hmmmmmmmmm
i’d say it’s interesting enough to keep reading 
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I would have never imagined Catcher in the Rye to be unlikable, tbh. He draws so much pity… but I guess we now have a way to broadcast immediate, visceral reactions. Like, look at all the streams of consciousness as people play a game. The emphasis is on a small compartmentalized reaction, on the unfiltered, right away reception of the piece.
Such are our times, I guess. Mayhap one day pendulum would swing back to a different ways to emote. I think we are going closer to pre-modern, pre-reflective ways. It’s loud and it’s short-tempered. We actually may understand Romeo soon-ish. “Oh, crap, this girl is hot! Nobody else compares, not even a girl who was the hottest 15 minutes ago! Get her or die!”
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I feel like “Kids these days don’t appreciate things like we used to do in my days!” have always been a thing, probably even in ancient time. It’s easy to disparage the youth for being flightful and looking for escape, but such has youth been in all times. So I don’t really think youth of today are different in that regard. “Catcher in the Rye” might not feel relevant to them right now, but perhaps a “trashy” WP novel does. Maybe it containts themes that make them feel seen or maybe it just let them escape a world that feels like it’s caving in on them (as the world constantly does when you’re young). Then let them read that trashy WP novel. At least they’re reading something. And maybe that act in itself will prepare them to read more challenging stories as they get older, or maybe it won’t and they will keep reading “trashy” novels. I don’t really see anything wrong in that either. Judging what people read won’t make them change for the better (and maybe that better is just an illusion anyway).
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I am with you on this. Plus, you know, what’s trashy? I am always very annoyed when people call romances trashy, because at its heart is a full-on denial of women’s tastes.
Tbh, I read far more challenging stuff when I was a kid/teen, and that’s not a bad thing either. I’m 47 and I’m too old to worry about it. I read what feels interesting and I can detect strong immersive undercurrent in some WP stories. And its absence in others.
To me, that ability to bring the reader along no matter what the subject is the craft. And i don’t care if it’s a philosophical essay on the meaning of life or laundry-machine sex.
Nobody owes us reading our books. We must entice them to.
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Also, sorry, wanted to boast the new cover image for the 3rd book of Lone Werewolf my kid made for me. Now I really need to write that book!
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Exactly! In the end these discussions always seem to amount to “Women read the wrong things” (because it’s never hard-boiled thrillers aimed at a male audience being critiqued). And the thing is, women have always read “the wrong things”. It’s not like the fascination with romance is a new occurance.
I’m in my 30’s now and I was also that precocious kid, discarding YA stories in favor of more challenging adult stories. I remember plowing through the Immigrants-series by Vilhelm Moberg at 14 (it’s a rather heavy epos about the hardship about Swedish immigrants to America, not sure if it’s translated to English) just cause I wanted to (honestly, if a teacher made me read it I would probably have shunned it).
I subscribe to this as well. Very well said. The readers don’t owe you anything, but you owe them an enjoyable reading experience (if readers are what you are after, of course).
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Exactly. I am yet to see anyone yelling at anyone for watching ‘Fast and Furious’ or ‘John Wick’, but ‘Twilight?’ Everyone piles on that like no tomorrow. But, lol, sorry, Twilight has more plot than the other two franchises… 
it’s being aimed specifically at women that draws critique. The same goes to the bxb books, and you are probably familiar with that critique. Apparently women write them all wrong. Because they are women. Writing for other women. But straight romance is also bad because they are written for women. Romeo and Juliet is good tho, despite the same plot and juicy points as many WP book, only being impossible to read. 'Cause written by a great man. I think these attitudes are seriously effed up and I am happy that the female writers are laughing all the way to the bank.
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I can be just as bad. It’s just that with machines, there’s a lot of thought going into the intent behind grammar that isn’t there for organic beings. They only pretty recently have been teaching robots to learn tasks the way human children do. Just a wonder of how “human” they are.
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Well, it’s in part because it’s always true. Each generation loses relevancy to the next. It’s why even writers often don’t matter within a generation.
