bus".

It's unclear to me how communicating with smoke signals would be evidence of literary snobbery (which is, I believe, something entirely different from luddism).

Carry on with your television... I'm off to read Pound.

Are you reading the Cantos? I'm almost to the "Throne Cantos."

I've never read Pound. Is the Throne Cantos the one you're supposed to read in the bathroom?

No, I have not begun the Cantos yet (someday, someday). Right now I am reading one of the collections of his shorter poetry. He writes beautifully, despite being a fascist.

Yosh:

"He writes beautifully, despite being a fascist."

I would BUY a book if it had that kind of blurb splashed across it.

Made me smile with that one...

I've heard somewhere that Fascism "aestheticized politics," so the fact that art and poetry is associated with it isn't surprising. One of Pound's more interesting prose works is "Jefferson and/or Mussolini."

the artists associated w/ fascism (actually many predated "official" fascism) were all about the "new" and the "modern" and abandoning a "discredited past." cf futurism.

Bob, you forget the overlaps of (proto)fascism and romanticism.

you're right - i try my best to ignore Wagner and all that, so often just forget about them.
I'm not for banning anything (though i have grave misgivings about cocaine - there's a lose/lose proposition) but i feel perfectly fine w/ ignoring large portions art/music/literature. There's only so much i can read, much less that i can actually know something about.

I hear you about ignoring the art (however beautiful) made by anti-semitic nationalist scum, but I would hate to live in a world without Wagner's operas.

You can read plenty anti-semitic nationalism when you pick up copies of the Left Behind series.

99: One branch of fascism was associated with the Futurists. Mainly the Italians when they weren't imitating Neoclassical imitations of the Roman past.

In Nazi Germany, it was a combination of revolutionary engineering (the Autobahn, etc.) with Neoclassical gigantism. Then there was the art, involving chaste nudes of naked men with swords and art that wouldn't be out of place on a Robert Jordan book.

During Easter weekend, my girlfriend's grandparents dissed:

*Shakespeare (not just reading it, which isn't as fun as seeing the plays performed, but all of Shakespeare)
*silent movies.
*The Sopranos (because of the swearing)

You would also have missed out on amazing architecture such as this.

Wow! Great site! Albert Speer's relatives live here locally. Hey, if you're going to get away from your past, Saskatchewan will do the trick...

Do they live next door to the Hilters and Ron Vibbentrop?

http://www.ulrikchristensen.dk/scripts/montypython/minehead.html

Have they won any by-elections?

"First, we plan to create a feasible water treatment plant for the community ... then we annex Poland!"

And just to show that it wasn't only the right, here's the city of the future of the left.

Stalin was a pretty conservative leftist (Socialist Realism; giganto-neoclassicism; imperial conquest, etc.) while Hitler was a revolutionary conservative. They were mirror images of each other who wouldn't let a million or so dead get in the way of their own debased theories. Stalin got rid of the avant-garde and Hitler did the same thing, calling modern art "degenerate." The epithets "right" and "left" start to make less sense when you reach the extremes.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/4483/subgeniusbigke2.jpg

These visions of a future city as imagined by despots show enormous scale but virtually no humanity. They're huge, impressive and utterly cold and soul-less.

Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

Makes you reconsider the US Capitol building. Funny how a nation allegedly built on equality and freedom would imitate the architecture of Empire (Roman, British, and otherwise). We Americans are such a bundle of righteous contradictions and base desires.

brings Joan Didion's description of the Reagan California "white house" that was built and furnished w/out a bookcase (from the white album).

which brings to mind my only trip to Disneyland - you couldn't buy a book, a magazine or a newspaper anywhere in there. Not even movie tie-ins. Not even in the water park where you might want to sit a while in between swims.

Walt forbid you actually use your own imagination and not his.

I'd love a book tie-in to Song of the South Walt was always on the forefront of the back end of the civil rights struggle.

