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1. No, they aren't forms of genre fiction

2. Middlemarch isn't social realism. If you had to put a label on it, it would be psychological fiction a la Stephen King

3. Lolita is DEFINITELY not lolicon (if anything it's the opposite) and it's quite offensive to suggest it is

The point is, OP is complaining about not liking reading, but if he's only read sci-fi, he hasn't read the classics



Oddly enough Middlemarch is often cited in literary courses as being the template for social realism ... eg:

    This avowedly humanist world-building would come to be called realism. Middlemarch is often cited as a template of that now familiar mode.
~ https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/06/George-Eliots-...

but I'm more than happy to leave the bunfight of opinions to those more invested.

> Lolita is DEFINITELY not lolicon

Well I wouldn't take that suggestion too seriously although it seems that you have.


The point is that they’re classics, not genre fiction. The person I was replying to would be well served reading great classics


Classics like Charles Dickens and not some pulp genre trash pumped out for weekly social media installments?


Sure, whatever old stuff that is loved by non-idiots that he hasn’t tried. Odyssey, KJV Bible, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Dostoevsky, Dickens, etc.


Hmmm. FWiW that was another literary jest, you know, what with Dickens famously:

    Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, a publishing phenomenon that sparked Pickwick merchandise and spin-offs.
...

    His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.


How are any of these lame jests actually helping the OP who is impoverished in his joy of reading? Keep them to yourself.


Best answered by asking the OP their position on lame jest Vs pompous arrogance I guess.

Might also ask their position on taking advice from those that cannot follow it.


It’s not arrogant to suggest someone read the classics. This demonisation of quality in literature is anti intellectualism


> It’s not arrogant to suggest someone read the classics.

Agreed. 'Arrogance' likely refers to attitude and manner.

> This demonisation of

What demonisation?

> is anti intellectualism.

What intellectualism?


Huh?


In regards to 3, It might as well be. It's a sick novel for sick people, and I can't believe that it's read in high schools.

Somehow we still read Marquees De Sade too even though everything he wrote is more depraved than most of what goes on 4chan today.


What? Have you even read it? It’s extremely tame and satirical, far far more tame than most modern shock porn writing like “A Little Life”

In fact there’s not even a single graphic sex scene in Lolita




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