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Raskolnikov2089 posted:You're right, children only read "Go Dog Go" and "Harry Potter" because they're too lazy to read good literature, not because their palate isn't ready for it yet. Haha dude this is not what you said. You said people start with Twilight and work their way up to more complicated books. Kids learning to read don't read Twilight either. At the point that you have the vocabulary and mental capacity required to read something as long as Twilight, you can be reading something more fulfilling. quote:Or maybe you just boiled what I said down to a strawman. Yeah, he's the one creating strawmen. You just shifted your position from "people read Twilight to get better at reading" to "kids fresh out of the womb don't read Joyce you snobs".
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Jul 31, 2014 20:00
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Which is my entire point. You don't just start out reading Joyce. People read a lot of genre crap, and eventually some will move on to higher-grade crap. I'm saying there's no good reason why they should even be encouraged to start with and glut themselves on crappy genre stuff when there are good books (and even good genre books, like you point out) that can be appreciated by a wider audience. Yes, it happens that people read a lot of genre crap when they read at all, and as far as I'm concerned that isn't even the same process as reading a writer who takes full advantage of their medium rather than just putting the story onto the page to have it out. Also this ^ All Nines fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 20:03
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Guy A. Person posted:Haha dude this is not what you said. You said people start with Twilight and work their way up to more complicated books. Kids learning to read don't read Twilight either. At the point that you have the vocabulary and mental capacity required to read something as long as Twilight, you can be reading something more fulfilling. And who's going to make them? You? I don't see any inconsistency. Twilight is a simple starting point, same as Go Dog Go and any other entry level book. There's a lot of people who struggle to read Twilight. You wouldn't begrudge a child for reading a simple book, because the reading skills simply aren't there. So why is it such a big deal that someone with the reading skills of a child reads something simple and enjoyable to them? Guy A. Person posted:Yeah, he's the one creating strawmen. You just shifted your position from "people read Twilight to get better at reading" to "kids fresh out of the womb don't read Joyce you snobs". And another misquote! Let's reread what I said quote:Like any other delicacy, your palate has to be trained to enjoy more complex tastes. People start simple (Twilight) and if they keep reading, eventually tire of the same dreck and move on to more complicated books. I didn't say anywhere the training was intentional. But the entire field of reading pedagogy is based on this. You start people with zero reading skills on something simple, and work their way up. I'm willing to concede not everyone moves on. But I never understand this snobbery that people have to read only "approved" books. How about we be glad that they read something, anything, and take comfort in the fact that a portion of those reading Twilight will one day move on to something better. Raskolnikov2089 fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 20:12
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All Nines posted:It probably isn't worth acknowledging such a reductive stance toward books in the first place, but I'll bite: Hemingway and Fitzgerald were the two greatest parts of High School english. There's a lot of genre fiction being read in schools these days too - I think it's an "at least they're reading something" mindset. But if lunchroom discussions were anything to go by, my friends who were in the regular english track actually got pissed that the honors classes got the better/"cooler" books when we actually were arguing homework stuff. Like honors english got Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a badass book, and the regular English track got to read...we had some multi-cultural book with something about a Tree in the title (and it wasn't A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which is an awesome look at multi-culturalism and has Tree in the title.). But this is not the English pedagogy thread, which is it's own discussion about why genre fiction is so much more popular than anything else. (largely because of the way "literary fiction" is introduced in school. When you discuss Dorian Gray as "badass book about a dude who sells his soul for eternal youth so he can gently caress lots of people winds up loving over the wrong people" it gets attention, and it really is a great novella. But Wilde winds up being taught as a stuffy old aristocrat (hah!) that had some Gay Stuff happen and that's that.) And Ada isn't Nabokov's masterpiece (that I give to Pale Fire for sure. The only thing I hated about Pale Fire is I had read House of Leaves first and thus structure wasn't nearly as interesting as I found it in House of Leaves where it was just nifty that the driving plot was told entirely through the annotations. Other than that, it is just a fantastic fantastic work of art.) but Ada is definitely his most fun to sink your teeth into. (His "most fun" would be Lolita, which despite the utterly disgusting characters maintains this light whimiscalness that is almost entirely due to the way Nabokov treats the English language in it.)
