Sunday, January 15, 2012

Book Club

I was thinking about blogging about some of my reading lately, but then I thought: who gives a fuck? By the time I get around to a book, I’d be the umpteenth millionth person to have read it and voiced their opinions on it. It’s like writing a paper of Shakespeare wherein the sheer volume of students in schools all across the planet have to write their own papers on the same tired subject. It becomes impossible to be original, or have an insight someone else hasn’t already thought of. That’s why I pity English scholars and Biblical Theologians the most. Imagine if you’re a pastor with a Bible opened before you, and you had to deliver a sermon related to a passage therein that the next preacher in the church down the street isn’t giving. If you don’t open your mouth and spout out the craziest racist thing you can think of, you’re not going to get through to anyone. That’s also why there’s so many theories involving Shakespeare being a fraud, or a homosexual, or an avid drug user.

Apply the same theory to any bargain bin book you pick up at whichever bookstore has yet to go out of business, and you’re encountering an internet culture where anyone can voice their thoughts and opinions on the same work. You’re likely only to have read it months or years before it came out and your average blogger scooped you before the book even made it to the shelves.

It’s not just books, but movies, games, sports, cars… anything really. I frequently blog about comics, movies and games, but those are all easily digestible. Even if the reader isn’t familiar with the subject they can sit down and browse through the content in minutes, if not hours. It’s harder to get them to read.

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