50 Shades, the lemming theory in action.

[Recidiva]

No more than other relatively clichéd stuff we enjoy reading. I totally don’t have an issue with that or a high horse to sit on. I sometimes go without reading any fiction for a time, and sometimes I’ll stuff myself with the most juvenile stuff you can think of. I do try to follow my appetites instead of getting lured into the “everyone’s reading so and so.”

I read the Da Vinci Code because it was on the bookshelf at the in-laws; same, as I recall, with Bridget Jones’ Diary. I saw the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie and said no thanks to the book, and I remain blissfully ignorant about the sparkling vampires, among other things.

Harry Potter I resisted through the entire decade of Potter mania (because I’d read the first book early on and was not charmed), but just last year, I saw the movies and then I couldn’t help reading the books, and then they captured me and I had an, uh, episode of reading every fanfic I could find. I haven’t actually revised my early opinion of JKR’s books, and I don’t think I’d have bothered with them at all if the movies hadn’t been charming, but I guess I should hand it to her that I was so annoyed with some of the things she did I had to seek the fanfic cure.

So it’s not like go “ewww, I read a bestseller, I feel so dirty” but if a best-selling book doesn’t look like it’d interest me anyhow and I’m not like, stuck camping, I’m hard to guilt into feeling that I’m missing something.

I read Da Vinci Code, Twilight, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Seen both the Swedish and American versions of the Tattoo trilogy...read the first book, might read more. I'm omnivorous. At the same time I'm reading medical and science stuff and shoving romance between the cracks when my brain gets tired at the end of the day and I am not in information gathering mode or "Gotta read this so I know what people are talking about" or "My daughter said...I should...read...this...oy..."

Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I get 20 books a week off the Amazon "free" list and I can't get past page seven in any of them.

I've switched to audio for a lot of it because reading takes my full focus and having a story told to me is a wonderful pleasure while I can do other things.

Two of my favorite books ever, Orson Scott Card's "Lost Boys" and the previous romance I've mentioned, nobody's ever heard about. I found them by being omnivorous and giving everything a fair shot, though fair shot might only take you to page seven. I refuse to read a book all the way through if I'm not engaged. It results in me picking a lot up and putting it just as quickly down, it also results in me not getting through things that want to start slowly. I get a lot done when it grabs me by the first page and pulls me along in its wake.

I'd never accuse you of being elitist. A lot of folks here have an opinion about a book they haven't read and they're discussing the social phenomena. It's a bit like someone complaining about a Beatles concert without ever going to one. "These kids, they go wild!"

I understand the harrumphing, it's not that great, and neither were the Beatles. But it's got an energy to it that might make me tap my feet from time to time, or at least not walk out by page seven.

 

[Verdad]

I read Da Vinci Code, Twilight, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Seen both the Swedish and American versions of the Tattoo trilogy...read the first book, might read more. I'm omnivorous. At the same time I'm reading medical and science stuff and shoving romance between the cracks when my brain gets tired at the end of the day and I am not in information gathering mode or "Gotta read this so I know what people are talking about" or "My daughter said...I should...read...this...oy..."

Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I get 20 books a week off the Amazon "free" list and I can't get past page seven in any of them.

I've switched to audio for a lot of it because reading takes my full focus and having a story told to me is a wonderful pleasure while I can do other things.

Two of my favorite books ever, Orson Scott Card's "Lost Boys" and the previous romance I've mentioned, nobody's ever heard about. I found them by being omnivorous and giving everything a fair shot, though fair shot might only take you to page seven. I refuse to read a book all the way through if I'm not engaged. It results in me picking a lot up and putting it just as quickly down, it also results in me not getting through things that want to start slowly. I get a lot done when it grabs me by the first page and pulls me along in its wake.

I'd never accuse you of being elitist. A lot of folks here have an opinion about a book they haven't read and they're discussing the social phenomena. It's a bit like someone complaining about a Beatles concert without ever going to one. "These kids, they go wild!"

I understand the harrumphing, it's not that great, and neither were the Beatles. But it's got an energy to it that might make me tap my feet from time to time, or at least not walk out by page seven.

I read various things too though it goes in spurts of focusing on something. I had a history kick when I could barely understand why anyone would read fiction when fact is so much more interesting. Interests come and go and come back again but there's only so many hours in a day, so I don't feel particularly bad when I tell 'everyone' to go stuff themselves.

It is understandable that hugely popular things are discussed as phenomena, though. Even sacred texts are such because that's the place a community gives them, so when something makes it to the big stage, you can't quite separate the book from everything surrounding it. It's a bit of a curse that it's like that—all too easily it's manipulated for the sake of sales, and sooner than you know it you're forced into having an opinion about something about which you'd just as happily have none.

I understand why it works so well, though. If, say, slashy stories I was recently reading made it big, gay men would have every reason to object to their portrayal in these stories. In vain would I say “but they're not even meant to portray you, they're about something else entirely and everyone who reads them knows it.” That may have been true of a relatively narrow audience, but once you've got 'everyone' reading, the potential for misunderstanding and undesirable effects grows.

With 50 SOG in particular I guess I just don't think the book original enough to warrant and sustain all the attention, though it does make me wonder about things like the smutty market. I'd have expected everyone to be bored with it already, or at least for the interest to have peaked and then leveled, with smut becoming just another thing to live with and around for better or for worse, but apparently there's markets to conquer yet.

But it's not that I don't understand at all why LC gets upset about it. Sometimes I get the horrors about things people consume too and I'm by no means settled on how much to worry.