YABookgate

One of the women in my class got super invested into the romance subplot and my immediate reaction was, "what was there to get invested in?"

You get invested in projection, as in the female lead is just generic enough that you can slip into her and suddenly McChad is giving YOU the wistful look. That's my theory anyway since YA perfected that shit. Look at the major YA novels that get shit like BOOK HANGOVER crates. Seriously:

fuckmewtf.png


Like, the fuck? I've read some read damn good books that have affected me emotionally, but they never brought me to tears. Can some books? Sure. But shit like the 'Throne of Glass' series, Red Crown series, Harry Potter, all of Cassandra Clare's hilariously refurbished incest fanfics, etc... If those brought you to tears over anything that wasn't the butchering of literature as a whole, then something's wrong.


He raised me to question and ponder and we have come to different conclusions in thought without any bother. I cherish those moments because when he dies I'll lose that ability to talk to a man I consider formed. Can millennials genuinely say the same about their parents if this how they think the world is?

I think some can. Depends who you ask. But really, it sounds like the book you're reading is the same shit that gets assigned in most English classes. I was 17 and had to read a book in English that had two dudes fucking each other while building the Vimy Memorial. Because Canukistan is beyond help and this book was approved for high schoolers (or my English teacher was a sick fuck. Maybe both.) Look at any of the books recommended by the CBC. They're pure unfiltered trash. To give some grand examples:

1. The Marrow Thieves: Cherie Dimaline's young adult novel is set in a dystopian future where Indigenous people are being hunted for their bone marrow.
2. Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club: Another blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off downtown St. John’s, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction, and hurt is breaking overhead.
3. From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way
4. We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir


These pile of shit books have won awards and fucking recommendations. Yes, this is Canada, which is a lost cause, but these books are what teachers will pull from to have their students read. Can you imagine walking into English class and being handed a book about how Women and possible The Gays in Newfoundland are oppressed by evil Gun-Owner Men? Or a dystopia novel about how aboriginals are MORE vulnerable because they're all special snowflakes? What about getting a fucking $100 crate full of shitty merchandise about a book where some half-fairy, half-bitch named Rhysanna (Or Generic Girl name) has 3 guys lusting after her and she must choose one at the Midsummer's Nights Eve ball.

Like I was at the end of all this shit, and am well into adulthood, but reading all this makes me want to give up books for life. I can't imagine what kids these days even do in classes where they're subjected to this.
 
1. The Marrow Thieves: Cherie Dimaline's young adult novel is set in a dystopian future where Indigenous people are being hunted for their bone marrow.
2. Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club: Another blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off downtown St. John’s, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction, and hurt is breaking overhead.
3. From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way
4. We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir


These pile of shit books have won awards and fucking recommendations. Yes, this is Canada, which is a lost cause, but these books are what teachers will pull from to have their students read. Can you imagine walking into English class and being handed a book about how Women and possible The Gays in Newfoundland are oppressed by evil Gun-Owner Men? Or a dystopia novel about how aboriginals are MORE vulnerable because they're all special snowflakes? What about getting a fucking $100 crate full of shitty merchandise about a book where some half-fairy, half-bitch named Rhysanna (Or Generic Girl name) has 3 guys lusting after her and she must choose one at the Midsummer's Nights Eve ball.

Like I was at the end of all this shit, and am well into adulthood, but reading all this makes me want to give up books for life. I can't imagine what kids these days even do in classes where they're subjected to this.

Fuck me those look awful. Why bother reading anything contemporary?

I'm going list some random things off that happens at English Uni, I could do it all day but I'll try to keep it small.

A lot of my courses involving trying to rewrite history to make out women, gays, and non-westerners as the soul creators of western literature (not really groundbreaking I know) and if they can't find a lose thread they just claim the writer can be taken as one of those three. We've done Lovecraft, don't get me wrong, but he was portrayed as a big meanie. One teacher had his short poem, On the Creation of Niggers on a PowerPoint slide which was slightly funny.

