Books are the new snobbery
Oct. 24th, 2005 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charliesmumHey, One in three has bought a book just to look intelligent.
I blame Oprah for the whole important book thing. I love the woman, but I don't think she's a natural reader, and therefore worries too much about what she is reading, because she doesn't want to look stupid.
I will admit to a sort of book snobbery - Whenever I travel I like to have several books on hand with which to pass the time, and, though I will pick books I want to read and that look interesting, I confess to heading to the 'literature' section of the library/bookshop rather than the popular fiction section, so I look all kinds of smart whilst sitting in the airport.
Of course I think the great secret about good literature that many people don't seem to understand is that they are, first and foremost, good stories. People may see me reading and think, 'gosh, she's reading Tolstoy! What an intellectual!' not realising that what I'm actually reading is a romance novel, where one couple ends up happily ever after, while the other ends tragically with the tragic heroine tragically throwing herself in front of a train.
And I'm sure if someone discussed the symbolism of the storm tossed waves in A Tale of Two Cities to Charles Dickens, he'd roll his eyes. Granted his stories were sometimes his way of ranting about society, but he still did it in such a way that people were clamoring for more in ways that would make the Lost fandom look apathetic.
And, apropos of nothing, I just got Charlie a chess set from a garage sale, along with a book called 'A Children's Book of Chess'. I think he'd be good at it. The book is interesting. It explains the pieces by illustrating what the pieces correspond to in real medieval times. For example, it says that a pawn can move two spaces in its first move because a pikeman would most likely feel a bit more daring and reckless with the entire army behind him, but the further out he goes, the more careful he would be.
It also says that the reason a pawn can only attack diagonally is because of the way they held their pikes behind their shields - they would be poking out to the left or right, not the front.
Also, 'freelance' came from the type of Knights who were not working for anyone in particular. Mercenaries.
I blame Oprah for the whole important book thing. I love the woman, but I don't think she's a natural reader, and therefore worries too much about what she is reading, because she doesn't want to look stupid.
I will admit to a sort of book snobbery - Whenever I travel I like to have several books on hand with which to pass the time, and, though I will pick books I want to read and that look interesting, I confess to heading to the 'literature' section of the library/bookshop rather than the popular fiction section, so I look all kinds of smart whilst sitting in the airport.
Of course I think the great secret about good literature that many people don't seem to understand is that they are, first and foremost, good stories. People may see me reading and think, 'gosh, she's reading Tolstoy! What an intellectual!' not realising that what I'm actually reading is a romance novel, where one couple ends up happily ever after, while the other ends tragically with the tragic heroine tragically throwing herself in front of a train.
And I'm sure if someone discussed the symbolism of the storm tossed waves in A Tale of Two Cities to Charles Dickens, he'd roll his eyes. Granted his stories were sometimes his way of ranting about society, but he still did it in such a way that people were clamoring for more in ways that would make the Lost fandom look apathetic.
And, apropos of nothing, I just got Charlie a chess set from a garage sale, along with a book called 'A Children's Book of Chess'. I think he'd be good at it. The book is interesting. It explains the pieces by illustrating what the pieces correspond to in real medieval times. For example, it says that a pawn can move two spaces in its first move because a pikeman would most likely feel a bit more daring and reckless with the entire army behind him, but the further out he goes, the more careful he would be.
It also says that the reason a pawn can only attack diagonally is because of the way they held their pikes behind their shields - they would be poking out to the left or right, not the front.
Also, 'freelance' came from the type of Knights who were not working for anyone in particular. Mercenaries.
