I love this type of piece. It's not one you read and then go "no, no, no that's all wrong" or "yes, that's exactly what I think" but one where you think "there are so many interesting observations here, I want to have more discussion right now."
Dr M and I talk about this all the time:
The machine of consumerism is designed to encourage us all to believe that our preferences are significant and self-revealing; that a taste for Coke over Pepsi, or for KFC over McDonald’s, means something about us; that our tastes comprise, in sum, a kind of aggregate expression of our unique selfhood.
And this observation speaks directly to my inner reading self:
At its best, literature is pure encounter: it resists consumption because it cannot be used up and it cannot expire. The bonds that are formed between readers and writers, between readers and characters, and between readers and ideas, are meaningful in a way that the bonds formed between consumers and products can never be
But don't take my word for it. Go read it! It's a readers must read.
*why could I not just reference the book's list, you ask? well, I got the audiobook, all 29+ hours of it.
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