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Books stereotypically aimed at men get critiques all the time, but it’s more because they’re promoting toxic gender norms (e.g. r/menwritingwomen) and not because they’re corrupting the youth. And some of that’s because men tend not to read as much as women, and some of it’s because these books they are reading tend not to enter the cultural landscape. I personally don’t think the Fast and Furious franchise is the epitome of fine art (how they keep churning them out I’ll never know), but comparing books and movies is a disingenuous comparison—I don’t think its primary demographic is one with a lot of readers, and I think if you asked some fancy film critic what was wrong with the modern film landscape, they’d most readily cite Fast and Furious, Minions, and that sort of stuff. So it’s not that people think “Abs McGee the dashingly handsome super-spy saves the world yet again” is any better of a book, it’s that it’s such a small portion of the market compared to other genres that nobody’s out there extolling the virtues of Abs McGee.
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It holds for books too. If someone wants to read ‘Trapped, Sexed and Loved by Alpha’ written in short sentences, and you’re like, why don’t you read Great Gatsby or Dune or Goodbye and Thanks for all the Fish instead… or even worse, you should be wanting to read Dune, the ultimate in boyhood wet dreams written in long confusing sentences with arbitrary drops of Russian words (like why?) … ain’t making anyone any favors.
Yes, women read more than men. They read voraciously. And they want to read what stimulate their dreams. Damn right!
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I don’t care for Twilight, but I’m going to be quick to point out that it’s a pioneer of a specific YA style–specifically has to do with what drives me a little bonkers in the Werewolf genre on Wattpad. It’s strengthened some older tropes and forged a few new ones.
But this idea of it being “the best” vs. “finding/leading your niche”?
Well-timed Niche makes bank.
But Shakespeare’s gender ain’t why he’s great. It may be why an uneducated mass who is against a modern female-written series would use him as a counterpoint, but that requires me to know the hearts and intents of every person out there.
No, Shakespeare was big because for his era, there wasn’t really anyone you could point to that was full, rich, strong characterizations for most any archetype he touched–that includes female characters. That’s what leads to speculation of him being a woman:
It’s the same reason why Jane Austen is still an iconic author, or why Mary Shelly can stand toe to to with Bram Stoker. Twilight ain’t NONE of that.
And I won’t even touch John Wick. There ain’t enough to it to even get me to look it up.
Yes, and that is exactly my point (although my quote was cut so it seems like I actually think this instead of commenting on the statement 
). So I don’t think anything unique is happening right now culturally. Kids are and have always been kids. Forcing them to read things that don’t feel relevant to them will only cause pushback.
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But let’s be realistic: most anyone arguing any point ain’t up to the success of Twilight, Shakespeare, or anything else mentioned. And the rare times we are, it’s like Stephen King: someone who really can’t always be an authority for things outside their strength. (His short stories gets his backside handed to him in criticism, for example.) It’s a very much “stay in your lane” thing.
I can just as easily turn that around and ask why anyone should be wanting to read a cliche high school drama full of Mary Sues and Gary Stus with a scattershot plot and unclear characters, and it sounds exactly the same: that we’re imposing our personal preferences to dismiss books people are clearly reading and enjoying and finding the merits of (didn’t Dune have two successful movies? And I can only speculate at how much money Twilight has made in all its forms). Any book, good or bad, can be distilled into some negative critique, and our own personal incredulity that people out there can enjoy reading something we don’t is just as bad whether we’re punching up or punching down. Just because the authors are dead or whatever doesn’t mean that their books are inherently more acceptable targets.
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I will say this, though. In 400 years, I don’t expect any literature to still be written about Twilight.
Ah well, the author gets to eat today, instead of starving like a lot of the iconics did.
I just want people to stop harping on other peeps’ tastes and sometimes sink creative projects that are very, very decent with rabid critique. And most particularly when a big portion of this critique boils down to ‘it’s for women/because of women/femnazis’.
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You’d be surprised. But I think a better comparison would be other popular books like Divergent that all kind of had their moment in the limelight, but faded away only to be replaced by something else. And I know it’s a different age bracket, but even series like Eragon or Percy Jackson haven’t seemed to carry the lasting impact something like Harry Potter has.
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But no one is forcing those stories on people, are they? That’s the difference. It’s not the cultural value of the stories themselves that are at stake but the right for people to read what they goddamn want, without having to hear about how it’s in bad taste or not intellectually challenging enough. So no, you can’t really turn that argument around.
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Like, I am not sure? Percy Jackson gets another kick at the can now with a new show (and deservedly so). And Percy never faced the critique either HP did or Twilight.
I’ve read all of Riordan and all of HP, with huge preference for Riordan, tbh, but I have never touched Twilight. Even my teen daughter won’t touch Twilight specifically because of all the mockery directed at it. And, for all i know, it’s a fun piece of teen fiction.