Daniel DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe, once considered "The First Novel" has been replaced by Aphra Behn's Oroonoko which is easier to stomach because it's written by a (libertine) woman about a slave. Crusoe was never really a first novel because prose has always been in a gradual process of change and it can't really be placed on a definitive map, however, DeFoe's is clearly the one that should be on the course because the work says something deeper between the lines that Oroonoko doesn't have. I have do the novel twice as well.

Most of our modules also peddle what Harold Bloom would call, The School of Resentment. Modules about all the bad things people have done in history. Slavery is a popular one. Uncle Tom's Cabin and the rest. Women being abused. I laughed quite loudly once in a seminar when a girl asked a lecturer, "why have women gotten it so awful in history until now?" You do fine in uni if you actually have some skepticism when lectures give blanket arguments about how awful so and so was. One poor chap (I should have defended him in retrospect) when he voiced opposition to making white characters black. The lecturer just let the class swarm him with guilt whilst he pretended to play neutral party. No wonder our course went from 250 in 2000 to 76 now. The essay questions are like this as well. Aesthetics, what's that?

The rest of the modules always cut out important works. We have a WW1 module that only features one work written by a solider from the time. The rest are books from the 1980s and 1990s and not written by veterans. It's those little details that really derail enjoyment. You can feel the loathing when we have to read a well deserved author.

Everything is sexual. If a book features an overbearing Dad, well he just wants to shag her. If a bloke is pally with another bloke, they want to shag. This obsession is so fucking irritating.

I could go on for days about specifics but I don't want to bore you too much.

I am glad I went to university. I enjoy the life, I like my teachers for the most part (many are relatively normal but some I pity because you can sense some disappointment with life), and I do occasionally get to write about how much I like one author. I even do some stuff with the Student Union (job prospects) but man if you go in blind, you'll end up duller than dry paint.
 
I found a new SJW book reviewer to watch out for.

This is Wiktoria. According to her, she is a bisexual, chronically ill, anxious criminology student living in Poland. Her book reviews can be sorted by representation. She also has quite the GoodReads library.
https://mooninscorpio.home.blog archive

She's one of THOSE people. She has hundreds of books on her shelves but has only read 14 of them. Representation is clearly important to her, as she has shelves for books that represent aromantics/asexuals (two separate lists), bisexuality (is she both? That makes zero sense), chronic illness, disability, lesbians, and more, but I don't care enough to continue reading her list. And of course she has a list of books she hates too.
 
I found a new SJW book reviewer to watch out for.

This is Wiktoria. According to her, she is a bisexual, chronically ill, anxious criminology student living in Poland. Her book reviews can be sorted by representation. She also has quite the GoodReads library.
https://mooninscorpio.home.blog archive

She's one of THOSE people. She has hundreds of books on her shelves but has only read 14 of them. Representation is clearly important to her, as she has shelves for books that represent aromantics/asexuals (two separate lists), bisexuality (is she both? That makes zero sense), chronic illness, disability, lesbians, and more, but I don't care enough to continue reading her list. And of course she has a list of books she hates too.
Let's see what we've got here...
Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 5.37.20 PM.png

...
Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 5.37.47 PM.png

Oh, this is gonna be fun.

Unfortunately, none of the books on this list have text reviews, but she is apparently really fucking triggered by Emily Giffin of all people as I'm pretty sure nearly every book she's ever written is on this Fuck You list, in some cases she even added multiple editions of the same book to the list.
Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 5.40.15 PM.png

Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 5.40.06 PM.png

Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 5.39.56 PM.png

Looks like Giffin writes kind of hallmark-y, Chicklit love stories, pretty light stuff, so I don't know what's got this person's twat in a twist, or why she continues to keep reading this author when she clearly has a hate-boner for her.
 
Let's see what we've got here...
View attachment 1334200
...
View attachment 1334202
Oh, this is gonna be fun.

Unfortunately, none of the books on this list have text reviews, but she is apparently really fucking triggered by Emily Giffin of all people as I'm pretty sure nearly every book she's ever written is on this Fuck You list, in some cases she even added multiple editions of the same book to the list.
View attachment 1334216
View attachment 1334217
View attachment 1334218
Looks like Giffin writes kind of hallmark-y, Chicklit love stories, pretty light stuff, so I don't know what's got this person's twat in a twist, or why she continues to keep reading this author when she clearly has a hate-boner for her.
Honestly, she probably doesn't. These people put books on their hate lists just by default.

