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Eh? Someone got their Harry Potter in the wrong place.
So there are no fanfics of Twilight and Harry Potter?
it’s called “professor trolling”
pointing out tiny mistake and pretending that automatically invalidates the whole thing
Even if there were Harry Potter or Twilight fanfics, they wouldn’t need to overlap the books’ areas because they aren’t the books themselves. Jackass.
shouldn’t the fanfics also overlap the “waste of trees” section?
if they were actually printed, then yes
but because it is a website, then they are just clogging the tubes
3 sections missing labels, the dubious notion that Harry Potter can be described as “good books” or “classics” (maybe “actual literature” applies, that’s debatable), and the idea that it’s the only book(s) in that particular containment makes for a rather lacking diagram.
Containment…? I do not think it means what you think it means…
Inconceivable!
Inconceivable!
lol wtf who cares
Fanfic of something is not the thing itself.
YOU FAIL, its not hard to make a good graph, and trolling FTW so stfu dude
Fanfics aren’t ever a waste of perfectly good trees?
Of course not. They’re usually on the computer screen.
Usually. Not always.
there are fanfics of twilight and harry potter but harry potter and twilight are not fanfics, therefore the fanfic section doesn’t need to overlap the section that harry potter and twilight are in.
it’s the whole “a square is always a rectangle but a rectangle is not always a square” thing. learn basic logic and understanding of how things work before you criticize them. thanks.
Oh there are Harry Potter fanfics. Google “My Immortal.” It’s probably the reason fanfics are part of “Things people actually read” and the only reason people read that one is for the lulz and failz.
(Sorry for the grammar, it’s 1am and I’m getting exhausted)
There is so much wrong with this diagram I don’t even know where to start.
I disagree, this is deffo one of the better ones, with a little mistake in the fanfic department, but what the heck.
That and the part where she called Harry Potter a “classic.”
Harry Potter will almost definitely become a classic, some people see it that way already
That’s not what it says. It’s in the category including classics, but it could also be a “good book” or “actual literature”.
However, IMO that whole circle is waaaaay too big. Like the man said, 95% of everything is crap. That extends to writing.
I know. No one understands Venn diagrams. They think the amount of overlap is purely a function of how much room they have, and not a representation of the actual information overlap.
I think if they did this one properly it would be a clusterf#$% anyway.
I love that movie. Remind me to use that term more often
Yourself included. You’re looking for Euler diagrams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_diagram) — a Venn diagram depicts overlap between all sets, empty or not. A Venn diagram for this graph would have to look something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venn6.svg
And that would be a whole lot less funny.
You’re right, it wouldn’t be funny anymore, because if he used that, most people would just say, “Ooh, pretty lines.”
.
Quiet. The harry potter books were good.
Well, the first 3 were anyway…
Totally!
yeah, fanfics should be under the dark blue circle, not the red.
almost all fan-fics are on the internet therefore no trees are wasted
rarely, you do come across a good fanfic…
What the hell?
Please don’t.
Harry Potter is definitely neither a good book, a classic or actual literature. Try something like Voice of the Knife, same level and a masterpiece.
But please, no. Come off whatever you’re smoking and take that one down.
J.K. Rowling is an amazing author and her books are fantastic reads! I bet you are one of those “ooo, I don’t follow the trends and that makes me artistic and smart and cool!”. Reality check for you, not liking something just because of it’s popularity is just as bad as liking something just because of it’s popularity.
No, no really, she’s not an amazing author. I used to be a fan of the books many years ago, but her writing became so poor and amateur that I stopped reading.
She can come up with a great, complex universe, but the quality of the actual writing has been far, far surpassed in the fanfic world, which is a pretty depressing thing to be able to say about a billionaire writer.
I find it more likely that you just grew up. Her writing has been terrible from the beginning. The first book was written so terribly that I was always amazed that adults actually seemed to like it.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoy the Harry Potter stories, but they are not written particularly well.
I own the entire series of Harry Potter books. I’ve only read the first 6, but I know pretty much who doesn’t survive the last one. I have to say that writing style aside, her complete lack of believable character development would be the biggest downfall. Five books of constant fearing for his life, having good things dangled just out of his reach, and then watching someone he loves die partly because he did something foolish, and the kid has a half-page temper tantrum? Uh….no. The only thing I’ll give her is that she got kids reading 700+ page books.
