Adult Editions of Kids' Books
[DISCLAIMER: the following post was committed to livejournal after the subject had been through several days of standing behind a counter, ladling out copies of Harry Potter to all and sundry. He would like you to bear in mind that the content of this excellent series of publications is in no way being slagged off. They really are very good. Kids' books. Good KIDS' books. Thank you.]
If you must follow the adventures of a public school conjurer, by all means, go ahead.
But please, don't kid yourself that by choosing a cover that has a black-and-white train on the front, rather than a bright red one, you are somehow reading a harrowing Booker-prize winner called Harry Potter and the Genocide in Rwanda. Because you're not.
Honestly (and I am speaking here primarily to the 40-something, pinstriped-suited man with the pink tie on the train today who - as my friend Shona pointed out - had no wedding ring; but secondarily to humanity at large, because this must surely be a metaphor for something or other...), your fellow passengers DO NOT, on a casual glance, assume that you are reading Thomas Mann in the original German, the musings of Nietszche in Thus Also Sprach Zarathustra, or even some early James Joyce.
And even if any of them did, let me assure you that they were immediately put straight by the fact that you were using A FUZZY TEDDY-BEAR BOOKMARK*. You really didn't think your cunning ploy through very well, did you?
Here's how I picture the dinner-party conversations at your house:
"What are you reading right now?"
"Something I've heard is a classic: It's called The Very Hungry Caterpillar."
"Mmm. I've read it. It's marvellous."
"Don't tell me how it ends!"
"Oh, I wouldn't do that, have no fear - but, well.... It's moving."
"Oh, look. I'm hogging all the Doritos..."
*Being fuzzy, these bookmarks are not flat. So they slip out quite a lot, and also they mess up the pages of your books. So I really don't know what they are all about. Or who would buy them. Apart from kiddies who like teddy bears, but not books, overmuch. And, I guess, people who are notionally supposed to be adults who do the same.
If you must follow the adventures of a public school conjurer, by all means, go ahead.
But please, don't kid yourself that by choosing a cover that has a black-and-white train on the front, rather than a bright red one, you are somehow reading a harrowing Booker-prize winner called Harry Potter and the Genocide in Rwanda. Because you're not.
Honestly (and I am speaking here primarily to the 40-something, pinstriped-suited man with the pink tie on the train today who - as my friend Shona pointed out - had no wedding ring; but secondarily to humanity at large, because this must surely be a metaphor for something or other...), your fellow passengers DO NOT, on a casual glance, assume that you are reading Thomas Mann in the original German, the musings of Nietszche in Thus Also Sprach Zarathustra, or even some early James Joyce.
And even if any of them did, let me assure you that they were immediately put straight by the fact that you were using A FUZZY TEDDY-BEAR BOOKMARK*. You really didn't think your cunning ploy through very well, did you?
Here's how I picture the dinner-party conversations at your house:
"What are you reading right now?"
"Something I've heard is a classic: It's called The Very Hungry Caterpillar."
"Mmm. I've read it. It's marvellous."
"Don't tell me how it ends!"
"Oh, I wouldn't do that, have no fear - but, well.... It's moving."
"Oh, look. I'm hogging all the Doritos..."
*Being fuzzy, these bookmarks are not flat. So they slip out quite a lot, and also they mess up the pages of your books. So I really don't know what they are all about. Or who would buy them. Apart from kiddies who like teddy bears, but not books, overmuch. And, I guess, people who are notionally supposed to be adults who do the same.