EDIT: She unlocked her Twitter.
archive
1590879160799.png

There's why she hates Giffin.
 
Last edited:
Honestly, she probably doesn't. These people put books on their hate lists just by default.

EDIT: She unlocked her Twitter.
archive
View attachment 1334240
There's why she hates Giffin.
Alright, looked up what that's about and apparently this is the comment that kicked it off:
Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 5.54.04 PM.png

And... Honestly, people putting videos and photos of their naked children online have always struck me as idiotic (especially if you're a public figure and know loads of people are gonna see it), so I kind of get where she was coming from with that part at least.

But, whatever, Markle's a POC so if you have any problem with anything she does, you must just think that way because of her race.
Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 5.58.49 PM.png

I'm sure her reeing at Rowling is because of the TERFy stuff, but I can't figure out what the deal is with Stephen King, who's Twitter is mostly Trump Derangement these days. I'd think SJWs would like him for that?


And of course she was part of that crew screaming at John Boyne for... (checks notes)... Writing a book about how you should accept and love your sibling if they come out as trans:
Screen Shot 2020-05-30 at 6.00.51 PM.png
 
I'm sure her reeing at Rowling is because of the TERFy stuff, but I can't figure out what the deal is with Stephen King, who's Twitter is mostly Trump Derangement these days. I'd think SJWs would like him for that?
Stephen King said a few months ago that quality matters more than diversity in writing and people got very angry because how dare you want to enjoy the story of your books without focusing on the color of the characters?
 
My English Literature course has become irritatingly obsessed with a novel called Normal People. I don't know if you Americans know of it but it has sold around half a million copies and has been adapted into a BBC drama so I feel it necessary to keep track of it seeing as I love literature. It's about university grads (so I guess the closest thread it fits into is here without me making just a new bitch fit one) and their sex lives. I haven't read or watched it fully but I get the gist of it- I've learned from experience that quitting on bad books is a healthy endeavour. From what I have read and watched, it's painfully inaccurate at least from my experience of university. Not enough unashamed degeneracy and has too much of a new accepted form of love and morality that people pretend is what they follow and believe.

What I really hate though is how flat the characters are. They lack a certain amount of depth or truth to them. Like when you read an edgy story where a murder happens because the character is such a bad ass who feels no pain that he can just kill without question. You could say that because the main characters are young, they aren't necessarily fully formed but I don't think that justifies Rooney work. In Brideshead Revisited, the university students have something about them. You can scratch them and you'll learn things that they don't even know about themselves. Waugh knows young people for the most part are quite boring, but their what we can say them about is not. Rooney characters are just accepted caricatures who even in therapy reveal nothing true of the "human condition." Not saying a novel should have to to be great, but it shouldn't be peddling a false world with false people. Abnormal People.

And yet people are groveling it up like it's a masterpiece and this is how the world and relationships are. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe people think this way now, as if they're shades of real people. Maybe these characters are what they want to be like. I'm not one for generational bashing but certain millennials really do have issues with maturing into adults. Acting like the world is a playground and life need not struggle. Sex is a toy that just needs consent. They've got weak stomachs from this attitude. My favourite feeling in life is that I can have an "adult" conversation about life with my Dad as an learning equal. He raised me to question and ponder and we have come to different conclusions in thought without any bother. I cherish those moments because when he dies I'll lose that ability to talk to a man I consider formed. Can millennials genuinely say the same about their parents if this how they think the world is? Children are wonderful because they can become functioning adults, certain millennials are just ugly inverts of immaturity. Maybe the book is a masterpiece because it conveys unwillingly this idea.