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Jul 31, 2014 20:23
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I would like to dispel the "at least they're reading something" excuse that gets tossed around. In general the people posting on this site aren't like underprivileged kids who have reading levels well below the national average or something. In fact I would be willing to bet that 90% of the people on this forum are nerds (not using that as an insult since I'm one too) and consider themselves smarter than most of their peers. Holding them to such a low standard is insulting and also kind of laughable.Raskolnikov2089 posted:I don't see any inconsistency. Twilight is a simple starting point, same as Go Dog Go and any other entry level book. There's a lot of people who struggle to read Twilight. You are comparing a 600 page novel (albeit a young adult one) to a Dr. Suess book for literal kindergarteners. You don't see the inconsistency? Try a little harder. And no I wouldn't begrudge a child for trying to improve their reading skills. Neither would the OP considering the title of the thread is "Quit Being a loving Child..." It is an appeal to adults, and presumably not adults who have literacy issues. Raskolnikov2089 posted:And who's going to make them? You? What the gently caress is this about? You seem to be trying to make this about actual children or adults who have literacy issues and that is not what this thread is about. Obviously people who are learning to read need to work their way up. The people in the Book forum of this site are not learning to read though.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:25
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Guy A. Person posted:You seem to be trying to make this about actual children or adults who have literacy issues and that is not what this thread is about. Obviously people who are learning to read need to work their way up. The people in the Book forum of this site are not learning to read though. Fair enough, I have misread the purpose of the thread.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:43
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Franzen's latter two novels are actually really good. And I think an easy place to start with Nabokov might be a translation of Despair, because its short and the [booming voice] Question of Identity [/booming voice] is addressed really bluntly so you don't have to have much interpretive practice to understand the subtext.
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Jul 31, 2014 21:36
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Honestly one of the biggest barriers between people and literature (or any art) is that most people think of themselves as A Person Who Does A, B, and C, and Likes X, Y, and Z, while art asks people to question the fundamental construction of their mind + world, either from an opposing perspective or from a position with no answer.
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Jul 31, 2014 21:43
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Bundt Cake posted:Honestly one of the biggest barriers between people and literature (or any art) is that most people think of themselves as A Person Who Does A, B, and C, and Likes X, Y, and Z, while art asks people to question the fundamental construction of their mind + world, either from an opposing perspective or from a position with no answer. But I'm a Person Who Likes Art. Doesn't that disprove your theory? 
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Jul 31, 2014 22:03
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Guy A. Person posted:I would like to dispel the "at least they're reading something" excuse that gets tossed around. In general the people posting on this site aren't like underprivileged kids who have reading levels well below the national average or something. In fact I would be willing to bet that 90% of the people on this forum are nerds (not using that as an insult since I'm one too) and consider themselves smarter than most of their peers. Holding them to such a low standard is insulting and also kind of laughable. I am the dumbest person on the planet. I know poo poo about poo poo. Babies with Downs Syndrome look like Richard Feynman compared to me.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:04
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Bundt Cake posted:Franzen's latter two novels are actually really good. And I think an easy place to start with Nabokov might be a translation of Despair, because its short and the [booming voice] Question of Identity [/booming voice] is addressed really bluntly so you don't have to have much interpretive practice to understand the subtext.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:06
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LaughMyselfTo posted:But I'm a Person Who Likes Art. Doesn't that disprove your theory? As far as I can tell, there is no advantage to understanding art. Either in this thread or the couldn't get through it thread someone posted that they found "The Trial" frustrating. Thats sort of what I meant in that other post. Of course a fatalistic view is frustrating. but thats the disconnect for that reader. instead of feeling relief at Camus acknowledgment that all this stuff out of our control is propelling our lives, they got frustrated that things weren't working fairly. Its like the exact right feeling to have, but instead of going Oh theres this facade of justice punishing people for things beyond their control, good point, they want him to get off scot free and have people apologize to him.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:12