My Grandfather read me stories of Br'er Rabbit when I was very young. I loved them--didn't see much difference between them and Winnie-the-Pooh. Then I got to college and used the term Tar Baby, and got some very hostile looks...

#112 - i felt deprived (a little) when i was a grade school kid in Santa Rosa CA (little NE of San Fransisco). I was the ONLY kid in my class who hadn't been to Disneyland. Heck, we didn't even have a TV - my geeky parents weren't about to drive us down to LA for an amusement park (late 1950s)

When I was very small, (late 1950s) my favourite book was about Little Black Sambo
which still seems to me to be a story of resourcefulness and familial love.

Of course, I haven't read it since about 1961, so it may well be full of ghastliness, but I suspect it's just the name which has lead to its decline.

OK, guys, back to the topic of literary dealbreakers, a person I am semi-interested in recommends that I read the Tao of Pooh - dealbreaker?

117:
You should accept that recommendation on the condition that he/she reads the Tao Te Ching.

117 - nah - it's not as if the recommendation was for a Dan Brown novel or a Scientology tract. IIRC from decades ago, the Tao of Pooh was pretty innocuous.
(btw, running Knoppix, out of curiosity, it's a tad confusing to see all the spelling errors flagged - under the assumption i'm typing in German. OK switched "iceweasel's" default language. How can i not love a browser called "Iceweasel"?

Sounds like a band name. Clever riff off of Firefox.

Let's make two more open source browsers called "Earthbadger" and "Aircormorant" or something like that, and we should have all 4 elements covered....

I don't know, anyone for changing the name of IE to Waterlogger?

122: Yes!

I'm really annoyed at Microsoft today because a friend who has a later version of PowerPoint has sent me a training manual he did about this swine flu thing, and I really want to read it, but....
...His version of PPT is newer than mine and...
...Microsoft won't let me use their "updates" even though I have bought Office and have a right to them, UNLESS I use IE, which I have not reconfigured in a long time, because I use Firefox...
...So, I can't read the file. And of course, at work we have an even OLDER version of Office than at home, so that's out.

We wouldn't have this problem if those Red Staters hadn't gotten romantic with their pigs. Damn you, Strom Thurmond's Ghost!

Anna, what you want is a conversion file. I found it for word, so I would assume there is one for powerpoint. I don't even know that it was from the windows website, but I did a google search for word conversion file and it works great.

I do feel your pain. After next school year I MIGHT get a new computer to replace my 18G machine. At least once a month it tells me I don't have enough memory. Pfft, I'll delete programs before I start messing with my Itunes, currently hogging about 7 1/2 of the 18G.

I use a free office suite from Sun Microsystems - OpenOffice. It has a file conversion component. I've never used it and don't know if it would solve your problem or not. Of course, there is the issue of whether IBM will continue support for the product.

We should be supporting open architecture products as much as possible.

I believe OpenOffice can read docx, xlsx & pptx files.

IBM? Surely you mean Oracle? Anyway, OO is open source so it's commuity-supported, and is likely to remain so.

Incidentally, it's open source, not open architecture. Two different things.

Snob nerds.

They're the worst...

Thanks for the corrections, Ian. I was stuck in the IBM buyout, but yes, it's Oracle. Not being a techie, or even a person who pays a lot of attention to stuff, I misspoke with Open Architecture rather than Open Source. I meant Open Source.

We should be supporting Open Source products as much as possible.

Snob luddites - I don't know...

Thanks all, I am home sick today, so I decided to try this out - just downloaded OpenOffice and it works like a charm!

Oh my gosh, catching up ont his thread has been hysterical!

As to the original question I'd have to say my literary dealbreaker remains as it has been for a decade now any and all positive spin or light given to that overly simplistic piece of mumbo-jumbo The Alchemist and when folks proclaim it's either their all-time favorite novel, the best novel ever, a profoundly life-altering inspirational/introspective novel that "really makes you think about life", or else argue that it has actual, real, substantive literary merits. {{{shivers}}} No. . .just. . .NO!