I have no idea who decides ‘classic’ but after reading some of the books in that category, I’d like to meet them. And smack them upside the head with said books.
There are some fanfics that are WAY better. (Yes, most are crap. Not all.)
That said, they probably will be considered ‘classic’ for children’s literature. Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good
If you enjoy them, doesn’t that mean that they’re written well?
I don’t know. I have read some god awful ‘classics’ that made me want to scoop my own brain out and eat it. I don’t think that literary snobs see how enjoyable a book is as important when assessing it’s ‘quality’
harry potter sucks my ass
Kinky.
Twilight portion is WAY too close to good books.
You just don’t get it. Meyer is one of the best writers of all time. Her stories are so great. YOU’RE JUST A HATER!! AND JEALOUS THAT YOU’LL NEVER BE AS GREAT A MAN AS EDWARD!!!!!111
…this is a joke, right?
Yeah, it was a preemptive thing.
thank God.
I actually had it encased in html joke fail I guess.
Proximity doesn’t matter as long as they don’t intersect. Even though it’s close it just means it’s not a good book, because Twilight isn’t part of the good book circle.
lol too true
While you’re at it, make the Required Reading circle overlap with the Complete Waste of Trees circle, and where they overlap, put Austen and the Brontes, and add to it Silas Marner, Ethan Frome, Death of a Salesman, The Pearl, Old Man and the Sea, Shane and countless other irrelevant pieces of garbage literature we were all forced to read in school.
Just because you were forced to read them doesn’t mean they are garbage. Every few years new administrators review required reading and change it. There’s a reason some of those books remain on that list year after year.
I’ve found that if we weren’t forced to read them, we would have actually liked them. I read most of my required reading on my own time well before I had to read them and I like most of them.
Except for Wuthering Heights and Shakespeare’s work minus Taming of the Shrew.
They can kiss my arse.
Worst book I ever read was required reading… but no classic, luckily. The author was writing a story based on a twisted version on his childhood traumas.
Same. I was forced to read a book about people doing meth, doing every kind of sex and child sodomy.
I… I love required reading! 
Did anyone have to read, “The Awakening”? THE WORST book I’ve ever been forced to read.
I had to read The Water Babies.
It hurt.
I had to read a book simply called “cheese” (willem elschot)
it sucks
gast! Kaas is een goed boek
I’ve gotta second that one. Something is wrong when a book that ends with the main character committing suicide over a man is celebrated as a groundbreaking advancement of the feminist movement.
She’s married to one guy, in love with another, and sleeps with a third. And then kills herself. Way to REPRESENT! >.>
Do you mean “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin? I liked that book and so did a good friend of mine in college whom I was in class with (yes, it was required reading for the class, a literature class).
Which book was this……surely for research purposes
I never had a required reading list, so I`m not to up to date on those things
And then there’s Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which is about a futuristic utopia that promotes promiscuity and drug abuse as the keys to happiness… My university has an entire freshman course that focuses on that book, and I was required to read it back in high school. XD
Required reading stuff can be fun sometimes…
“Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß”?
Some books, I read them before they were required reading; most of them I liked, but found the course work incredibly BORING because it was tearing up a good book. One of them I HATED and thus hated the class on it.
Other stuff for required reading…. A number of them I’ll actually admit are good literature, but I find them depressing as frick. However, a larger number I find incredibly freaking AWFUL: Silas Marner, The Old Man and the Sea, anything by Alice Munro….
I never said they were garbage BECAUSE they were required reading. The earned the garbage title on their own merit. There was plenty of required reading in school that was excellent: A Brave New World, The Illiad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Candide, The Canterbury Tales, any Shakespeare, all come to mind immediately.
The Old Man and the Sea was not garbage. Perhaps you have ADD.
Now I may be bias (I’m entering grad school for literature) but I actually loved most my required reading! The only exceptions I can think of are “Catcher In The Rye” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” – although in fairness, our professor prefaced that book with “I believe it’s important to understand what people in the time were actually reading although, personally, D.H. Lawrence is like reading cheap porn if it was written by an asshole.”