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AA is for Quitters posted:Also, on the subject - if I hated, hated hated Heart of Darkness in high school is it worth it to try anything else by Conrad? I'm not even a huge fan of Apocalypse Now, even though I saw the movie before reading Heart of Darkness so it wasn't the whole "I hated the book so much I hate thematically-linked media as well" thing, I just find the whole premise to be...boring and flat. I'm a huge sap for Conrad, and while HoD isn't his best book (either Lord Jim or The Secret Agent. Probably The Secret Agent) but it's still great. You're right in that the plot isn't important. So many of his stories are just some small, sometimes uneventful bit of business, But it's how he can wring so much pathos from the environment, he sees the malice of mankind in rocks, uncertainty in fog, pointlessness of human endeavour in roots. So much of his prose is just flat out beautiful, and his concerns are timeless. The need for self-respect, the attempt to forge an identity, and his piercing cynicism into people who dress up their greed in the guise of philanthropy. His irony challenges Henry James and while I can't think of any of his stories that are actually funny (The Duel, a comic short story isn't exactly hilarious), so many passages of his are charged with just a devastating wit. His views on women were outdated even at their time, and the charges of racism and founded, despite his anti-colonial stance, but He's still one of the great novelists.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:49
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Holy poo poo people. Who cares what other people read. Come join the Shaxberd thread if you feel guilty. I'm even posting synopses so you can just pretend you're reading along. Also Conrad is awesome and I'm saddened to hear someone didn't enjoy Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now. Typhoon was another good story of Conrad's though.
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Aug 1, 2014 00:50
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Anyone read Nostromo by Conrad? I've had it on my shelf for a while (so many unread books on my shelf).
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Aug 1, 2014 01:28
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Yeah it's good but I think he works best in concise stories. He just bulks that book out with various one-dimensional characters and politics that he dismisses immediately.
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Aug 1, 2014 01:34
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Look at this joker never read Hemingway in highschool. For Whom the Bell Tolls had about a third of it written in Spanish.
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Aug 1, 2014 01:57
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computer parts posted:For Whom the Bell Tolls had about a third of it written in Spanish. Look at this joker who never read The Old Man and the Sea in elementary school
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Aug 1, 2014 02:14
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Read Primo Levi please. All of it.
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Aug 1, 2014 14:10
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computer parts posted:For Whom the Bell Tolls had about a third of it written in Spanish. And it's one of the best books I've ever read. It's all about getting in step with an author's rhythm. I'd guess there might be a lot of Kerouac haters out there, but On the Road was all rhythm for me. It took three or four false starts before I really got into it. If you can latch onto a particular style, even dense or "difficult" books can read smoothly and easily.
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Aug 1, 2014 14:16
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AA is for Quitters posted:But if lunchroom discussions were anything to go by, my friends who were in the regular english track actually got pissed that the honors classes got the better/"cooler" books when we actually were arguing homework stuff. Like honors english got Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a badass book, and the regular English track got to read...we had some multi-cultural book with something about a Tree in the title (and it wasn't A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which is an awesome look at multi-culturalism and has Tree in the title.). Was it The Lemon Tree, a novel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I read that for a Middle Eastern History class and actually really enjoyed it. It gave me a pretty nice perspective on the whole hosed up situation over there.
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Aug 2, 2014 04:40
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ArmZ posted:Read Primo Levi please. All of it. So I finished "Survival in Auschwitz" a while ago, while it's a probably the best book about the camps I've read I'm a little reluctant to read more due to finding it a bit overwhelming. Is "Saved and the Drowned" basically just more of life in the camps? If so I'd feel comfortable skipping it but I'm wouldn't mind having someone sell me on why I should read that too.
