So, this morning I was in the middle of my usual routine, reading the chapter I had fallen asleep finishing the night before, and I was struck with a paralyzing thought.
What will my children be reading?
Currently I am fully enjoying my second reading of
which I can only hope my children will have a fondness for when they reach an age to truly appreciate the humor, as dark and honest as it is.
The fact that I would find a book like this at all is somewhat shocking given that my parents and I have vastly different taste in reading materials. My father loves the long and epic, Minchener in particular. I don't much care for 200 pages on the uprising of the Rockies and therefore this was never something that was ever remotely interested in reading. I will say, to my credit, that I made it through this little jem,
and promptly contemplated never reading a book again. My mother, on the other hand, who is a much more prolific reader, prefers crime novels like those streaming from the pens of Patterson and Kava. This is a genre that, while I don't particularly care for, I don't take much of an issue with. At it's core these types of books understand that literature is entertainment and most of them are quite entertaining. Call it lowbrow if it makes you feel better, but all in all not the wost reading decision one could make.
The truth is that my taste is a little all over the board. I will read just about anything. Recently, I have gone out of my way to read what many would consider "the classics." I have read everything from this painfully long and still some how captivating work,
(Which, by the way, I would not read in the winter unless you want to tickle the homicidal maniac sleeping in the dark recesses of your mind.) to arguably the best book of all time.
It might be fair to say that I haven't really found my niche. Maybe, I never will.
With all of this information in hand the question of my progeny's reading choices is borderline frightening. Let's just cut to the chase and say exactly what I am wondering. Am I ever going to have to suffer though my children carrying around copies of this monstrosity?
Is this what kids are going to look back on my generation and think? I would like to believe that the crap that floats to the top will one day be scooped away to make room from some newly foul form of fiction, but the damage has been done. This will exist in the collective unconscious for the rest of my life. Now, as for those of you who are going to ask the inevitable question, have you even read it? The answer is yes, all four of them. I approached them gingerly. I reserved my opinion until after I had consumed and no, this is not good writing. It appeals to the inner hope of every female adolescent and therefore the success is understandable.
However,
the writing is crap, the characters are undefined and poorly developed, and it REEKS with the lusty desire of a woman living out fantasies that will never come to fruition. Really, it just presents a really twisted way of looking at love and relationships. I wouldn't recommend it.
That being said it is almost inevitable that my to be children will one day read these books. Their young minds will take to the crack filled pages like a junkie on a pipe and I will loose them forever. I will just sit at the foot of their beds and plead with them.
WHY? Why does it have to be Twilight?
I will fight through the pain and stare on with anguish in my eyes. Then one day I will present them with an ultimatum.
They must either pick up,
or get out of my house.