Seriously, though, the classics have a lot to offer the critical reader, and even those that just enjoy a nice story. They’re not for everyone – no book is – but most of them are well written, clever, or at least mildly entertaining. I think a lot of the boredom in the classrooms comes from having them taught in inefficient ways, or students who feel forced into reading. Of course, some of those students won’t read anything unless forced, so I’m not entirely sure if there is a solution. But don’t blame the classics when it’s our own cultural mindset and education techniques that are often the weak link.
Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to expand our literary canon, either. I’ve had the opportunity to read a lot of more modern novels, as well as classics from the world outside of western Europe and personally think they offer just as much in terms of skill building and story telling. We make students read to help build their communication skills, have them utilize critical thought, and of course all media is a function of cultural indoctrination. Well, if our students are truly bored of Shakespeare, why not try Arundhati Roy. Books shouldn’t bore people. They should excite, inspire, confound, and occasionally (if they’re really good) they should piss you off just a bit but they shouldn’t leave students with a bad taste in their mouth.
Also, quick note on Shakespeare: I have a lot of friends that claim to hate the bard after high school experiences. I have found that dragging them to an actual performance (preferably a comedy, they were aimed more heavily towards the every man) turns them around. My brother still claims to hate him, because he’s a stubborn guy like that, but he’ll always go with me whenever the local tavern puts on “Much Ado”. With few exceptions, plays are suppose to be acted out, not read straight.
Someone clearly never understood deep readins or subtext…
I’d like to add A Tale of Two Cities and Lord of the Flies to that list.
Wow I can feel the love on this thread! Holy smokes!
Not that Harry Potter is horrid, but please, no. It’s not yet worthy enough to be with all other good literature.
And required reading is all the way over there by itself?
It should at least be overlapping Things Most People Actually Read. Because trust me, there’s a lot more people that read classics than you think. Lord of the Flies just so happens to be my favorite book. Followed closely by Dante’s Inferno and Through the Looking Glass.
Also, Harry Potter and Twilight are now required reading in a few places. I think the world’s gone absolutely mad.
We should burn those places. Not the books, the places that require them.
Actually, it makes sense to do that. Most kids these days won’t read even required books. By making the required reading even poor garbage (like Harry Potter) you’re increasing the chances that some of those kids might get past the first page.
Reading garbage is better than no reading at all.
If we use that logic, why not have them read some of my literature? At least there are pictures.
btw: as long, as people like books, its not a waste of trees, for what do you write books?
RIGHT FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT! So, why the f*** is that a waste of trees?
God, this annoys me.
FAIL. Harry Potter is not a literary classic. It’s a dumbass book about witches with brooms up their bottoms.
Just because you do not like the topic does not make the writing bad. The general writing style of Harry Potter is very well done as well as the plot. I’m assuming it is included with the green circle because it is a ‘good book’ not a ‘classic’
I second your fail
Actually, I’ve heard literary critics go both ways on the subject. Some honestly believe that Harry Potter will endure as a classic for our time. Now, I’m an opinionated bitch, but I haven’t studied much children’s literature. I only know, well, what I read through childhood.
I do know that Harry Potter was very engaging for me when I was younger (although by the fourth book I was getting too old and found her style boring, but again – opinionated bitch). I know that the stories are classical hero’s journeys and growing up tales. So, hey, maybe they will last as a children’s classic. As far as popular series for younger readers go, I preferred Lemony Snickett’s, but then like I said I’m not an expert in children’s literature and have no idea what might enter the canon at that level.
Also, I read animorph’s as a kid, so clearly my young taste was severely lacking.
Wow, I didn’t realize that many people hated Harry Potter. I’m with the graph-maker on this one- I like the books, and although I wouldn’t consider them particularly noteworthy in terms of writing (I mean, they are still technically kids books… tell that to my Grandma though), I think they may be considered classics in the future.
I don’t hate Harry Potter, but it would definitely qualify [loosely] as a good book, but certainly not a classic. The series, while entertaining, was rushed at the end (at best). What started as strong writing and storyline ended weakly.
Popular, yes; lasting, maybe; classic, not yet–and not likely.
The last book read like a fanfiction and should have been split up into two or cut some of the plot. For example, the whole Elder Wand thing was completely unnecessary.