I'm sorry I rambled. Some of the stuff is both unrelated and don't know if I agree with everything I've written. I'm just getting sick of pretending to like the book because women won't shut up about it.
I read Normal People a few months ago. At the time, I was feeling somewhat nostalgic about my college days, so I was probably more forgiving than I’d otherwise be. My chief complaint was that a lot of the drama between the two main characters felt manufactured, and that a lot of that tension could have been resolved had they just sat down and talked about things for twenty minutes. There are certain big issues with one character’s personal life that she somehow never disclosed with the other character despite the book covering their friendship over a series of years, and the book is supposedly about their deep connection that keeps them coming back to one another. And it never came up in conversation? Ever? It defies logic.
 
I read Normal People a few months ago. At the time, I was feeling somewhat nostalgic about my college days, so I was probably more forgiving than I’d otherwise be. My chief complaint was that a lot of the drama between the two main characters felt manufactured, and that a lot of that tension could have been resolved had they just sat down and talked about things for twenty minutes. There are certain big issues with one character’s personal life that she somehow never disclosed with the other character despite the book covering their friendship over a series of years, and the book is supposedly about their deep connection that keeps them coming back to one another. And it never came up in conversation? Ever? It defies logic.
I just found the characters on the whole so artificial. I'm not suggesting realism but a sense of truth to them. I don't want to think the characters are just characters.

I can see why someone would look fondly on it on a nostalgic level. I felt the same way reading Brideshead last summer.
 
Fuck me those look awful. Why bother reading anything contemporary?

I'm going list some random things off that happens at English Uni, I could do it all day but I'll try to keep it small.

A lot of my courses involving trying to rewrite history to make out women, gays, and non-westerners as the soul creators of western literature (not really groundbreaking I know) and if they can't find a lose thread they just claim the writer can be taken as one of those three. We've done Lovecraft, don't get me wrong, but he was portrayed as a big meanie. One teacher had his short poem, On the Creation of Niggers on a PowerPoint slide which was slightly funny.

Daniel DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe, once considered "The First Novel" has been replaced by Aphra Behn's Oroonoko which is easier to stomach because it's written by a (libertine) woman about a slave. Crusoe was never really a first novel because prose has always been in a gradual process of change and it can't really be placed on a definitive map, however, DeFoe's is clearly the one that should be on the course because the work says something deeper between the lines that Oroonoko doesn't have. I have do the novel twice as well.

Most of our modules also peddle what Harold Bloom would call, The School of Resentment. Modules about all the bad things people have done in history. Slavery is a popular one. Uncle Tom's Cabin and the rest. Women being abused. I laughed quite loudly once in a seminar when a girl asked a lecturer, "why have women gotten it so awful in history until now?" You do fine in uni if you actually have some skepticism when lectures give blanket arguments about how awful so and so was. One poor chap (I should have defended him in retrospect) when he voiced opposition to making white characters black. The lecturer just let the class swarm him with guilt whilst he pretended to play neutral party. No wonder our course went from 250 in 2000 to 76 now. The essay questions are like this as well. Aesthetics, what's that?

The rest of the modules always cut out important works. We have a WW1 module that only features one work written by a solider from the time. The rest are books from the 1980s and 1990s and not written by veterans. It's those little details that really derail enjoyment. You can feel the loathing when we have to read a well deserved author.

Everything is sexual. If a book features an overbearing Dad, well he just wants to shag her. If a bloke is pally with another bloke, they want to shag. This obsession is so fucking irritating.

I could go on for days about specifics but I don't want to bore you too much.

I am glad I went to university. I enjoy the life, I like my teachers for the most part (many are relatively normal but some I pity because you can sense some disappointment with life), and I do occasionally get to write about how much I like one author. I even do some stuff with the Student Union (job prospects) but man if you go in blind, you'll end up duller than dry paint.
Gays kind of did invent Western literature since Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad were pretty gay and probably so was Homer if he was real. And non-Westerners, shit, the Bible was written by a bunch of Jews and that's a huge influence on Western literature, and the Bible has the story of David and Jonathan which is pretty gay (and supposedly David wrote some of the Psalms too).
 