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Aug 2, 2014 05:08
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srypher posted:Was it The Lemon Tree, a novel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I read that for a Middle Eastern History class and actually really enjoyed it. It gave me a pretty nice perspective on the whole hosed up situation over there. No, actually some googling reveals it was actually The House on Mango Street which from it's wikipedia summary doesn't sound like a bad look at the American Dream as told through someone who's realizing that hard work etc. isn't exactly paying off...I should go back and reread it and see if my dislike for it was chalked up to it being poorly taught, or due to it being an actual poo poo book. and gently caress For Whom the Bell Tolls. I love Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls is probably my least favorite thing of his. Give me his shorts. Give me Sun Also Rises, give me Old Man and the Sea, Farewell to Arms, anything... I've had For Whom the Bell Tolls sitting on my dresser for years. Every few months I start trying to read it and just can't. I have the same problem with This Side of Paradise despite loving everything else Fitzgerald's done.
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Aug 2, 2014 17:30
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Guy A. Person posted:I would like to dispel the "at least they're reading something" excuse that gets tossed around. In general the people posting on this site aren't like underprivileged kids who have reading levels well below the national average or something. In fact I would be willing to bet that 90% of the people on this forum are nerds (not using that as an insult since I'm one too) and consider themselves smarter than most of their peers. Holding them to such a low standard is insulting and also kind of laughable. Raskolnikov isn't just talking about complexity in the sense of the overall length or vocabulary. He is talking about the complexity of the story and ideas that a book contains. Its totally true that many people first get comfortable with the idea of reading a long-form piece of writing, or get into pop-philosophy crammed in to a lovely fantasy book, and then develop their tastes for more refined writing. I really dont know why you're digging in your heels on this, did J.K. Rowling murder your parents or something? CestMoi posted:There are no good books that are easy to read. Thats ridiculous. Some ideas may be difficult to convey in a written format by their very nature, but the onus is always on the author to make the reader's task as easy as possible. Mr.48 fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 2, 2014 18:53
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CestMoi posted:There are no good books that are easy to read. the english translations of blindness and death in the andes disagrees disclaimer though is that those are the only ones I've read by saramago and vargas llosa as of yet, don't know how they compare to the rest of their authors' works
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Aug 2, 2014 19:52
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Mr.48 posted:Thats ridiculous. Some ideas may be difficult to convey in a written format by their very nature, but the onus is always on the author to make the reader's task as easy as possibly. Nah. The important question to ask in these cases is whether or not the book has good reasons for challenging, or at least being inherently difficult for the reader, and the problem is when difficulty is added to hide the writer's lack of anything valuable to say/linguistic talent. Then again a lot of people don't allow conversations to challenge them either and operate under agree-to-disagree mentalities rather than defending their opinions.
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Aug 2, 2014 20:35
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CestMoi posted:There are no good books that are easy to read.
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Aug 2, 2014 21:13
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This thread seems to be mostly stuff taken out of context. I dunno what to tell ya.
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Aug 2, 2014 21:24
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Blind Sally posted:This thread seems to be mostly stuff taken out of context. I dunno what to tell ya. Death of the author.
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Aug 2, 2014 21:52
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Mr.48 posted:I really dont know why you're digging in your heels on this, did J.K. Rowling murder your parents or something? Lol. No I actually really dig the Harry Potter series. And I'm not digging my heels on this because I hate people reading or even primarily posting about scifi/fantasy books. I just find it laughable that the majority of posters in this subforum are beginning readers who aren't advanced enough to read more challenging works. That's kind of insulting and also pretty suspect given the likely demographic of this site. Also my reading comprehension might be awful but I think CestMoi was being ironical.
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Aug 2, 2014 22:25
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inktvis posted:Wouldn't be a bad idea for people to go back and take a look at the context of this post. I actually truly believe it and wanted to express my opinion and just happened to do it at a time that makes it look like I was being sarcastic.