I can't explain it but for some reason any and everything surrounding the topic of that novel is excrutiatingly irksome for me. I don't dismiss the person out of hand per se but out of sheer irritation I do mentally check out on them at the suggestion of Coelho's brilliance and become highly suspect of their literary opinions.

"Oprah's Book Club" still earns my ire. Any book she (more likely her staff) chooses automatically becomes suspect in my eyes. The woman induces more nausea in me that a plate of raw offal...

I once caught a friend of mine reading a book by Stephenie Meyer - she said she knew it was trash, but she'd really enjoyed it. OTOH, she also thinks Harry Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven is one of the best books she's ever read - and she rereads it every now and again. I've not read the Mulisch, but he is one of the Netherland's three greatest post-war writers. The film adaptation was very good indeed (see here). I now have my own copy of the book and shall be starting it this weekend.

(Oh, and the friend is Dutch, btw)

Ok here's my dealbreaker and this is a person that I am, unfortunately, related to through marriage: "I never read a book over 250 pages (!!) but I'm reading the Twilight series and loving it. You should really read it." She has tried to get me to read similar trash before until I finally said "I think we might have different tastes in literature" just to keep peace in the family.

133: Me too. And her inability to understand Jonathan Franzen's reservations about The Corrections being inducted into her book club really left a bad taste in my mouth.

135: Very diplomatic of you. You're an inspiration to all of us struggling to maintain good relations with philistine family members.

brenzi, for some reason your story reminds me of a student of mine. He generally only reads fantasy and can't be bothered with anything else. He keeps complaining about how boring The Great Gatsby is. The other kids were shocked, saying, but it has drinking, and sleeping around, the girlfriend gets pimp-slapped and then mowed down, what's not to like? (Apparently they were paying attention.)

Then my annoyance with this student reached an all-time high this past week. On "Take Your Child to Work Day," I had only 8 kids in class, so I said, what the heck, and showed "Ferris Beuller's Day Off." His only response was "I liked the Star Wars music." Friggin' dork. Put away your Yu-gi-Oh cards and come out with the real, live people.

132: I read the Alchemist and of course, it's a well-known parable that occurs in the 1001 nights so I knew by about chapter 2 what the ending was going to be. It was light and sweet and for a very young person I suppose it would be thought-provoking - I gave it to both my kids to read and they were about 11 and 12 and they both liked it. Life changing, for an adult, not so much unless the adult in question has read VERY little to begin with....

I have read other Coelho books, and they were light/entertaining as well - the Devil and Miss Prym was my favorite of the ones I have read. Then I read one of his more recent ones, The Zahir, and decided that was it for me - it just seemed like it was SO navel-gazing. No more Coelho for me.

133: There was a discussion on another list I participate on, about the Oprah phenom, and we all agreed that it was troubling how stuck up we were about it. If I want to read a book and there is an Oprah edition, I look for a non-Oprah one. Just like I avoid the ones with movie tie-in covers. this makes me a stuck up jerk, it's not particularly admirable. The book's the same, and are you opposed to a bunch of people, mostly women, who normally would not read Faulkner, reading it for a change? Why?

137: Your student is beyond hope. I recommend you force him to read Bimbos of the Death Sun for your class. My son who is sadly way too into Fantasy is allowed by his school to take a Fantasy and Sci Fi class which counts as a required English credit, and he is taking it next year. As if he doesn't read enough genre fiction to begin with....

My issue with Oprah is that two of the books in her book club turned out to be "fake memoirs." I find that troubling and the reasoning behind choosing those books gratuitous. They should just call it "The #1 Ladies Emotional Pornography Book Club," since that is what Oprah is offering, with the occasional patina of literary respectability -- a little Faulkner here, a little McCarthy there.

I have a feeling she had an ulterior motive behind picking Faulkner, since she didn't want her audience to have a library full of contemporary pap. A Faulkner book on the empty bookshelf lends intellectually credibility, even if you only pretended to read it. Oprah is an incredibly savvy business woman. She knows what she's doing.

