That's it. I give up.

[rrneck]

The human race is surely headed toward an inevitable decline into chaos and destruction. There is no turning back. It's over.

?v=1

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_550_16-shocking-statistics-youll-wish-were-made-up_p16/#15

[Fridays Child]

1. I agree with your statistic but only if we are...

...using a very loose interpretation of "written." The term "poorly written" is much more accurate.

[ZombieHorde]

2. "The human race is surely headed toward an inevitable decline into chaos and destruction."

Wait, I thought we were always in a state of chaos and destruction.

[rrneck]

3. Yeah,

but at least up till now we made it look cool. Now we're going to be devoured by our own stupidity and shat out of the colon of idiocy for being too fucked up to to give the planet indigestion.

[Demo_Chris]

4. oh god

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. As bad as that is

at least they're reading SOMETHING.

[RiffRandell]

6. That's great!

I read most of the books on that page, but none that are circled.

[sendero]

7. Even at my advanced age.

... I "get" most cultural trends. I still listen to out-there electronica and still find the occassional new band my kids are listening to to be tasty (to be fair they were raised well and have really good taste .

But I have never, ever ever understood the fascination with vampires. Never. And at this point I suspect it is too late for me. Or maybe rather than being some deep dark allegorical mystery it's just a dumb one-inch-thought fantasy.

[rrneck]

14. I enjoy a good vampire story.

Just like I enjoy a good baseball story or a good war story. But the whole Twilight thing is just beyond a creature of teen marketing and so into the worst kind of wish fulfillment without a shred of anything that might be confused with art it's ridiculous.

[OriginalGeek]

19. I like a good vampire story too

but it started with Bram Stoker in my early teens. That's still the standard by which I measure. Anne Rice was great. Poppy Z. Brite was too (what ever happened to her though?). I even enjoy the bubblegumminess of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse. But I saw the first Twilight movie with my wife and daughter and will politely bow out of going to any more of those. Meaning I will fake a heart attack if I have to. Or induce one if that doesn't work.


If you want a really excellent vamp movie, check out Shadow Of The Vampire. John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. Completely great.

[rrneck]

20. My favorite class in the seventh grade was literature.

The teacher didn't assign us anything to read and demand a "book report". He read to us. We got Tolkein, the story of the Titanic, and Bram Stoker. He was the bestest teacher ever.

I read all of the Anne Rice books. They were very good except before it was over it seemed like she was struggling to find something for her vampires to do.

I'll get the movie. Thanks for the rec.

[OriginalGeek]

21. That does sound like an awesome teacher!

The best thing I can say about my HS lit teacher was that he ignored us and let us just read whatever we wanted. And didn't check on what it was. (I went to fundamentalist baptist run high school). In 9th and 10th grade I got through a LOT of Robert E. Howard and Poe and Lovecraft. And Dickens. I loved A Tale of Two Cities.

I don't remember a single assignment he ever gave us - he was the husband of one of the daughters of the founder of the church and school so I guess he felt he was owed a paycheck for making sure we didn't wander off - but at least we could read and I love to read so that worked out for me.

[union_maid]

8. This is not a surprise

Thirty years ago our family ran a used record and book store. The Romance section was VERY popular, and the used book store clientele skews less that way than new book business. Back then it was Danielle Steele who could not be stopped. OTOH, who am I to look down my nose? My go-to for a relaxing read is a murder mystery and that's been the case for the last 50 years or so. So, if someone wants to read about sparkly vampires while I'm reading about bodies in the library, go for it, I guess. As was said up thread, at least they're reading. Not everyone does, and not always because they can't. I've known plenty of people who'd rather watch Wheel of Fortune than read ANYTHING.

[In_The_Wind]

10. Did you enjoy reading Patricia Cornwell?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Scarpetta

Kay Scarpetta is a fictional character and protagonist in a series of crime novels written by Patricia Cornwell (born 1956).

[union_maid]

11. For most of the books I did

After a while Scarpetta, et al started to get on my nerves. None of the characters seemed to have any sense of humor at all. To be fair, being stalked by all those madmen might have been hell on their nerves. Plus, too much explicit cooking in the middle of these very dark mysteries.

[In_The_Wind]

12. LOL! I found her to be entertaining back in 2004.

:evil grin:

[Loryn]

16. There was a time

I wouldn't miss a Scarpetta book. After a while though, she was a Doctor, Lawyer, Scuba diver, Chef, and on and on.
I expected her to become an astronaut, and post the first autopsy at zero gravity.

[union_maid]

22. Yes! And still she found time

to be emotionally tortured and to emotionally torture those around her. She could do it all! Like I said, got on the nerves.

[rrneck]

15. That's true.

In my small hometown there was a Hallmark Card/Book store that did huge business in Harlequin romances and they would periodically have a "$1 a pound sale" where there would be a big cart of discounted books and a scale. I could always find some good history there for a couple of bucks.

[In_The_Wind]

9. It isn't her fault!

http://stepheniemeyer.com/bio.html

I don't think I've missed anything Stephenie Meyer has written.

[union_maid]

13. I haven't read her

but I've read almost all the Charlaine Harris books, vampire and non-vampire, so my reading is not any more elevated. Actually, I gave up modern lit some years ago and a lot of important non-fiction gets a pass, too. To tell the truth, at this point in life, almost my whole purpose in choosing reading material is to keep those endorphins working. My current absolute favorite books are the Chet the Dog mysteries by Spencer Quinn (aka Peter Abrahams).

[rrneck]

17. How am I supposed to piss and moan if you keep making sense? nt

[petronius]

18. Who is Stephenie Meyer?

Note: this is just the obligatory post to demonstrate intellectual superiority and detachment from banal pop-culture dreck. Instead of just googling the name - like a normal person would - I decided to type all this out in the vain (heh heh: double entendre! Get it?) hope that my pretensions would be validated. And now that I have googled in another tab, I see that she writes that Twilight stuff, which I've heard of but don't read (because I'm smart that way).