Rant: A woman in my Denver book club said we should skip all the classics

We were discussing 'The Great Gatsby' last month at the library, and she flat out said, 'These old books have nothing to say to us now.' She argued we should only read books published in the last five years. It shut down the whole talk about themes that still matter today. How do you even have a real debate when someone dismisses a whole century of writing?

3 comments

3 Comments

blairwhite3mo ago

Honestly, she kind of has a point though.

jake_martin163mo ago

Blairwhite's take is interesting, but it misses how this kind of argument gets used against way more people than she's talking about. The logic gets stretched to places she probably didn't mean, and that's the real problem. It sets a precedent that's way too broad.

robinson.holly2mo ago

Okay but what if I'm the problem? I tried to read Moby Dick last year and spent three weeks on the same page about different kinds of rope. Maybe she's onto something and I'm just not smart enough for the old stuff.