Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Hmm... Good to know. I'm starting it today. Kind of excited.

Waldorf and Sauron wrote:Ooh if you can use the word Porn to describe any vacuous thing, I'll give it a shot: are pixie stix "flavor porn"? Is Jon Schmidt "Musical Porn"? The possibilities are endless!

Yes. Yes, Jon Schmidt is most definitely Musical Porn.

Tao wrote:On a somewhat related note, (and yet still quite fitting for this topic, I suppose) I would like some input from readers as to the merits of some of these new mega-popular books? I've not read Twilight but I have heard similar comments as to the quality of the writing, and yet it's success in unquestionable. I have read the first Harry Potter and the first two in the Eragon series, and found nothing worthy of the respective uproar about either. True, one was written by a single mother struggling to make ends meet and the other by a 15-19 year old. So there is novelty there, but the writing really is pretty poor, in my opinion. I can understand that to many, Harry Potter represents the first novel they've read since college or high school, or at all. In that respect, I recognize the power of Rowling's writings, but I can't see the appeal to people who were already readers and had been exposed to other writers' more subtle usages of literary tools.

I will grant you that none of the books you mentioned are incredibly well-written. And I don't necessarily fit into the category of readers we're talking about--I'm (hopefully!) mature enough at my age to realize that nothing in Twilight is ever going to happen, nor do I want it to. But it's fast-paced, doesn't require much thinking, and dangit, it's satisfying! Eragon...I really thought was pretty bad. I made it through the first book, barely, never even bothered to finish the second one once I started. And definitely didn't watch the movie. Harry Potter is better than the other two, but again, not really a great work in the literary sense. But I like the Harry Potter books simply because they are books I wish I'd had when I was younger. The whole world that Rowling created is the big attraction, I think, even for someone who's read a decent amount. And they can be stepping stones to other books, or something to fill the time when looking for the really great books.