[HPFGU-OTChatter] Harry Potter mentioned in poll of books you can't pick up

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

Monica Boukhalfa :

> I didn't see that. I read the post and I think I missed it. It appears
> that the only comment to that tune was that it was over burdened with
> teenaged love.
> Being a book about teenagers, that didn't seam out of line to me.


I must have missed that comment, but I think that, while the idea may
have merit, the answer is much simpler.  The article itself mentions
that longer books just don't seem as appealing - a shocking 34% said
they wouldn't even buy books over 350 pages.  GoF, being the longest
of the HP set, is the longest and, from a sheer physical standpoint,
the most daunting - I know I haven't slogged through War & Peace for
the same superficial reason.

It's sad that a long book can be so off-putting, but the simple truth
is that, in an age where the world moves at lightspeed and the
well-read literature-adoring person is paid less than the person with
specialized knowledge (doctor vs the average literature teacher),
people read, if at all, for fun, which usually means short and breezy
escapist fiction.  There are always exceptions to this rule (the bible
tops out pretty much every bestseller list), but just look at the
annual yield of the romance novel industry to see that breezy pop
fiction rules the day.

~Ali