11:19 pm - 04/03/2012
The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads.
I’m sure all those books are well written. So is “Horton Hatches the Egg.” But Horton doesn’t have the depth of language and character as literature written for people who have stopped physically growing.
I appreciate that adults occasionally watch Pixar movies or play video games. That’s fine. Those media don’t require much of your brains. Books are one of our few chances to learn. There’s a reason my teachers didn’t assign me to go home and play three hours of Donkey Kong.
I have no idea what “The Hunger Games” is like. Maybe there are complicated shades of good and evil in each character. Maybe there are Pynchonesque turns of phrase. Maybe it delves into issues of identity, self-justification and anomie that would make David Foster Wallace proud. I don’t know because it’s a book for kids. I’ll read “The Hunger Games” when I finish the previous 3,000 years of fiction written for adults.
Let’s have the decency to let tween girls have their own little world of vampires and child wizards and games you play when hungry. Let’s not pump Justin Bieber in our Saabs and get engaged at Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland. Because it’s embarrassing. You can’t take an adult seriously when he’s debating you over why Twilight vampires are O.K. with sunlight. If my parents had read “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” at the same time as I did, I would have looked into boarding school.
NYTimes Fail Opinion
Joel Stein: "Adults Should Read Adult Books"
The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads.
I’m sure all those books are well written. So is “Horton Hatches the Egg.” But Horton doesn’t have the depth of language and character as literature written for people who have stopped physically growing.
I appreciate that adults occasionally watch Pixar movies or play video games. That’s fine. Those media don’t require much of your brains. Books are one of our few chances to learn. There’s a reason my teachers didn’t assign me to go home and play three hours of Donkey Kong.
I have no idea what “The Hunger Games” is like. Maybe there are complicated shades of good and evil in each character. Maybe there are Pynchonesque turns of phrase. Maybe it delves into issues of identity, self-justification and anomie that would make David Foster Wallace proud. I don’t know because it’s a book for kids. I’ll read “The Hunger Games” when I finish the previous 3,000 years of fiction written for adults.
Let’s have the decency to let tween girls have their own little world of vampires and child wizards and games you play when hungry. Let’s not pump Justin Bieber in our Saabs and get engaged at Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland. Because it’s embarrassing. You can’t take an adult seriously when he’s debating you over why Twilight vampires are O.K. with sunlight. If my parents had read “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” at the same time as I did, I would have looked into boarding school.
NYTimes Fail Opinion
Then again, clearly I'm a pretentious asshole because I just wrote a paper comparing the works of DFW and Pynchon...and this guy just name-dropped both of them. FUCK.
lol what do you fucking care? Are they reading aloud at a high volume on the subway or something?
and with my work schedule, there is zero chance i'll see it while it's out, even if i wanted to.
this makes me feel soooo old tbh.
I hope to someday be able to read the poop scene in Gravity's Rainbow and force myself to like it that I may feel smug in my superior brainpower, just like you. :3
And even though he'd really want to read it because you know this guy has got to be self-obsessed, he'd never get to read it because pop up books are too childish.
Edited at 2012-04-04 04:58 am (UTC)
But I see grown ass adults reading Cassandra Clare and shit and it's just..idk. I have guilty pleasures too and I get that they're fast reads but yeah.
IDK what points have already been brought up, but for someone like me with ADD, the kind of over-written intellectual snobbery this guy surely enjoys would send me screaming into the night with blood dripping from my ears. No thank you.
First off, Cinderella Castle is in Disney World and Sleeping Beauty's castle is in Disneyland. Second, don't shit on my dreams!