notOphelia
she/her ⋆ ִֶָ🐠˚࿔ english degree veteran ⋆ i love magical realism, moral ambiguity, and unlikeable characters ⋆ ro/en/fr
2578 points
3.51 average · 256 reviews
Click a segment to filter
When your circle small but y'all crazy
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
and 
I woke up today thinking about this because I have read and hear comments that say that people won't read certain books or finish them because they felt like the book was "stupid" or that it gives them a headache because the book is "so simple". In my case, I enjoy most books I read and I can even give it a 5 star rating because it either brought out a strong emotion in me (rage, sadness, etc.), or I just enjoyed the story of the book and could appreciate the way it was written and I did not analyze it or thought that the story or narrator was "dumb" or something. In general I do not do the analyzing books thing, specially with fiction, and I would like to hear from people how do they approach reading. Is it something that needs to be like studying, is it for enjoyment, is it for critique? I'm genuinely curious.
© 2025 Pagebound
notOphelia commented...
There have been already several comments mentioning the importance of analysing what you read, and I just wanna add onto that to argue that even 'popcorn fluff' should absolutely be scrutinised in the same way as 'capital L' Literature because it doesn't exist in a vacuum. All literature is the product of a sociocultural and political environment and it will invariably reflect aspects of this environment regardless of authorial intent (or maybe even in spite of it), so it's always important to engage with the text critically beyond what's printed on the page. In this sense 'entertainment' literature is not different from any other type of literature, and refusing to see this is how people end up in the "it's not that deep" camp. (Plus, as others have mentioned, how do you even decide which books are to be taken seriously and which aren't? Or, rather, who decides? And why should you go along with it?)
I also think people have skewed perceptions of what analysis entails. It doesn't have to be highlighting and taking notes every chapter. Even just reading a review you disagree with and thinking about why you disagree is better than nothing.