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What College Students are Reading
- Thread starter Anamnesis
- Start date
TheRedNewt
New Member
I like watching everyone freak out about "kids these days" while forgetting that the majority of people (not just college students) have always been reading more low brow stuff than the kinds of books cited at the beginning of the article. Yeah, people on this forum probably had those experiences, and no surprise that a future writer would as well. However, it all depends on who you surround yourself with in college when it comes to what if anything they read.
Plenty of college students fit that typical liberal, artsy, free-thinking college type, but that's not the norm and it never has been.
Plenty of college students fit that typical liberal, artsy, free-thinking college type, but that's not the norm and it never has been.
Peder
Well-Known Member
I hardly know what to say, since so much of what has been said sounds strange to me. At root, though, I wonder about the generalizations of who "today's" college students are and what "they" are like, and how they relate to let's say "yesterday's" college students. My memories of college in the dark ages don't quite match anything I have read here.
First of all, I don't remember any stories like the Harry Potter or Twilight series even existing, much less being read. I suspect they are famous nowadays, and justly popular, for being new departures in popular literature as well as for being interesting.
Second, on the alternate 'serious side,' Kerouac and others were just beginning to appear, but not with overwhelming popularity on campus as I recall. Some few students were politically active and engaged, and eventually gained their notoriety in campus disruptions, but they were not the norm either.
Third, at my college everyone was loaded down with book-reading to be done and written work to be prepared. Socializing was possible only in short time slices; the college scene, seen through my eyes, was definitely not "party time."
What does that all mean? It means I have the suspicion that comparisons of what college students are reading and have read, and who college students are and what they are like, is so highly variable as to make meaningful discussion almost impossible. Somewhat like the weather. What makes a nice day? There are many kinds.
First of all, I don't remember any stories like the Harry Potter or Twilight series even existing, much less being read. I suspect they are famous nowadays, and justly popular, for being new departures in popular literature as well as for being interesting.
Second, on the alternate 'serious side,' Kerouac and others were just beginning to appear, but not with overwhelming popularity on campus as I recall. Some few students were politically active and engaged, and eventually gained their notoriety in campus disruptions, but they were not the norm either.
Third, at my college everyone was loaded down with book-reading to be done and written work to be prepared. Socializing was possible only in short time slices; the college scene, seen through my eyes, was definitely not "party time."
What does that all mean? It means I have the suspicion that comparisons of what college students are reading and have read, and who college students are and what they are like, is so highly variable as to make meaningful discussion almost impossible. Somewhat like the weather. What makes a nice day? There are many kinds.
alliterati
New Member
I liked HP but have not been able to get into the whole Twilight thing. I'm more likely to enjoy some Terry Prachett or Terry Goodkind in my spare time. I'm basically a math major so I don't really do a lot of reading for school so reading for fun is still an awful lot of fun.