I concur that reading should be enjoyed by all. However, I was confused: why are these lit crit types trying to dissect bestselling books? Like trying to do an examination of The Da Vinci Code. You normally don’t expect lit standards, right? Of course I’m sure there are bestselling books that are also literary fiction but isn’t life too short to read a book and then complain vehemently that you wasted your life doing so? Time would be better spent reading a better book I think.

Good lord, read those Historian comments and people are pretty nuts! Don’t know that I agree with the whole good reader/bad reader argument. I would be the first to be dressed down by a literary critic for loving books like Dracula and Tale of Two Cities and also loving Conan stories, The Stainless Steel Rat books, etc. I like to think that I am a discerning reader but that definition really only means that I know what “I” like and what books I think are good in meeting my desires at the moment. I read for the love of reading and can tell if things are really off, but I sure don’t go into a book looking to read it critically for errors, etc. That would make me a bad reader by their definitions but certainly not by my own. There are few books that I have read that I haven’t finished but I also like to believe that I put a good deal of thought into what I read before hand and tend to pick out things I know I will end up enjoying. Quite the flame war going on over there Fence, thanks for pointing it out.