I want more people to read books. I also want to be able to call a bad book a bad book

Don’t make me choose

I recently watched a Man Carrying Thing video about the “why don’t men read” discourse and its more annoying contours. There was a point when he talked about grown men who love Percy Jackson and how there’s nothing wrong with that. In a sense he is right. Having a YA novel as your favorite book says nothing about your moral character, your worth, or even your education (especially these days). And I certainly appreciate the idea that criticizing a person’s preferences might raise the stakes for reading at all, and that men might not want to read for fear of reading the “wrong” books.

At the same time, if I think Percy Jackson is a bad or mediocre series, I should be able to do so without wading through peremptory accusations of elitism. I should be able to express a preference, or argument on how a particular work, even if it precious to someone else, is found wanting on whatever grounds are important to my aesthetic worldview.

I guess my ideal would be a critical environmental where some amount of sparring is tolerated. Where I can vociferously criticize Percy Jackson, and you can likewise make your arguments for why you think Brideshead Revisited is regressive garbage (it’s not, but we can agree to vehemently disagree). I think as books have become yet another way people are sourcing their sense of identity, such sparring has become increasingly threatening, but I believe it is evidence of a healthy artistic culture. It is world where art is taken seriously.