Come to think of it, Breaking Dawn ended like a fanfiction, too…
They both changed their own rules so they could write what they wanted (not to mention SM completely destroyed half of her characterization).
Yawn. Another morning. Think I’ll check Graphjam.
(click)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Harry Potter is classic literature? Really? You have to be joking.
Except it’s really SOOOOOOOOOOOO TRUE. So don’t let it bother you too much.
I just hate it because a) I hate romance novels, b) I hate teen novels, c) I’ve read Dracula and found it awesome, and d) I’m an avid reader of modern-setting fantasy, and I hate how everyone assumes fricking-”Twilight” is the be-all and end-all of the genre. Replace “Twilight” with “Harry Potter”, and that last reason is why I hate that series as well.
Fads are fads and they always pass. Be cool, be serene, eventually it’ll all be gone.
replace “harry potter” with “Terry Pratchett”
As much as I love the Discworld books, I didn’t start actually meeting other people who had heard of them until I started working in a library, and then enrolled at an extremely nerdy college. D: At least everybody’s heard of Harry Potter… (which I’m not much of a fan of, but I have to admit the books are written pretty well compared to most mainstream stuff.)
Discworld doesn’t have the markings of future canon. I think we could lobby to sneak some Gaiman in there, though.
I can’t wait until I’m one of those seventy something tenured professors. I want to see what the future of literary canon looks like. We’ve already started to set the canon for the fifties, so it’s not so out of reach.
*carefully counts her 75 Terry Pratchett/discworld related books on the shelves next to her computer*. (tell me again how many kiddies books that rowling woman has plagarised from Pratchett, CS Lewis and Lewis Carrol amongst others?)
So – not got the makings a future canon eh? Perhaps it’s only the USA who has yet to catch onto the wonders of Pratchett then. In the UK you’d be hard put to find someone who hasn’t heard of him. Pratchett at least caters for adults as well as having sets for children (the bromeliad triology, the Johnny Maxwell series and the Tiffany Aching series)
Which is probably why the Queen awarded him an MBE for services to literature
But simply being an awesome writer doesn’t mean one makes it into the canon. Discworld is an awesome series, but I’m not sure it works as an exemplify of any literary movement, nor has it gained such popularity as to be noted for it’s effects on shaping popular culture or shaped the literary that has come after it in a meaningful way. Add to that the fact that genre books are still not as easily accepted into canon, and that series as a whole are only really just coming into canon and I just don’t think the Discworld books will be the classics from our era. That doesn’t mean they’re not good. Hell, think of how many books are published in a year verses how many books are really in the literary canon for, say, the whole of the 1800s.
Replace “Harry Potter” with “Song of Ice and Fire”
Required Reading should be partially over “Things Most People Read”
And shouldn’t Fanfics be in Romance as well?
What if they’re not romantic fanfics?
you forgot Lord of the Rings. That trumps Harry Potter by leaps and bounds.
I concur. Lord of the Rings IS classic. No arguing with that.
This comment = WIN
Yes.
true, but it was quite a difficult set of books to read.
It’s not for the faint-hearted. But worth it. I mean, it’s an accomplishment in and of itself.
The good stuff in life is never easy. Like…sex. Sex isn’t easy. It takes time, practice and skill to undo a bra with only 1 finger. Having said that, LoTR is the book equivalent of sex. Hard to do/read but it’s worth it.
If I sound like a complete perv here, its bcuz I am one.
Read the book. At risk of sounding like a loon, it would’ve been better about 500 pages shorter.
And that’s coming from someone who regularly reads 2 or more 300 page books in a day.
Excpet, no matter how great a book it is, I wouldn’t put it in “Books that People actually read”. There’s a movie of it, and it’s a hard read, so ot many people “actually” read it…
The thing with “books people actually read” should say “books most people will actually read” or something along those lines.
Where does Penthouse Forum fall?
That little un-named wedge between ‘romance novels’ and ‘things most people actually read’
Giggity.
