Accounting for Taste

Posted on December 13, 2020     Leave a Comment

The truth is, there’s a lot of snobbishness surrounding fiction. People who read literary fiction often look down upon people who read genre fiction; people who read hard sci-fi often look down their noses at people who watch Star Trek or Doctor Who; people who read anything at all often judge those who prefer to get their fiction-fix from TV than the pages of a book; most bizarrely of all, there seems to be some dispute about whether or not e-books constitute ‘real’ books.

Am I alone in finding this a little strange? No matter how much I may love fiction (and I do!), it is, ultimately, just that. Fiction. Untruths. Entertaining lies. Why, then, does it matter which ones we enjoy and which ones we don’t? We often speak of our ‘guilty pleasures’; TV shows or books we like but know we shouldn’t but… hold the bus! Why shouldn’t we?

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Accounting for Taste

Posted on February 7, 2016     Leave a Comment

The truth is, there’s a lot of snobbishness surrounding fiction. People who read literary fiction often look down upon people who read genre fiction; people who read hard sci-fi often look down their noses at people who watch Star Trek or Doctor Who; people who read anything at all often judge those who prefer to get their fiction-fix from TV than the pages of a book; most bizarrely of all, there seems to be some dispute about whether or not e-books constitute ‘real’ books.

Am I alone in finding this a little strange? No matter how much I may love fiction (and I do!), it is, ultimately, just that. Fiction. Untruths. Entertaining lies. Why, then, does it matter which ones we enjoy and which ones we don’t? We often speak of our ‘guilty pleasures’; TV shows or books we like but know we shouldn’t but… hold the bus! Why shouldn’t we?

Read More