Thursday, April 5, 2012

Titanic is a verb

I just read the most heinous book. Just really, really bad.

I had chosen it because it was about the Titanic. It ended up being nearly as disastrous as the ill-fated boat itself. It sank so bad it “Titanic-ed”. Boom. I just turned one of the worst maritime disasters into a verb. Too soon?
I should have been tipped off in the beginning, when there was a startling lack of contractions and an overabundance of manners from the main character; A young girl in the 3rd or 4th grade.

The main plot was something along the lines of the girl’s distant relative who died on the titanic and was now haunting the girl in an effort to solve some mystery. I stopped paying attention to the story itself about ¼ of the way through and started counting the number of snacks the characters indulged in. Seriously, every chapter at least one character would say “Hey! That big plot point you’re in the middle of? Let’s stick a pin in that and have a small but highly nutritious, low calorie snack.” I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how the line was written. This book was obsessed with reinforcing the importance of a solid meal schedule.

And speaking of reinforcing, anytime something happened and a new character came in, the whole scene would be recounted in full detail. THE. WHOLE. THING. A full 20% of the book was just a copy and paste of the opening scene being retold to different characters.

Ashamed as I am to admit it, I read the whole thing. Every boring sentence of it. It was apparent that the book was intended for a much younger audience, but I read through doggedly out of spite. Or masochism, I’m not sure which.
The fact that it was intended for a younger audience didn’t make me feel better though. 70 years ago kids were reading Little Women and Freckles in 4th grade! Not this watered down, meaningless dreck! Maybe the reason people get all the way through school without learning how to think for themselves is because they don’t have to anymore. Books have been diluted to a politically-correct, curriculum – approved, formulaic imposters of what literature used to be.

Needless to say, the best part of the book was clicking “Delete From my Device”.