Ah ‘Literature’. I teach in a high school. I hated ‘literature’ in HS. I hated ‘literature’ in college on my National Merit Scholarship. Luckily I was able to avoid both pretty well. Except for the stuff in the AP Lit class I got a 5 in (freaking Kate Chopin and Thomas Hardy). The irony is I used to walk to school reading and read voraciously now. Just not the sh!t held up as ‘literature’. It frustrates me horribly that the students I teach are being driven from enjoyment of reading by the same godawful crap I avoided. My only consolation is that the people persecuting them are going blind grading horrible, horrible essays.
Hint: If they find books they LIKE to read, they read. If they read, they develop an ear for good language.
That’s the very problem we’re having with our 14yo, he’s not interested one bit in any of the stuff on his reading list. He’s not much of a reader anyway and forcing crap upon him doesn’t help the situation.
I would have never made it through my college Shakepeare class if it weren’t for them showing the BBC movies every Thursday night. I tried reading it, gave it the good old college try as it were, and fell asleep every time. Attrocious stuff to digest.
Poetry is meant to read aloud. Shakespeare is meant to be performed. If you just read the text, its like having somebody describe a painting. You’re missing a total dimension.
Hmm, you could always perform it for yourself, in your living room, that should add some dimension……I deny all allegations that I have done this and shall do it again
I totally agree. I’m a literature whore and it even took me a while to warm to Shakespeare. The moment I saw it preformed on stage,. though, the whole thing clicked for me. Most plays are not written to simply be read by monotonous, nervous students.
Poetry is just like reading books. It’s a skill, and it takes time to develop. Must people simply aren’t interested in putting fourth that great of effort to read poems. Which is a shame. I had a professor who was just a genius at the stuff. Entering his class, I would have said that poetry was one of my least favorite styles of writing. Now I’m interested in doing a thesis on Allen Ginsberg. The man just loved poetry so much, he had a passion (and a shy, geekiness to him, too that made him seem very on level with students) that came through and made me want to read. That’s what’s so often missing from the classroom.
You know, you keep referring to yourself in negative terms, like “bitch” and “whore” – dude, be kinder to yourself, it’s like you’re trying to get in the insults before someone else does.
1. That’s a long way to go for a ‘Twilight sucks’ joke
2. Required reading should definitely overlap ‘things most people actually read.
3. ‘Fanfic’ should be entirely inside ‘waste of perfectly good trees’
4. Change it to ‘good books, classics OR actual literature’ and Harry Potter can stay where it’s at.
5. I suspect the HP haters who must vent their spleens over a mere sliver on this graph have never read the books, but just hate the hype (as I do with Twilight)
Your #3 is inaccurate, because fanfiction isn’t generally printed out (back in the 60′s and even up to the 80′s, yes; but nowadays the kiddies just put it right on the internet right away).
Very true…should it be classified as a waste of perfectly good bytes?
You can’t put it entirely in the “waste” category.
Fanfics = 99.99999% literary equivalent of a hamsters racing through piles of scrabble tiles, .00001% nifty little tidbits of fiction that actually stand up as an entertaining pseudo-sequel.
I’m certainly not claiming that the next literary great is hiding in there, but as I’ve seen a few that serve as something above the average garbage heap.
You’re missing a section for books that actually have a point. There are “classics” that are just for fun (like any Shakespeare), but there are tons of books that had something to them… such as 1984, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Lord of the Flies, etc.
Harry Potter was not written to be literature. Claiming it to be so is just wrong. It’s a series written to entertain children and make some greedy English woman (convicted of plagiarism) a metric sh it-ton of money.
hehe, we just had to read lord of the flies for school, good book
The problem with Pride and Prejudice was not enough zombies. Thankfully, that has been rectified.
Now if only they could fix that problem in all the other classics… *sigh*
Agree in general, except that Shakespeare’s plays DEFINATELY have points to them, and P&P… not really. Just a bit of a feelgood, that one.
False. The fact that it was marketed to children was amusing to her, because, in her own words: “The series opens with a double-murder!”
As far as greedy, she gives a LOT of her time and money to charity, and she started the series with so little money that she couldn’t even afford to make copies of the manuscript; she had to retype the whole thing.
As far as being convicted of plagiarism, that’s false to the Nth degree. She’s been sued by a few nutjobs who claimed their work was copied, but when it got to the courts, they found that those suing were lying, since either the case was about the use of a single word (“muggle” being similar to. . .I don’t remember the word, but it was something like “mubble” or so) or the book in question was written AFTER Harry Potter in order to make the lawsuit.