For every token work of Great Literature (Hey, Oprah, how about Crying of Lot 49?), she can move truckloads of lesser fare quite easily.

"Who wants a free car?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-HuyFdoLHc

139: One particularly dismal summer a fencing coach of mine decided to throw a ton of Russian literature my way as a form of distraction. Seeing how much I enjoyed Anna Karenina, my aunt went out and bought a copy for me as a birthday present. Alas, it had the Oprah sticker of approval on it. In the end my snobbery canceled itself out, though. It was the Richard Pevear/Larissa Volohonsky translation. Richard Pevear makes me happy.

#123 - will Open Office's ppt clone read the file? if not, pass it my way as (at home - but not at work) we have office 2007 and i'm sure (???) it can be saved in an older format.

but
www.promedmail.org if you want to keep up w/ the info public health infectious disease specialists are sharing.

139: Avoiding movie tie-ins and Oprah editions doesn't necessarily make one a stuck up jerk. Well, stuck up perhaps, but not a JERK. The book on the inside may be the same, but a book is still a physical object with aesthetic value. While it's true you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, neither should you neglect the cover itself. It is part of the whole, and warrants consideration; no book should be ugly when it can be avoided. Anyway, that's the rationalization of this stuck up jerk! :)

I did really love The Poisonwood Bible, so at least one of Oprah's picks was satisfying.

I had trouble imagining a lot of her "lit lite" fans getting through The Sound and the Fury! Can you imagine the looks on those readers faces when they tried to tackle that one?

I'm not sure I really have a problem with the book club. If some intellectually-impoverished housewife wants to pick up a copy of Anna Karenina, why should anyone have a problem with that? I'll grant that the tripe that buries the decent selections is disappointing, but if even a few people put forth an effort to read a classic isn't that worth something?

Not that being in Oprah's book club isn't a deal-breaker or anything.

My issue isn't the housewife reading Tolstoy. More power to them ... although do they need Oprah telling what to read and how to think? (Oh wait, that's the job of their husband -- rim shot!) You're not seeing the forest for the trees in this case. Why would she want people reading difficult books instead of watching her show? The Faulkner and the Tolstoy act as "cultural ballast" to the cheap swill and fake memoirs that also comprise the Oprah Book Club. Is this any different than installing a Rolls Royce hood on a VW Beetle?

http://www.vwworldseries.com/images/JMVWRollsRoyceBeetleFrontWE.jpg

It's the worst kind of tokenism. It's not the literature that offends me, it's her condescension. Plus having all that power will certainly go to your head. Her book club has the power to make or break aspiring authors. Almost Faustian in its genius. I wouldn't be daft enough to turn down that kind of market share, but I'd have reservations for a book club that has had 2 memoirs exposed as fakes and serious literary types having trepidation about even being associated with it.

I do not think I could date a girl you anticipates the next Nicolas Sparks book.

But, if I was to date a girl who likes Henry Miller as much as me...(which is a lot)... I might be a little worried.

Thankfully, my current is a big sci-fi/fantasy geek, and is now in a phase of nonfiction, which usually includes books about food. So, I am good with her ;-)

I think my one issue with anyone's book collection, if it were to come up, would be a lack of diversity. Take me and the original poster for this topic: I am very liberal in my politics and, even more so, in my life-philosophies. Bu, hey, I love reading Tom Clancy books. And, no, I do not agree with much of his philosophies (and his main fan-base). For example, there's a random criticism regarding Camus in Hunt For Red October that I felt did not have to be there. But I like his attention to detail. Thus, I will read him with the same enjoyment that I get when I read Don DeLillo.

But, if I were to come across someone who had Tom Clancy and other like-authors and only those like authors, I would worry...just as I would worry about someone who only has Classics and refuses to expand from that.

147: It seems to me that a lot of the snobbery around Oprah is about her fans, not her. We are all free to dislike her, of course, it's the kneejerk contempt for her audience that comes across sort of obnoxious to me.

