I don’t mean to be unkind, but I don’t get how you can claim to “love books” and have a shelf full of Harry Potter and Jodi Picault. Have we created a nation of people who honestly believe that “reading” is one of their hobbies because they own a copy of The DaVinci Code? Where did we go wrong?
Your homework: Burn your books. All of them. If you think they’re good books, then burn everything else you have that you think is good. Don’t give them away, or donate them – that’s just moving the problem on to some other poor bastard.
Now populate your shelves with: William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S. Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka; and that’s just for starters.
Come back to me for further recommendations when the fog has lifted from your brain.
I’d forgotten about this lovely reply to one of my photos from 7 years ago. Oh, literary snobbery, you haven’t changed much.
I’d forgotten about it too. I hope you’ve developed a love of literature in the last 7 years, or at least burned your copy of The DaVinci Code.
And what have we learned?
Never confuse “snobbery” or “elitism” for having standards. (If you don’t have any standards for yourself, then why should anyone else?)
Never confuse “popular” with “good”. (If every book on your bookshelf appeared on a best-seller list, how do you tell the difference?)
Learn to accept criticism, especially from people who have no investment in whether you take their advice or not. (If you find it difficult to accept criticism, you’re missing out on many opportunities to improve. Here are my book reviews. I might have got it all wrong. Please feel free to reblog any of them with any criticism you may have – let’s get a conversation going! I’ve also started a blog of simplified classics called Pretend You’ve Read. Please feel free to criticise anything you feel I got wrong there, too. Why not? Hone your reader’s instincts.)
Keep pushing forward. (Otherwise, what are you doing with your life?)
Always try to be a better version of yourself. (ditto)
Put your energy into creating things, making things and helping people, not into destroying things, taking things apart or trashing people. (I made that post with the sole intention of improving your life. I wasn’t try to upset you or make you feel bad or come across as “snobbery”. I was trying to help you understand what literature is, what it can do, and how you can cut yourself off a slice of that crazy action.)
A great way to learn to be a better version of yourself is to read literature. (I assume you understand this better than you did seven years ago. At least, I hope so!)
All from that one little post I reblogged from you 7 years ago.
Let’s be friends!
Well actually, my career in publishing and the book industry – which I hadn’t yet begun when I posted this – is down to my passion for all books, whether they’re deemed to be “literature” or not. The book industry is not sustained by holding onto the novels of dead white men, but by recognising that there are gems in all genres, and valuing all readers.
I personally love children’s books and YA. But I also ran a successful Classic Challenge for five years. (Don’t think that was anything to do with you, dear reader).
I have not moved on from Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events (maybe Dan Brown, but hey, it was seven years ago) and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami
William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S.
Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka.
Wow. White guys. So many white guys. They are the one true coming of all literature.
Wow. This guy. Telling OP that all her interests are trash and that she should burn them so she could learn about real literature. Then, seven years later, telling her he was doing it to improve her life.
This whole set of interactions is so new and different. It’s almost like it hasn’t happened a billion times in the last day. Wow.
Good grief. What a tool.
Don’t you know all good arguments start with “burn that book”?
Frank Kafka.
Frank.
The day someone tells me to burn books of any kind is the day I know that they are a moron who believes in censorship of individual taste and of FUN. The day that person only recommends books that are on any school syllabus and doesn’t branch out beyond them underscores the point with fifteen exclamation marks.
Probably my favorite is the fact that OP had 2 obvious Richard Dawkins books (The Selfish Gene and The Greatest Show on Earth) indicating a wide and well-nourished range of interests – from evolutionary biology to young adult fantasy to women’s fiction. (and how satisfying and beautiful is her bookshelf!!) I mean, the cure for a balanced literary diet is not “apply a small wodge of tedious historical men’s fiction following the same themes.”
Meanwhile, her self-appointed critic literally just has a list of dead white American/Russian men who wrote Gritty Literary Fiction About Sad Stuff during a narrow period of history. THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE PRETENTIOUS CLASSICS! THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE OBSCURE FARE!
I am actually a lot more accepting about people being snotty about Classics ™ because I accept that they’ve gone so deep that they probably don’t realize how much they need to decompress – they have lost their adaptations to surface life and normal human interaction, like those deepwater fish that you have to bring up slowly in your net, or they’ll burst. But imagine bringing yourself to be snobby about angsty men’s fiction written between 1800 and 2000.
