And then there's this guy

[profbutters]

Adults Should Read Adult Books.  Discuss amongst yourselves!  I shouldn't be typing at all, since I just got a steroid shot to the wrist. Thank GOD I am not phobic about needles, but I still don't like it and it feels ikky.

Here's how the article starts:

"The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his

Comments

[bellemistoire]

Ah, he's a lit snob, fabulous. You know, I often find Literature to be self conscious and pretentious and boring and I'm betting that's pretty much the only thing on his approved reading list. Having read works set in Cherry Orchards, Russian Gulags, Revolutionary France, British Moors, and magical fantasy lands populated by magical sword swinging pages (including one girl pretending to be a boy), I'll take Tamora Pierce's magic YA knights-in-training novel any day.

Reading, I like it to be fun.

[leilia]

Reading, I like it to be fun.

WORD ON A STICK.

This is why I hate most required reading because it takes the fun out of reading. I've read classics. Enjoyed some. But most I've gone "Meh" at. Even a lot of modern fiction I feel is boring. If I want to read the next "Great American/British/Russian/Nationality of your Choice Novel" I will. But Reading is my escape. It's my first love. And I made a choice that I am not going to waste what little time I have reading stuff that isn't fun.

[docnerd]

I am not going to waste what little time I have reading stuff that isn't fun.

Yes. Even nonfiction doesn't have to be boring. Over the years, I've gotten a lot better about stopping reading a book that I'm not enjoying. I no longer feel compelled to finish what I've started.

[profbutters]

My English major students often admit that having a book assigned to them can take the edge off and make it feel like a chore. I'm really pleased that they feel cool about admitting this in my classroom. I do usually point out that part of being an English major means you're going to have to read some books you don't like, but if you're not an English major in college or teaching English, or required to in some other way, I don't see the point.

I will seldom walk away from a book, but I put down The Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory and there is a good chance I will never finish it. I should donate it to the local library. It's in great shape, and someone will love it.

[docnerd]

I've finished a couple of books that, in retrospect, I wish I would have walked away from. I'm looking at YOU, The Historian.

The last one I can remember doing that with was, in fact, a YA book. The main character--the POV character, since it was first-person--was a complete sociopath. In the first chapter, he quite happily talked about which of a farmer's daughters he had more fun raping (at the ripe old age of 14), and over the next 20 or so pages, he got even LESS likeable from there, and he was so unsympathetic that there was no way I was going to spend the next 400 pages inside his head. Just, NOPE, put it back on the pile and it goes back to the library.

[bellemistoire]

One of my majors in college was English, so I read a lot of classics due to requirements, but at the time I felt pretty uninterested in most of then. Now, however, I sometimes pick up one of the fancy, leatherbound classics at B&N and take it home to read a little bit at a time and I find them much more interesting. (not the Bronte sister though. Dear God they're awful.)

Of course my bookshelves are mostly covered in things like romance novels, epic fantasy, mysteries, and pop non-fic history books as well, rather than modern Literature, so clearly I am a lowbrow person. :P