I find her creepily self-absorbed and don't know why her fans don't think this, but I have many friends who are Oprah fans, and that by itself does not mean they are complete write-offs. I may be reading too much into this, but I don't see the same amount of time spent vilifying audiences of other silly TV shows that are hosted by men. I think anyone who could watch Larry King's inanity every night may very well be an idiot, for example, but Oprah fans get all the hate.

I agree with bardsfingertips, people who like a wide variety of stuff and are constantly trying to expand their horizons are really the most fun to get to know.

(edited twice! Gargh, I can't count OR type "fans" where I wanted it.)

>147 kswolff:
I don't believe that the power has not already gone to her head. (see free car giveaways) You are confusing the ends and the means here. In the situation of sham book clubs the end does in fact justify the means. But while she has a certain responsibility, and while she may not bear it with the responsibility we would wish, we cannot blame her followers for what they do not know. They see an authority figure and assume wisdom.

>148 bardsfingertips:
If one were to never expound upon the classics, how could you judge them? You do realize that you could read the classics for the rest of your life and never finish them, yes?

Post edited for clarity

>150 b_m:.

Yes ;-)

149: Jerry Springer, Bill O'Reilly/Glen Beck/Sean Hannity...I don't think Oprah fans get quite *all* the hate.

152: There's a reason I used Larry King as an example rather than the shock jocks. She is not a shock jock and I don't understand why she (and her followers) comes in for the kind of hate normally reserved for them. Oprah does not exactly incite people to hate on foreigners etc.

being locked into TV - no matter the shows - would be the deal breaker for me. That, and being a bright person who really WANTS the Bell Curve to be the fount of US social and educational policy. I did lose one of my oldest and best female friends over that book.

again..."you know i hate tv/ there's gotta be somebody other than me/ who's ready to write it off immediately/ i'm looking for a cynical girl."
Marshall Crenshaw.

I have a grudge against Oprah largely because I used to work at a bookstore and had to deal with all the frantic requests that flooded in as soon as she endorsed a book. People often called while the show was still on.

It's not that she endorses bad books - some are undoubtedly good. It's the attitude of some of her bookclubbers that bother me. They come in and ask, "where is your Oprah shelf?". There's no point suggesting other titles they might enjoy because they don't seem to care what the book is about (although they might refuse the thicker ones). They'll buy The Secret just as eagerly as Middlesex. The only thing that matters to them is that Oprah recommended it.

Very amusing thread, the things I judge people severely for include:

Those who describe a book, which I would class as genre fiction, as "must read".

Those who read any "celebrity" autobiographies, in particular those "celebrities" who have not done anything of note and are known only for being famous.

Those who ask me why I have only read five of the Harry Potter books, saying " you should read the others, they're really good"", when they have no reading experience outside of childrens fiction with which to compare the books. I could give them a list as long as my arm of books they should read, but don't bother, as I know it would be wasted breath.

People who have a small number of uninspiring books and read them over and again. Infact anyone who reads books multiple times, I know this is perhaps a controversial one, but how can people ever find anything more interesting, or better, if they don't read different books. I've never read a book twice, and would only consider doing if I felt I hadn't taken it all in first time, and I can only think of perhaps two books that fit that category.

People who have read a few books, not enjoyed them, and dismissed reading altogether as boring.

I've only read one of the Harry Potter books. It was enough for me.

I had to read the first few HARRY POTTER books out loud to my sons, alternating with my wife. I did a deadly Snape voice.

The best to to me was the third one, PRISONER OF AZKABAN...but that's just thilly old me. After that, the books got fat and formless and no one dared to tell Potter she was grotesquely over-writing. The last book was quite dreadful.

while i'm relatively snobbish in re poetry - i'm much more plebian in re novels..esp. kiddie lit. All 3 of us in the Blanton/McConnaughey household adored the Potter series. Are they great writing? of course not. Are they greatly enjoyable? well, for us..yup. AND i WILL say she's a better writer then the egregiously overrated Gene Wolfe. Pah. In my reading universe, he's maybe 2 steps above Dan Brown. Pretentious, ponderous, overwritten, far more serious than the average heart attack and as self-important as Newt Gingrich.

