Kim’s Comments (group member since Sep 17, 2008)

Kim’s comments from the Runs with scissors group.

Do you feel that if a book makes the banned list, you are more apt to read it? I know that if a book is considered "dirty" or contraversial, I am more apt to read it to find out what the big honking deal is. For the most part, I usually don't see what all the flap is or was about. In my high school, the building was connected to the Jr. High, so we shared the cafeteria and library. There were books on a restricted shelf that only the high school kids could check out due to the fact that they had been banned by other schools or that the material was considered too "old" for the under 14 crowd.

I made it my mission to read every single one. Most of them had been banned at one time or another. "Lady Chaterly's Lover" , " The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test",were among the titles I can recall. Maybe these were right to be restricted, some of the others not so much. The irony of it all was and is, the local library branch is right next door, and any one regardless of age, could have checked those books out at any time, so really the school was protecing only thenselves from angry parents.

I guess it is human nature to control what you can and fear the rest. History shows that new ideas have been met with fear. "Farenhieht 451" isn't that hard to belive, especialy with modern soceity's determination to kill the written word. 24 hour news, constant updates, the internet on all the time....information is efemeral. A book is permanent, therefore making it dangerous? Or is it just human nature to force your ideas on others even if you have to use blunt force trauma?

I too feel the same way about the first 50 pages. I have slogged through some very mediocre books hoping that they will get better, only to find that they disapointingly did not.

Do books become popular because of the movie made from them, or the other way around?

Empowerment. That is a good point. Do we as readers seek out characters and genres that speak to us, empower us? Do characters have to make you feel good or do you prefer to feel sorry for someone? Do you seek out characters that speak for you, speak the way you wish you could? I know that I gravitate to strong female characters that do not need the proverbial Prince to save them. I like stories with women in places of power who are not painted as convining bitches jonesing on power, not to say I don't enjoy a good villaness, 'cause I do.

I despise characters of any gender who moon over someone they can't have, scheme to get them, but experience no personal growth in the process. A good character should to me become an old friend by the end of the book. You should want to return to them time and time again.

If you can find no sympathy for a character, does it make it harder to read the book than someone you can identify with?

What book genres to you seem to read the most? I know I read almost anything, but I do find that I gravitate to the fantasy/sci-fi range more often than not. I don't know if it is a need to escape the world I am in, or to imagine what life would be like elsewhere. I love a well written mystery and that means that it is hard for me to figure out before I get to the end. I prefer auto biography's to biography's only because I prefer to hear about someone's life from the person who lived it. I do read non-fiction from time to time, but for the most part, I guess I drift to fiction. What about all of you, members and potential members, what genres to you read the most and why?

So, with the movie of "Twilight" comming out soon, I was wondering about books being made into movies. Do you think that mediocre books such as "Twilight" do better as movies because pacing helps tell the story?

Do good books become richer by being made into a movie or do you think that they can be ruined when not in the right hands, like Harry Potter books 3 and 4 or Eragon?

For me, movies help me picture things that I may have had trouble picturing, like Magrathea from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", while I didn't think much of the adaptation, that scene was pretty cool when they were in the planet design room.

What do you think, are movies the way to get people to read the books, or do you think that movies are ruining the written word because they leave too much out and make minor things bigger?

O.K., so does a book's author have to be dead or can a book be considered a classic while they are still alive? For example, "Catcher In The Rye". Salinger was a recluse, but still alive when the book reached classic status. Does the book have to have been contraversial to have impact? For example, "The DaVinci Code" is considered contraversial, but will it obtain classic status? Or should the "His Dark Materials" series(a.k.a "The Golden Compass trilogy) by Phillip Pullman be considered classics because they fall under the perview of making you think? The messages in those books are just as thought worthy as say Harry Potter, which is being hailed as a modern classic. So is age what makes a book a classic? What about modern and instant classic classifications? Or do you think that society is over using the word, like awsome or fantastic have been so over-used, the orginal meaning of the words has been changed?

I think that a classic is a work that will be still read over and over again by many generations. Like Homer or Dante, the works have to corolate to the world at large, at the time it was written and still be able to speak to the world at large several years afterward. For example, 1984 or Brave New World. When these books were written, each was a concept so far fetched,, that no one thought it could come true, yet we use the phrase "Big Brother is watching" in some shape or form to this day and we are capeable of genetic altering and custom design of humans. So, what makes a work an instant classic? Something that is popular at the moment like Twilight? or is it something more lasting?

What makes a book a classic? Does it have to be older than say 20 years? or older? You hear about instant classics, but what makes them so? All thougts are welcome.