Except that's not always the case. There are plenty of people out there who do things because they believe it's expected of them. Reading the NYT reviews is part of it --and the NYT's commercials on satellite channels like A&E and Bravo highlight their implicit superiority-- and people who want to fit into certain social strata may feel the need to pick up literary novels for reasons other than entertainment. Reading for entertainment is simply one reason among many, and people don't always read with fun in mind.
This is what's being addressed in the Ann Leckie post, sort of.
I've had many people assume that writers whose works I adore are works I read only to somehow make other people feel stupid. Ummm, no. I read them because I adore them. I don't castigate other people for their failure to come up with a similar adoration; I don't assume that other people are reading books with the sole incentive of making a Statement About Their Intellect. If they say they love something, who am I to tell them they're wrong, lying, or attempting to impress me?
I can without qualifiers say that I don't love or adore certain works. I can say why, at length, because those are book discussions. But assuming that people are only pretending to like something in order to somehow fit into some sort of social agenda, just because I don't like the books in question seems unfair.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 04:39 am (UTC)Okay, let me take a breath here.
Except that's not always the case. There are plenty of people out there who do things because they believe it's expected of them. Reading the NYT reviews is part of it --and the NYT's commercials on satellite channels like A&E and Bravo highlight their implicit superiority-- and people who want to fit into certain social strata may feel the need to pick up literary novels for reasons other than entertainment. Reading for entertainment is simply one reason among many, and people don't always read with fun in mind.
This is what's being addressed in the Ann Leckie post, sort of.
I've had many people assume that writers whose works I adore are works I read only to somehow make other people feel stupid. Ummm, no. I read them because I adore them. I don't castigate other people for their failure to come up with a similar adoration; I don't assume that other people are reading books with the sole incentive of making a Statement About Their Intellect. If they say they love something, who am I to tell them they're wrong, lying, or attempting to impress me?
I can without qualifiers say that I don't love or adore certain works. I can say why, at length, because those are book discussions. But assuming that people are only pretending to like something in order to somehow fit into some sort of social agenda, just because I don't like the books in question seems unfair.