158: Ditto for me. I could not believe how awful book 5 was. It was about twice as long as it should have been. that was the only time I have watched a movie that was actually BETTER than the book on which it was based.

Re: Harry Potter Book #3 was definitely the best (Book #2 was the worst) and I thought she was headed into new territory. Book #4 proved she wasn't. It was horribly overwritten, as were the rest of them. Did my then-young-daughter and I love them anyway? Absolutely. The story line captivated her, and thus, me. In reading to her, my Snape was awful, but my McGonagall was pure gold.

I'm so out of this conversation.

I've never watched, nor do I keep up with Oprah, or her book selections. I was wondering, while reading this thread, which Faulkner she recommended until someone mentioned The Sound and the Fury. Which were the false memoirs? I remember a dust up about somebody getting caught in making up stuff for one of her selections, but two??

I've never read a Harry Potter book, however, they are all (I think) in my library. My wife read them all.

I have, OTOH, read 11 2/5 of the Left Behind Series.

162: If I remember rightly (I don't watch the show) there was one summer where Oprah had her fans read not one but a few books by Faulkner. They are now everywhere on used bookstore shelves in little sets, this is how I know this. I think it was in 2006 or 2007?

Yes, some guy wrote a memoir about being a drug addict or something, and it turned out to be largely made up, or something. I don't remember this happening twice either, but it was mentioned in sources outside of her show at the time.

However did you make it through 11 of the LB books? Are you familiar with the blogger Slactivist who provides running commentary on them as he reads them? I sometimes read that, and it gives me no appetite at all to read the books, which sound like they'd just enrage me.

It required a lot of hard work, perseverance, and suspension of much of my personal belief regarding the end times.

I wanted desperately to see Rayford Steele reunited with his wife, but the gore, God, the five mile wide river of blood and the sense of unmitigated glee at the doom of so many people. The anti-Semitism was a put off as well. The last book was, to use a term in the news these days, torture. Like being water boarded with blood, carnage, revenge, and hatred. Just what Jesus is all about, right?

Of course, since the real enemy has not turned out to be a one world government but Islam, I'm expecting a whole new take on the end time prophecies with Islam at its heart. The beauty of the premillenial dispensationalist reading of the end times is the prophecies can be laid over any period of history and with a tweak here, a smush there, be made to fit. The end times are with us, ye, even unto the ends of the earth.

I heartily recommend this series to anyone who thinks God is all about the revenge.

South Park mocked the memoir in the episode A Thousand Little Fibers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Fibers

164: I also get a kick out of the End-Times-of-the-Week villains these religious wingnuts keep foisting on the gullible and the unimaginative. First it's Hitler and then Stalin and then Saddam and then Bin Laden and then back to Saddam and Hillary and Obama, etc. Rinse, lather, repeat. A fine way to wash a small brain. Morons.

I love the name of the Antichrist: Nicolae Carpathia, as if he were an extra from Ghostbusters 2 Gotta love how they built an industry on anti-Slavic hatred. Then again, the Slavs are a bunch of swarthy bearded bomb throwing anarchists and communists. Just kidding. People who take this stuff seriously shouldn't be snubbed but publicly mocked and made fun of. Especially when their religious dogma sounds so similar to the racial doctrine of Nazi Germany. Coincidence? Only the CIA black helicopters know for sure.

>166 kswolff:
kswolff you are a very strange person. Not that that's a bad thing...

Without Karl, life would be a good deal duller, no question.

Of course, one day a Tac team will batter down his door and we'll never hear from him again but...it's good theater while it lasts.

Wouldn't count on it. We Americans are too obsessed with firing gay translators who know Arabic from the NSA and giving out Monopoly money to the financial elite. I don't think they'd care about little ole me.

