There's a great meme that goes around that absolutely applies here. It starts off saying "List of books to read before you die" and goes like this: 1. Any book you want 2. Don't read books you're not interested in 3. That's it 4. Congratulations, you did it
Sometimes those lists of things like "The Western Canon" or "40 Greatest Books of All Time" are interesting to me, and I can sometimes be persuaded to see how many I actually have read, but I don't think they're always all that necessary. I majored in English Lit so I've had my share of slogging through something I hate because I've got to write a paper on it, and I wouldn't tell people they ought to do the same in real life just to live up to some arbitrary standard of being "literate." I think if someone's reading a book because they're supposed to they aren't going to get much out of the experience.
I had to read The Great Gatsby in high school and loathed it. I still have people telling me how great it is, and how I should give it another chance, but life's too short to read shit I'm not interested in, and it's definitely too short to re-read the same shit. It takes a major shift in the way I look at a story to induce me to go back to something I hated. Actually that did happen recently - someone pointed out that Catcher in the Rye is actually about the protagonist dealing with being sexually abused. I totally didn't pick up on that when I read it before and I remember finding him boring and self-absorbed. With this person's new take on it, I'm going to read the book again.
Anyway, sorry about the rant :D
I was explaining fork theory to Fox while we were at Disney and he totally got it. Like when you get poked beyond your last fork and you start losing your temper, or how a little kid can hit their fork limit and have a meltdown because regulating your emotions and stuff is already hard when you're that young.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-09-01 05:32 pm (UTC)1. Any book you want
2. Don't read books you're not interested in
3. That's it
4. Congratulations, you did it
Sometimes those lists of things like "The Western Canon" or "40 Greatest Books of All Time" are interesting to me, and I can sometimes be persuaded to see how many I actually have read, but I don't think they're always all that necessary. I majored in English Lit so I've had my share of slogging through something I hate because I've got to write a paper on it, and I wouldn't tell people they ought to do the same in real life just to live up to some arbitrary standard of being "literate." I think if someone's reading a book because they're supposed to they aren't going to get much out of the experience.
I had to read The Great Gatsby in high school and loathed it. I still have people telling me how great it is, and how I should give it another chance, but life's too short to read shit I'm not interested in, and it's definitely too short to re-read the same shit. It takes a major shift in the way I look at a story to induce me to go back to something I hated. Actually that did happen recently - someone pointed out that Catcher in the Rye is actually about the protagonist dealing with being sexually abused. I totally didn't pick up on that when I read it before and I remember finding him boring and self-absorbed. With this person's new take on it, I'm going to read the book again.
Anyway, sorry about the rant :D
I was explaining fork theory to Fox while we were at Disney and he totally got it. Like when you get poked beyond your last fork and you start losing your temper, or how a little kid can hit their fork limit and have a meltdown because regulating your emotions and stuff is already hard when you're that young.