Book snobbery

I don't think there's any real shame in being a little bit of a book snob as long as you don't get too carried away and find yourself exclusively reading booker prize winners or books of the century. I know I must be a bit of one because I'm frequently told this usually just after I've scoffed at the movie cover a popular novel has just been re-released with or muttering something mean about the latest Cecelia Ahearne so perhaps it's a title that's not completely undeserved. 

As with other kinds of snobbery it's often best to keep my thoughts about books to myself as much as I can but of course I don't always do the best job of this. Many times have I found myself uttering an opinion aloud just as I'm wondering how wise that was. It's not always beneficial to be quick witted. 

So some people don't read at all, so many people find it less a pleasure and more of pained chore. Something to be endured rather than enjoyed and much as I try to empathize with that I really just can't process the idea of a world where I didn't love books and in that sense find I struggle to see through the eyes of non enthusiastic readers. Other people will read but never actually delve into a really good book, merely skimming the surface of popular fiction and with the racy books that followed in the wake of 50 shades of grey there's a whole new audience of readers that are not really reading. In a way I think it's a shame because as some one who reads though it's a form of nourishment I know there are many many wonderful books out there and I still get excited every time I spot one brimming with promise or a plot that's likely to draw me in and lose all sense of time.

I see all these people who are missing out because they are not reading or the book they are reading is so predictable it is almost as if the author used an actual template to write it and I'm not just talking out of my ass here (if you pardon the expression). I used to read a lot of popular fiction, like loads and loads of it. For a good bit of my twenties it made up most of my reading material and a lot of that was because I was mainly reading what the library had large quantities of or what I could easily acquire in my local second hand book shop. I remember how my sister, a fellow book snob, used to laugh at some of the ridiculous titles or derivative plots and I found in a way despite the fact that I was reading many different authors it  was although I was reading the same book over and over again. A large amount of chick lit can be summed up as follows , woman meets man (or vice versa) and they like each other but then some obstacle/event keeps them apart and he/she/both of them are very upset by this and even though it all seems hopeless then in the end it all works out. 

And I also read large amounts of crime fiction, it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to cotton to the fact that no one actually writes six books  a year and that James Patterson probably wasn't responsible for most of muck he was churning out. And popular psychology books still hold their appeal for me, I find I return to them again and again on nights when I can't sleep. Sure If I can't be asleep I might as well be learning something interesting. And I even went through a bit of a phase of reading young adult fiction 'allegedly' for work purposes but some of it was actually pretty good so I don't regret it not even for a minute. I do however worry a little about the grown women who exclusively read books written for teenagers because to me it suggests they have not moved beyond their own adolescence if they won't read anything without a teenage angel/vampire/werewolf love triangle or permutation of above.

And Now I am on a bit of a roll, reading mostly literary fiction just because that's what's appealing to me at this moment in time but I think this leaves me qualified enough to say what constitutes a good book and express when my own level of disappointment when good people make bad literary choices. Everyone has their vices and this is just one of mine.