#156 Ah youth!

I had a peek at your library. I can with reasonable confidence state you have not squeezed all the meaning on your first reading from:

Marl Twain, Aeschylus, Burton, Verne, Stevenson, Hawking, Stendahl, Keats, Tennyson, Kant, Darwin, Huxley,
Spenser, Frazer.

I only looked at LT's first page. Please reread those authors and report back.

163 - The Faulkner set was Light in August, As I Lay Dying, and Sound and the Fury. I have the oprah set of them because it was a decent value; the books are just the regular vintage versions, her symbol is only on the case. I guess her website also had a summer long "lecture course" with various scholars (I remember Arnold Weinstein being mentioned as one, he's actually a really engaging critic/professor, he was teaching at Brown when I was there).

Came across a good comeback for the "have you read all of these" question.
Just smaile and say "Some of them twice."

Almost worse than 'I don't like reading' is 'I like reading but I don't have the time'. Usually followed by some explanation as to why they haven't read a whole book in 23 years. That's not liking reading! Real readers will always find the time. Recently I was at a meeting (book in handbag, as usual) when a new acquaintance leaned over and told me that she loves reading and had just finished a book about 3/4 the length of mine (mine was a 900-page Wally Lamb - so yes, long-ish but not exactly tough reading) and it had taken her a year. How did she remember the beginning by the time she got to the end? I knew then we were never going to be best friends. At least if someone says they don't enjoy reading I think it's only a matter of finding the right book, but people who think one book a year is 'enjoying reading' make me despair because I suspect that's the furthest they will ever go.

And my other biggest grump. I don't know whether this is just an English thing or if it happens all over the world. The people who tell you they are off to read/buy a 'book' - and it turns out to be a magazine. What? Clearly these people have never even seen a real book, let alone read one.

When one says they are reading an audio book, does that really count as reading? I know a lot of people on LT listen to audio books, and I don't have a problem with it, however, listening and reading are two different activities using different parts of the brain and engaging in wholly different input and organizational processes. Is it sensible to say one is reading an audio book?

173: It all boils down to priorities and personal taste. If you don't enjoy reading, just say it. Saying you don't have the time just sounds disingenuous. If you really have a passion for it, you'll put some time away for it. It just pains me to see people "who don't have time for reading" ingesting some random Extruded James Patterson Product (TM).

174: I thought we had an entire thread devoted to that controversy. For me, personally, I enjoy listening to an audiobook, but I don't consider it "reading." Different sense, different activity. Eating a meal isn't reading a cookbook. I don't see audiobooks as bad, but calling the activity "reading" strikes me as verbally inaccurate.

174> My dad is visually impaired, so he can only 'read' books by listening to them. It makes sense to me when he says he's 'reading' a book.

176: Good call. I concur with the "reading" then. I've seen the limited offerings in the Large Print section of the Library. How does that compare for works available in braille? I have no idea and I'm curious.

173> For someone with your name, you're obviously a little judgmental of someone who's a slow reader. =P

Touche (sorry, no accents). No, I'm actually a very slow reader myself (as you would expect). I just manage to find loads of opportunities to do it!

because (i suspect) there are a couple of good sized retirement communities in chatham county AND the residents there certainly are major uses/donors of the libraries, we have about 60 shelf feet, at least, of large print books. Which I'm finding more useful as i get older, too.

177> Most public libraries have wonderful services for the blind, but they usually offer them over the phone. Through my dad I've learned about the otherwise hidden audio library for the blind - you ask for titles on the phone, and they mail the tapes right to you. They even provide a nice tape player. Interestingly, materials for the blind get free postage!

Hmmm. I'm a little alarmed by the posters on this thread who are anti-rereading. After all, the book in question will be exactly the same as when you first read it, but it's fairly likely that you won't be the same person - surely that has an effect?