Also, Harry Potter is an amazing series, with amazing writing (especially book 7, which had more emotion in one chapter than most other “fads” combined), an engrossing and carefully-planned plot, and will definitely become a classic, if it has not done so already. There are college courses that use Harry Potter, and, in fact, a few that are ABOUT Harry Potter and its literary merits. So up yours, pretentious a-holes.
Yeah that is weird. I don’t even remember any writer named “shakespear” at all.
Bizarre.
As a book lover, I feel the pain of this graph maker. I think this graph is well done (minor problems, but w/e).
Also, for all of you whining about Harry Potter: it overlaps with “Good books, classics, actual literature.” Certainly not a classic, and frankly I don’t know what the criteria for literature is, but I can say they are “Good books.”
So calm down.
Yeah, I made this when I was in high school and working part-time at the local public library. Being a bookworm and constantly being in contact with what other people are reading makes you wince often. (It was a great job, though. Sometimes it almost makes me wish I didn’t decide to go to a university far far away.)
And I’m not much of a Harry Potter fan, but I have to admit that the series is written very well compared to most mainstream books.
It’s not just Twilight that is a waste of perfectly good time; it’s -all- fiction.
the twilight haters are getting a little boring. I do like twilight, but i think most haters are 1000x more annoying than the fans
and too, harry potter isn’t that perfect
ive read better books (no, not twilight ;P)
I wonder why you think that.
A frighteningly large number of fans actually try to KILL people, for goodness sake.
well, i havent met any of these sorts of fans, but i DO have met many pretty annoying haters, so thats why I think like that,,
You are wrong.
“but i think most haters are 1000x more annoying than the fans”
- That is because you are a fan. That’s like saying “People who hate what I like are 1000x more annoying than I am”.
Seriously, they are annoying, so are you and every other 13 year old girl. And if you are a 20-something reading that crap, grow up. If adult men were reading about 15-17 year old girls and lusting after them, it would be creepy. It’s no different for adult women lusting after the Twilight kids.
So you’re saying it’s impossible to read Twilight without lusting over the characters?
Well the story focus is basically lusting over a character (Edward). His good looks are described over a 150 times in the first book alone! Even his breath is wonderful!
So maybe it’s not impossible but…what is there left of the book if you take the lusting and longing away?
Lusting over Edward cannot be termed pedophilia, though, because he’s over 100 years old.
It can be termed deranged, however, because he is an abusive douchebag.
Yes, and you are saying *that* because you are a hater. You’re saying, “You like something I hate, therefore you’re 1000x more annoying than I am.” It goes both ways.
And of course, everything everybody reads has to be for a purpose. The writing must be perfect, and it must have solid values and good moral fiber. Otherwise, there *can’t* be a point in reading it. Reading something for fun? *shock horror* Throw them in jail and never let them read anything but Homer ever again!
This graph has too many missing overlaps to be a venn diagram. Don’t hate the graph – it didn’t ask to be born, it never had a chance.
so where is the strain in all this, or hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
And Hannah Montana is a GREAT musician, otherwise there wouldn’t be THAT many kids buying her music
and Hitler was a GREAT politician, otherwise there wouldn’t have been THAT many Germans following him.
(this is a joke. If you think I’m going too far, well, tough. and I’m German, I’m allowed to make fun of my country’s history.)
*fahne schwenk* schon okay.
You can’t put classics and good books in the same section, they’re not one and the same. Jane Austen is just as trashy as Twilight only I can read Twilight without getting the urge to gouge my eyes out. Austen is vapid and pointless and I give thanks that I was never made to read that drivel in school since I had a couple of English teachers who didn’t worship her. The only reason people consider her books to be literature is because they’re old. All the classics were the popular novels of their time; if they weren’t popular they wouldn’t have stuck around. 100 years from now the lit snobs will be reading Twilight and Harry Potter and poking fun at the people reading the modern day cult novels.
Not true.
