Ppl on the other hellsite losing their minds over this in every imaginable direction lmao
some further thoughts on this:
I do think that a factor here willl be that (for whatever reason) this guy’s students have become less likely to lie about their favourite book.
there’s some kind of major irony in the fact that the majority of people responding to this haven’t read the entire article BUT also that a lot of them couldn’t if they wanted to bcos its fucking paywalled. here it is:
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books
the TL DR is that the article is primarily about the fact that increasingly college students are struggling w the reading material they’ve been given, w longer books, and with ‘challenging’ books that used to be normal assigned reading. the above excerpt is just a closing anecdote.
important to note here that the issue is not that Percy Jackson is fantasy or that it’s 'lowbrow’ literature, it’s specifically that it’s a book for children.
unlike with other categories like genre, there are actual mechanical differences between children’s literature and adult literature. books for children use simpler prose & vocabulary because children are generally still learning to read. there’s a whole technical side to it that i don’t fully understand! but it’s that 'easy read’ aspect of them which is relevant, not anything to do w their relative quality.
Neither of my children’s high schools had a library.
Indie bookstores mostly collapsed with the rise of Borders, Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble - and those mostly collapsed with the rise of Amazon.
Used bookstores collapsed faster; they were always operating on a shoestring. I used to get 5 romances for a dollar at thrift stores; those kinds of sales aren’t around anymore.
Children now have the whole internet to poke at from a very young age. Books are static, non-interactive items with few or no pictures. Of course younger kids are drawn to video and tweets more than books.
…They need encouragement and support to switch from what’s easy to absorb (videos, tiny text posts, image memes) to what takes concentration and time. (Or they need to just be obsessed with text. Those of us who fell in love with the act of reading are still doing books.)
and then…
publishers decided to really, really go all-in on YA books.
In part because of the success of Harry Potter. In part because that’s their target audience for movies 5-10 years from now. In part because the target audience is forgiving of flaws like “plot holes” and “cliched characters” and “overused tropes” - they haven’t read enough to notice those problems. (Not that they all have those issues, but a YA book can still be financially successful with them, in ways that adult literature often can’t.) Oh, and in part, because it’s easy to insist those books be “family friendly,” meaning, no heavy content about sex or drugs or racism or homophobia or even women’s rights, so they can sell them everywhere rather than having to figure out who the actual audience is and pitching to those people.
The target READERS of YA books are teens.
The target BUYERS of YA books are parents.
Teens can’t buy books. (Teens can buy books in stores. They can’t buy books online, because they don’t have credit cards. Most sales are not in stores anymore.)
Teens who grow up with their parents buying them books online have no idea where and how to buy adult books. And often, no way to develop an interest in them - you can’t browse Amazon like you can a bookstore or a library. You can’t say “show me all the fantasy books with authors whose last names begin with R” - there is no “what’s next to Rick Riordan on the shelf?” What’s “next to Rick Riordan” at Amazon is more Rick Riordan, and whatever spinoff series exist, and whatever fantasy books have the same keywords.
Searching Amazon for Rick Riordan, or just Riordan, will not get you to The Coming of the Walrus: What Really Happened in the 60s by James Riordan. (Is it any good? I dunno. But teens looking for something new to read are going to find Rick Riordan Presents novels, not adult fantasy.)
Schools are going to need an entirely different approach to reading if they want to instill lifelong reading habits, because the current systems were based on the premise that people read for entertainment.
Some people still do. But you don’t need to. You will never run out of video entertainment options anymore, and that wasn’t true just 20 years ago.
Schools are going to need an entirely different approach to reading if they want to instill lifelong reading habits, because the current systems were based on the premise that people read for entertainment.
THIS PART. And unfortunately the way we’re teaching reading and English has not caught up to this new reality. Kids have drastically lower reading skills than they used to, and the curriculum isn’t making up the difference - it’s just teaching at the level we think the students should be harder, as if we can make them better readers through force of will. And any suggestion that maybe we should slow down, give them more time to absorb the material, and give them space to learn how to enjoy reading, is met with accusations that we’re not helping them succeed.
It’s not likely to instill a love of reading. It’s likely to instill frustration and resentment, and to link those emotions to reading.