(Also, Frank Kafka. We shouldn’t laugh)
I don’t know which is a richer irony: “Create, don’t destroy!” from someone whose criticism involved telling a stranger to burn her library, or “If every book on your bookshelf appeared on a best-seller list, how do you tell the difference?” from someone whose essential reading list is a Freshman Lit syllabus.
Here’s a better idea: Read what appeals to you, take it apart, put it back together, find out what makes it tick, revel in what you love about it, and don’t let anyone take it from you. And the OP is absolutely killing it. 🙂
I get grossed out by how often things online suggest all older people are wealthy because I’ve seen time and time again poor old people being fucked over.
Old women losing their homes because their husbands die and their lower social security can’t pay for rent or taxes. Or old people whose spouse helped them manage things like health problems or memory difficulties not having any financial means to replace that support with care workers.
Old people skipping meals and going hungry.
Old people whose families have liquidated most of their assets because the family has guardianship and there’s far too little protection.
Old people whose medical bills have totally bankrupted them or who are losing medical care needed to stay in their homes instead of an institution for financial reasons.
Old people whose age related disabilities mean that navigating the bureaucracy of the welfare system is impossible for them.
There’s so much suffering of the elderly poor swept under the rug in favor of focusing on the very small group of wealthy old people. No serious anti-poverty movement or measure can exclude elder poverty from their work without harming millions. Old people aren’t disposable.
Canada has become the first North American country to allow its citizens to identify as gender neutral on their passports.
Instead of identifying as male or female, citizens can opt for an ‘X’ on their passports and other government documents to indicate that they are non-binary.
Other countries who have made the move include Germany, Australia, and Pakistan.
What does identifying as genderless on your passport accomplish? What if literally ever person requested a passport like this? Why include sex on a passport at all if it is interchangeable with gender identity and thus meaningless? I don’t believe in discrimination against people based on how they chose to present themselves, but I wonder what is then point?
Vancouver-based filmmaker Joshua M. Ferguson, who uses the pronouns they/them, said in a statement that they will be applying to have the ‘X’ designation on their passport today.
Ferguson, who is from Ontario, was the first person in that province to apply for a non-binary birth certificate but they are still waiting for that to come through; they are also waiting to find out if BC will approve an ‘X’ on their health card and driver’s license.
“Non-binary people like me experience emotional distress and encounter difficult situations in public when our forms of identification do not match our gender identity and gender expression,” said Ferguson.
You can’t actually apply for a passport that says “X” yet because they can’t print them. You can, however, ask for an observation (which is like an official sticker correcting the error). Don’t fill out a new application/get new pictures. You do not need this for the observation. However, once the passports can be printed you will need to re-apply. This means you need to get new pictures and fill out a new application. I know all this because I tried to get a gender neutral passport this morning. If you have already gotten pictures – keep them. They’re good for six months.
Reblogging for that information.
I also wanted to comment on this:
Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada, an LGBT rights group, told the Globe and Mail that Canada should reconsider having gender markers on passports at all.
I agree here. The health cards in Ontario were changed and no longer have the marker on them. I absolutely believe there’s no reason to either declare your identity or declare what’s in your pants. (OHIP, who might ostensibly be the only organization that needs that information, has it on their files, and it doesn’t need to be on the health card – hence the change. So if they can do it, everyone can.)
People are identifiable by their photos. Adding the gender marker just means that whoever is identifying you will use societal expectations of what your gender is “supposed” to look like. Even if you look exactly like the picture on the ID, you can be turned away because someone has decided you don’t “look like” the gender and it’s “suspicious.” Better to take them off altogether.
“In Nepal, 150 people have been killed and 90,000 homes have been destroyed in what the UN has called the worst flooding incident in the country in a decade.
According to the Red Cross, at least 7.1 million people have been affected in Bangladesh – more than the population of Scotland – and around 1.4 million people have been affected in Nepal.
International aid agencies said thousands of villages have been cut off by flooding with people being deprived of food and clean water for days.”
You know what’s really fucked up, think about how many poor people with eating disorders or problems with food
How many poor mothers skip meals to feed their children
How many poor children only eat one mea a day (like free lunch at school)
How many poor teens and young adults just don’t make enough to eat and start internalizing that they’re unworthy of food
How many poor people do you know who can’t afford healthier food
How many poor people don’t have enough time/money/gas/ability to cook fresh meal
How many poor people do you see starving on their breaks their lunches just to save food
Capitalism creates these problems and i have never seen a post on here talking about how we struggle with eating disorders and food insecurity under capitalism.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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