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Notes -
You have an incredible talent for talking to someone without responding to them.
The essence of my post is that we're not publishing enough books that are interesting to men. The essence of your first reply was that we already had published plenty of interesting books. The essence of my first reply was that those might have been interesting to you, but that you're atypical and that therefore your reply fails to contradict my thesis. I understood the essence of your second reply as being to claim that old books aren't necessarily unreadable, and replied that "not unreadable" != "interesting". If that was noncentral, and the essence of your reply was actually something along the lines of, "there's no point making books more interesting when that doesn't necessarily make them more useful", then I encourage you to go back and read my article without skimming because I use most of it to explain why the present state of the publishing industry disadvantages books that provide any sort of value to men, and therefore why, if you care about "good books", it is necessary to first convince publishers that men like to read by reading and paying for any books, so that they see the need to select and cultivate good books. If that was noncentral, and your central point was that you men probably won't start reading good books just because they're reading bad books, then I would claim that my central point is that they definitely won't start reading good books if they're not reading any books... and as per my earlier points, that in a tautological but also very true sense men won't start reading books if there are no books they're interested in reading.
(if the central point of your 2nd-to-last reply was something totally different than my three proposals, feel free to clarify that now.)
It clearly wasn't, which should have been obvious given the examples I gave of interesting books. It's quite simply wrong that there are no interesting books published before current year plus ten.
As written, your response implies that you disagree with the position that "old books aren't necessarily unreadable"-- meaning, you think old books are unreadable. Responding against what you actually mean to say-- that "old books are interesting"-- I would counter, "nuh uh." Well not actually, but c'mon-- are you totally incapable of seeing how a person might enjoy recency and currency in the media they consume, and thereby prefer to look for classes of media where they can find it?
No, my response implies that the essence of my second comment was not that old books merely readable.
Sure, in the same way that I am capable of seeing why a person enjoys reading books written in the first person rather than the third, or why a black woman enjoys reading books about black women. I simply consider this a blinkered perspective and if I never read, for example, Hemingway because I think bullfights are barbarous and reprehensible, it would be ridiculous.
I do not believe that you can learn to expand what you like by reading more of what you already like.
Why are you making a moral argument instead of addressing my mechanical one? I'm not saying that reading old books is bad or worthless, I'm saying it's going to be much harder to get kids and men to read good books without first instilling a love of reading, which is very likely to take bad-but-entertaining books. I absolutely loved Eragon as a kindergartener. Was it the absolute peak of literary achievement? Absolutely not. But it hadn't been for books like Eragon, I never would have been interested in reading books like the Dragonriders of Pern, or from there Foundation and I, Robot, or from there Anathem and Void*Star.
I am wondering if we are even having the same conversation. Are my messages getting through? Is there some corruption in the database?
You enjoyed Eragon not because you were a kindergarten-level reader but because you were a child. If you are already not a child, or not a kindergartner, there is no point in starting with children's literature to cultivate an enjoyment of reading: you should just read actually good books.
There's definitely some sort of miscommunication going on because you remain convinced that I'm trying to prove that reading the classics is totally ineffective at getting people to read, when in point of fact I'm merely saying that while that may work for some people, the fact that it hasn't worked for everyone suggests that we should try and adapt a different tactic.
I literally never suggested that? I suggested people read slop. Meaning-- I suggested that people prioritize finding books that are enjoyable to read even though they lack serious literary quality. That doesn't mean specifically children's literature. There's slop for all ages of people.
It's not really this that I'm convinced of. It's more like, I don't really think that reading is valuable in itself unless you are reading something worth reading. I also don't think that reading the classics has been tried and found wanting; mostly I think it hasn't been tried at all by "nonreaders". I also don't think that the tactic of reading garbage is likely to lead to appreciation of actually good literature - I expect it will merely increase appreciation of garbage.
Sure. I'm responding to the Eragon example you brought up. My argument works against reading slop just as well.
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