And as for trash - well, on my TBR heaps I have crime thrillers (some more "literary" than others), because I do adore a damn good satisfying story and have no objection to workmanlike prose (although I won't put up with clunky dialogue); I also have books by Oliver Sacks, Daniel J Boorstin, the inimitable PG Wodehouse, Peter Ackroyd, Colette, Steven Pinker, Jasper Fforde - the list goes on. Each book will be appropriate for a different mood, and I'll (I hope) enjoy them all for different reasons. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and whilst I have read and enjoyed the HP books, I vastly prefer Philip Pullman (and really wish he'd been around when I was younger - I was stuck with CS Lewis!).

#182 I couldn't agree more, Sophie! Every now and then, for reasons of lack of space, I have a massive purge of books to go to charity but it's hard to get rid of the goodies. I now have 1,000 and something books that I simply can't bear to let go because I know I want to reread them (I'd actualy have to read no new stuff at all for the next 4 years if I were to do that). The only books that are only good for a single read are (on the whole) the not very good ones. The really great stuff demands at least a second read, if not a third and a fourth.

ETA - Just being lazy now, but could you point out some of the anti-rereading ones, as I hadn't actually noticed that and haven't been able to find them by skimming. I can't imagine any avid reader feeling that way!

#183 - on a very quick scan through, #156 was against rereading - I should be working, so won't trawl through the rest of the posts! I certainly am unlikely to reread a crime thriller - part of the fun is not knowing whodunnit - with the exception of Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre, and I'll read those again just because I enjoy the worlds they create. However, since I joined BookMooch, I've got such a lovely fat pile of new books that rereading occurs much less often ... Although it occurs to me that it's several years since I read Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass - that feels rather tempting!

I routinely reread Heart of Darkness, but I don't generally like to reread books. Some books require rereading and I sometimes will reread one of those, The Golden Bowl comes to mind. I expect one can gain from rereading a book like Midnight's Children and I may read it again one day, but on the whole I have enough that I have yet to read to keep me busy.

#184 Thanks for that, Sophie - I see what you mean. Really good books can be read time and time again and often improve with a second read. It can sometimes - especially when time is short - be a struggle to find that compromise between never reading anything new and never rereading old favourites. It's an odd thing that no-one would ever expect a person to refuse to listen to a song more than once (well, some songs, maybe), yet books are so much more involved than any song will ever need to be. Obviously, rereading isn't necessary with all books - I can't imagine what could be gained by a rereading of The Da Vinci Code but I'd defy anyone to get the best out of Middlemarch on a single reading, unless the only purpose the reader has for reading is a very superficial one of 'wanting to know how it ends' and there is so much more to good literature than that.

I do want to reread Paradise Lost, since I read it in high school and it went over my head. I have 2500+ books, so rereading really isn't an option. I do like rereading choice passages.

186: Read Dan Brown is hard enough; can't imagine having the stamina or the eye-Kevlar to bear reading it again. I couldn't get past Ch. 1 of Angels and Demons I enjoy a good thriller about nefarious conspiracies, but Dan Brown writes like shit. Literally. If you want conspiracies, read The Illuminatus Trilogy or Foucault's Pendulum

Who would want to reread Twilight? What, Jane Austen causing brain aneurysms? Just because the hardcovers are thick and the cover designs aren't all that bad doesn't make you profound. On my daily commutes, when I see medical professionals reading that book (read: nurses), all I can think is: "Mentally stunted."

>187 kswolff: - I'd rather see them reading Austen than Meyer. Much rather.

Ran across this and thought it might be appropriate here.

Gene: Found that article on classics that fail to make the grade a good read, even though it pilloried some of my favorite writers. Always fascinating to see the posterity granted to certain works, while others, titles that made a momentary big splash in their time, are never heard from again.

190,

Thanks, geneg, I really enjoyed it, as well as the comments.

190: The blogger is definitely entitled to his opinions and nothing is more maddening than the hordes of rubes who create populist literary hagiography. That said, it's hard to take him seriously when he quotes BR Meyers, since Meyers comes across as an ill-informed philistine and total douche.