"Starting off with pop at adults who read Harry Potter, her dogmatic but intellectually anorexic arguments failed to back up her choices spectacularly. Leaving aside the ridiculous (and risibly pathetic) notion that adults shouldn't read children's books, Smith revealed the paucity of her intellect by railing that those adults should instead be reading Madame Bovary. Just like the cerebral deadheads who argue along similar lines in The Big Read, the notion of "proper" books is bordering on the fascist. The conceit that Candide is superior to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader solely because it is a "proper book" is as tragic as it is fallacious. In the best of all possible worlds, one cannot even countenance this erroneous hypothesis. I've ploughed through Bovary and, God knows, it's dull beyond belief. It was, for me, one of those tomes that after reading you couldn't help but think that that was a slice of your life you'd never get back."Somewhere along the line I realised I was never going to get around to reading much Dickens or Hardy and although it depressed my initially I eventually realised it was OK. Once I've finished this, I'm going to be reading this, this, this and this (some more). Variety feels more important somehow.
TV Bit old, but I somehow managed to overlook this great review of the Linda Smith Room 101 from a couple of weeks ago....
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