Gays kind of did invent Western literature since Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad were pretty gay and probably so was Homer if he was real. And non-Westerners, shit, the Bible was written by a bunch of Jews and that's a huge influence on Western literature, and the Bible has the story of David and Jonathan which is pretty gay (and supposedly David wrote some of the Psalms too).
I get that. I agree with that. I'm talking about saying certain straight men are homosexuals. It goes back to my point about sexing up works when it isn't needed. I'm not denying any point there. I don't know if it has gotten anything to do with being such a female led course but there is certain male attitudes they have problems with understanding. Impotence or the lass of manhood. I should have clarified my point better.
 
Gays kind of did invent Western literature since Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad were pretty gay and probably so was Homer if he was real.
Actually, I've seen it suggested that Achilles and Patroclus were originally just supposed to be best-friend warrior bros with a strong manly bond, and then later generations of extremely gay Athenian city-dwellers reinterpreted this into their framework of erastes and eromenos because much like today, their failure of imagination left them with only one cultural lens to interpret it through.
"Homer" almost certainly didn't exist as an individual who authored or wrote down the Iliad.
 
Actually, I've seen it suggested that Achilles and Patroclus were originally just supposed to be best-friend warrior bros with a strong manly bond, and then later generations of extremely gay Athenian city-dwellers reinterpreted this into their framework of erastes and eromenos because much like today, their failure of imagination left them with only one cultural lens to interpret it through.
"Homer" almost certainly didn't exist as an individual who authored or wrote down the Iliad.

That's actually quite possible in the case of Achilles and Patroclus since we know for a fact that Homer was at the very least a pseudonym, as opposed to an actual figure from history.

I can pretty much guarantee that David and Jonathan in The Bible were just best-friend warrior bros considering the Jews were the first people in recorded history to explicitly outlaw and condemn any type of homosexuality and label it as "degenerate"

I'm pretty sure the story of Sodom was in the Israelite cultural memory and the Mosaic Laws were in effect before the time of David, even if a fair bit of it was oral tradition that wasn't fully codified into the written form we know of today until the Babylonian Captivity.
 
I can pretty much guarantee that David and Jonathan in The Bible were just best-friend warrior bros considering the Jews were the first people in recorded history to explicitly outlaw and condemn any type of homosexuality and label it as "degenerate"
Without taking this too far afield, I've read some interesting scholarship suggesting that David's portrayal in the Bible wasn't originally intended as positive.
Such as: The Demise of the Warlord, which compares our surviving account of David to what his contemporaries would have considered the ideal warlord lifestyle. David was the one who transitioned the Israelites from nomadic warriors into city-dwelling, and he apparently transgressed more than a few traditional aspects of the warrior ethos. His relationship with Jonathan (as portrayed, anyway) might have been interpreted at the time as a dig at David's "unmanliness".
 
...But these are adult books. Maybe an earnest kid could get them earlier than his reading level dictates, but until then, what do you have? The Percy Jackson series, which has gone WOKE? Harry Potter, I suppose. A few mentioned books like The Outsiders, but when you get assigned books in school I remember not a lot of guys seemed into them (because it was a chore). Where's the gap to keep boys reading between the ages of 12-18? Unless they go right into that good adult shit, you get to read about what?

There's really no YA for boys anymore. It doesn't really exist (and a ton of it was written by women anyway, which is fine, but nowadays the only women around are insane). So boys are basically stuck with assigned books, older books or adult books. For Young Adult, there's really not much that's politically appropriate that will appeal to a teenage boy whose hormones are raging (sex, violence and the like). Power fantasies are universally a no-no (unless its a female power fantasy). So you're not going to really catch them reading.

The best bet is to have a parent that understands this and shovels classic fiction and adult fiction their way so they can hop out of the gap. Really the only thing I can think of that will catch boys is a genre that doesn't exist in the West: The Japanese Light Novel. These cover all sorts of topics and are basically written to be very easy to read. Descriptions very short and curt, simple dialogue, simple plots. They're made to be written quick and read quick.

The problem is this genre doesn't actually exist in Western cultures. And if you do read Japanese light novels, the problem is that the dialogue and wording is very stilted because of the translation. This happens with pretty much any foreign book unless you get a dedicated translator, author and editor (you kind of actually need a PhD to translate literature, because some languages have wordings, verbiage and even the way the sound together to convey meaning, which is lost in English translation).