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Aug 3, 2014 00:03
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CestMoi posted:I actually truly believe it and wanted to express my opinion and just happened to do it at a time that makes it look like I was being sarcastic. Are you sure it's not you who's a bit thick and finds good books hard to read? Like, I mean, that's obviously an atrocious opinion, and probably an ethically disastrous one at that, considering how it tries so hard to disregard every literary tradition outside of some modern trends originating from roughly between Trieste and Harvard. e: I'm not sure why I'm doing this.
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Aug 3, 2014 00:25
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You should constantly be struggling and striving to read, and if you actually enjoy the time you spend it is worthless.
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Aug 3, 2014 00:35
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CestMoi posted:You should constantly be struggling and striving to read, and if you actually enjoy the time you spend it is worthless. this is a correct opinion
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Aug 3, 2014 00:56
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Ras Het posted:Are you sure it's not you who's a bit thick and finds good books hard to read? The way he phrased that post and the one after it, I feel like he was being sarcastic again.
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Aug 3, 2014 01:03
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Guy A. Person posted:Lol. No I actually really dig the Harry Potter series. I genuinely don't get this snobbish attitude that most of this thread reeks of. Who cares if people read silly pulp for their own enjoyment? Are you that insecure about your own intelligence and taste in book? Its like the people who get off on these literary circle-jerks are the closeted republicans of the written word.
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Aug 3, 2014 17:22
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Mr.48 posted:I genuinely don't get this snobbish attitude that most of this thread reeks of. Who cares if people read silly pulp for their own enjoyment? Are you that insecure about your own intelligence and taste in book? Its like the people who get off on these literary circle-jerks are the closeted republicans of the written word. I think the problem is working itself out. For a while there was pretty much nothing but genre fic threads. But now people are beginning to post more threads about other work, classical and otherwise. As long as we keep doing that instead of blindly criticizing stuff, it's gonna sort itself out. But this thread should probably get a title change, since it's needlessly inflammatory and keeps bringing in people who angrily post without reading the discourse that has occurred throughout the thread (not pointing fingers).
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Aug 3, 2014 18:31
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Mr.48 posted:I genuinely don't get this snobbish attitude that most of this thread reeks of. Who cares if people read silly pulp for their own enjoyment? Are you that insecure about your own intelligence and taste in book? Its like the people who get off on these literary circle-jerks are the closeted republicans of the written word. I genuinely don't understand why you have such poor reading comprehension. I didn't say anything even remotely approaching what you're accusing me of here, and in fact said I was fine with it (edit: "it" being people who read pulp/genre, since like I said I am one of those people)! I was specifically commenting on the lame excuse that the abundance of genre threads in this forum is due to all of these posters being beginning/weak readers who don't have the capacity to read something more challenging. That is insulting as hell to those posters, and if you agree with that assessment then I'm not the snob here pal. Guy A. Person fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 18:39
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Mr.48 posted:I genuinely don't get this snobbish attitude that most of this thread reeks of. Who cares if people read silly pulp for their own enjoyment? Are you that insecure about your own intelligence and taste in book? Its like the people who get off on these literary circle-jerks are the closeted republicans of the written word. hmm yes why would someone post an opinion about books in a forum dedicated to posting opinions about books? alternatively, why do people who read silly pulp think people who read literary books are snobs? Are you that insecure about your own intelligence and taste in books? “It gets harder all the time, Bev Shaw once said. Harder, yet easier. One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be hard as hard can be grows harder yet.” ―Coetzee
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Aug 3, 2014 18:45
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ArmZ posted:hmm yes why would someone post an opinion about books in a forum dedicated to posting opinions about books? Ha, nice.  "'Cause, remember: no matter where you go... there you are." ―Buckaroo Banzai
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Aug 3, 2014 18:48
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