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Originally Posted by Xanthe
I think that what turns up on the bestseller list is usually quite predictable, rather than being special.
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Man, you have no idea how many people in the book biz would kill for those powers of predictability....
I concur that some of it is not impressive literature, I just don't see any particularly pressing reason to slam the people who buy it, or any reason to presume they don't read it. Clearly people read the Harry Potter and Dan Brown books, for example.
There are also tons of books that follow The Formulas and fail to catch on, or that purposely avoid The Formula and take off.
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Originally Posted by Xanthe
I don't think that anyone here can truthfully say that they don't know someone who reads books on those lists for just that reason.
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I think I can. Their interest may be piqued by the book being on the bestseller list, or because all their friends read it (
Eat, Pray, Love certainly seems to have made the rounds), but "cachet?"
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Originally Posted by Xanthe
You, for example, immediately jumped to the erroneous conclusion that I must think that my reading tastes are more impressive than others.
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That's pretty much because you're slamming other people who you don't even know based on your perceptions of their tastes. It's kind of insulting and condescending to suggest that millions of people buy books that they never finish or read.
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Originally Posted by Xanthe
I think that you are confusing them with the movie and music uploaders, where being the first is a badge of pride....
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Not really, it's more just that piracy rates allegedly track pretty closely to popularity. For example, if
Twilight books are massively popular, they'll be heavily pirated as well.
Plus there are, I have little doubt, some people who acquire pirated materials out of an acquisitionist urge -- it's free, so why not collect as much as you can?
Or to put it another way, I don't see any particular reason to view pirates as enlightened readers and purchasers as saps who don't bother to finish reading the books they buy.