"Young Adult" Book consumers are almost always female. So they're going to be written for that demo. Writing 'Young Adult' for boys almost seems like a pointless endeavor to me. You're better off trying to replicate an easy-to-read style of Light Novel and going straight to popular fiction and skipping the genre altogether.

I understand that there's this desire for young boys to have something, but for me growing up, I basically skipped right from books in school to Stephen King, Pratchett, Tolkien and Lewis. What you have is basically to build that bridge, get boys the reading skills and maybe make them find books on their own.
 
There's really no YA for boys anymore. It doesn't really exist (and a ton of it was written by women anyway, which is fine, but nowadays the only women around are insane).

Nah, couldn't be could it? I mean, take a look at the "New YA releases" GoodReads is pushing for May/June 2020:

https://www.goodreads.com/genres/young-adult (obviously link updates at some point)
edit: http://archive.is/StX8u
May-June-2020-Releases.PNG
As the saying goes, my sides have left the building. There's literally (maybe?) two books on this list that would interest a teenage male who is heterosexual.

Clap When You Land - Dominican Guurrrll power as two half sisters realize daddy played around and had a second family.

Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2) - Second book in a space opera trilogy, this is the one that MIGHT be of interest to straight boys. But IIRC chicks on a book cover are typically of limited interest to boys. Which this has.

The Fascinators - Two boys with superpowers...who might just have "feelings" for each other. Looks like the authors of m/m slash fic are now all grown up and have found homes at Big 5 Publishers.🙄

Henna Wars - Lesbian Muslim girls, hopefully with descriptive scissoring or something. Or even better Mom and Dad throw her off a building. HaHaha, who am I kidding?

Felix Ever After - Fat Beaner who is also tranny and genderqueer, lookin' for love. Apparently not in a wheelchair, much to my surprise. Sure to be a hit between rounds on Fortnite with all those 13 year olds, right?

House of Dragons (House of Dragons #1) - Another maybe. Seems like a Woke D&D campaign? And a generic fanasy cover is probably better than anything else on this list. The majority of the MCs are even male, by my count.

The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea - Not even sure WTF this one is supposed to be about, TBH. Lesbian magical pirates who crossdress, maybe?

By the Book - YA teen romance. For those nerd girls into Jane Austen and Emily Bronte, but who also demand hot guys (who fawn all over them) AND a feminist message. I sense the beans already flicking.

Parachutes - HaHaHa, WTF? As if any wealthy Chink family would dump their daughter into an LA beaner home. I'm sure they'll be lots of gurrllpowah and best fweindsies foeva by the end of this one, though.

The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly - Another YA romance with a feminist message. And hawt guys, presumably. Blah, blah, blah women can't LARP as knights in MY medieval themed restaurant as main theme/conflict. Yup, they went there.

This Coven Won't Break (These Witches Don't Burn #2) - Lesbian witches being chased quite literally by the forces of the patriarchy who want to steal their magic. U Go Gurl!

Stay Gold - Transgender "boy" going "stealth" at a Texas High School. And the "cisgender" girl who is drawn to "him."

Forged in Fire and Stars (Forged in Fire and Stars #1) - Female blacksmith becomes some sort of Loremaster to a dethroned princess. IDK, not as off-putting as most on this list, but nothing I could see here as appealing to a boy. Does not have an instant turn off cover, though. Nah, still rejecting.

Date Me, Bryson Keller - Openly gay nerd secretly dates in the closet gay popular dude. Doubtless high school hilarity ensues.

The Paper Girl of Paris - YA Romance set in Paris, presumably pretending the place isn't Little Algiers at this point. Maybe historical flashback to WWII, dunno and don't really care.

Summary: Of the fifteen books GoodReads recommended, there are two iffy at best books straight boys might read. And one of those has a cover that will more likely than not make boys reject it.

Hadn't meant to do all fifteen, but I guess I got on a roll. And I guess I was curious to see if it was as bad as I first thought. It was, sadly.
 
Last edited:
Back