Quote:
Originally Posted by bhartman36
Is there a danger that someone introduced to bad writing will prefer bad writing? Better-written books are often more challenging to the reader.
I don't know the answer, but the trend is disturbing to me: When I was a kid, I used to read The Hardy Boys books. While it might be a bit of a stretch, adults reading HP and Twilight now seems akin to them reading The Hardy Boys back then.
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You may have answered your own question. Do you go back and reread the Hardy Boys
now? If you do, what do you think of them?
We learn to read as young children, and the stuff we learn to read is stuff the folks who wrote it assume a young child
can read and understand. Do we get stuck there because that's where we started?
Appreciation of literature is a
learned skill, and like all other skills, it's gained by practice. I appreciate stuff now I wouldn't have appreciated as a teen or even as a young adult. I had the vocabulary, even then, to
understand what I was reading, but lacked the experience and knowledge for it to connect with me. As I grew older and read more, I gained an understanding of what made a plot work, what made a character meaningful, and what made prose good.
I can read and enjoy works now I didn't care for when younger, because I've learned ways to approach it - hooks to hang my interest on, if you will - so that I
can appreciate the work.
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Dennis