low brow reading isn't something new, and it certainly isn't primarily sold by amazon.
penny dreadfuls and other adventure type books from days gone by weren't exactly shakespeare, not that i'm sure that shakespeare was considered the shakespeare of his time.
besides, a lot of people i know don't read at all.
anything that gets them to read? i'm all for it. my granddaughter hasn't read a book in years - she texts, watches TV and takes selfies, but says reading is boring. i'd rather she started reading so-called crap than that she didn't read at all.
in the sixties, they said comic books were crap that would rot your mind. i loved comic books as much as i loved reading the oz books, prydain books and a variety of other books when i was 5 to 11 years old. all of them contributed to my lifelong love of reading. maybe too much of anything is bad for you - i'm not exactly the poster child for moderation. but eating a jumbo jack once in a while won't hurt you, and i bet it'll even taste good. i'm sure the same could be applied to books.
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Originally Posted by Turtle91
hmmm... without becoming offended...and actually listening (reading?) to what she said...it does make a certain sense.
I dare anyone to argue that there is NOT a lot of crap being peddled at these self published sellers - Amazon being a huge one. And, no, I'm not saying there isn't good stuff too...but one apple amidst a crate of candy bars doesn't belie the point she makes.
Yes, any reading is good reading: when you are trying to teach a child to read...and to love reading. But an adult reading the equivalent of "The rat sat on my hat", and thinking that what they read is true literature....well, come on.... and no, she is not talking about whether someone ENJOYS what they read...she specifically made the point that people become accustomed to the low standard and think that is what it should be. I do believe people ENJOY eating junk food...kinda hard not to with all the chemicals and drugs added to it to make you THINK it tastes good...(but that's another subject).
There is definitely something to be said for the days when publishers would filter what they published...what came out of the other end of that process had a much better chance of being a higher quality of work...and worth the money spent on it. Yes, there were rejected books that later became best sellers - and any number of other examples someone could point to...but generally speaking, the process kept the standards much higher than the depths to which they've fallen recently.
Cheers,
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