There are numerous books that are now considered classics which weren’t popular in the time that they were produced. Just look at pieces of modern literature – “Ulysses” by James Joyce, generally considered one of the best (and toughest) novels of the 20th century, was banned for obscenity, shoved into obscurity, and has only recently (within the past 40 years) regained popularity. “Animal Farm” couldn’t find a publisher for the longest time because of the content, and again, didn’t gain popularity for quite some time.
Very rarely does popularity in its time = classic. Remember that Van Gogh didn’t begin to become famous until the last year of his life, and it was a number of years before he became canonized in the history of painting.
There are a number of things going into the making of a classic: depth of material/metaphor, speaking to both one’s own time and the future, revealing truth about humanity/human nature, and working with conventions of the genre in a way that either bends them in new ways, or re-imagines what was classic in that time.
Harry Potter fits all those categories, and it will be canonized into children’s literature in no time, just like Narnia, Winnie the Pooh, Catcher in the Rye, The Wizard of Oz and Through the Looking Glass were before it.
Ulysses=Writing fail.
A writer you can’t comprehend is not, by definition, a good writer. Having worked your way through it doesn’t make you awesome. It makes you a sucker. Let me assure you that whatever you extracted from Ulysses could have been gotten more enjoyably from someone better. And probably more popular.
Ironic, as Twilight is plagarized from Austen!
She’s considered a classic author due to being one of the earliest women writers, not really for her work in itself. It is pretty pulpy.
Twilight is more for preteens in my opionin
I started reading it when I was 9(4th grade), and finished when(whole series) in the summer before 5th grade
ATTENTION!!
Everyone search/read Francine Prose’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Can’t Read.”
This contains all truth about modern literature.
I’m so glad that the Harry Potter issue was raised in the first comment
You know who is brilliant? Meyer’s publisher. They have a marketing god on their side.
I wish I could deny this, but I can’t
Wow, I’m surprised at all the fanfic haters! Not all fanfic is utter garbage although I’ll admit that a lot of it is. You just have to sift through to find the real good ones, just like in other print mediums.
In other print mediums, publishers and editors do that for us.
Not really. There are tons of published material that some people love and other people hate. *cough*
Except that Harry Potter actually was plagiarised. The first book at least.
False.
Could be the pure and simple fad factor. Could be because it’s a terrible book. More than likely though, it’s because it was a moderately bad, but ultimately ignorable, book that gained legions and legions of rabid fanatic readers that hailed it as an amazing literary achievement.
See, when something receives an insane, undeserved amount of praise because of a lunatic fan base, people who are outside of this lunatic fringe tend to become irate that the snowball keeps growing.
Bottom line, Twilight will not destroy the universe. It will however, continue to piss off everyone outside of it’s enamored masses because we are frankly sick of hearing about this moronic cast of characters and their middle school style, drama filled “love” lives.
could you overlap “Twilight” with “Fanfics”?
some fanfics are really awesome and epic.
No part of Twilight is fanfic.
Seriously, Jane Austen as part of good literature? clearly you’re either a feminist, lesbian, or quite possible both. The point being, Jane Austen is a waste of time, all the novels have the same exact plot. re-evaluate your life and read something worthy.
P.S. you could’ve totally fit The Da Vinci Code in there.
Yet another Harry Potter Vs. Twilight bitch war.
Ah literature…English is not my mother tongue, but in my school students had to learn to read, speak and understand English quite fluently. So we also had to read English literature (in English
)
So at age 14 I wanted to do lord of the rings, and the teacher told me no, because it would be too hard for me! I prooved him wrong and scored enough points (each book was worth a certain amount of ‘literature points) to last another year. Didn’t stop me from reading more though.
As for Shakespear…I had another English teacher when we got into touch with that, and he handled it the right way. We had to pick a scene from a play, and had to play it. However, we were allowed to think up of a new context, and other characters, as long as the text would remain the same. Everything else was up to us to change.
It allowed us to understand the relevance of the text in modern times, and to interact with it, like it was meant to, instead of droning it up.
I myself did ‘to be or not to be’, where an assasin was about to kill a tied up person, and tried to console that person about his upcoming death.
I think I love you. Or possibly your teachers. Either way, I approve this message.
She lost the right to be called “great” the day she decided abusive relationships should be portrayed as a good thing to young girls and made that wolf dude a paedophile.
You, go, Stephanie!
You mean from the day she had a teenage girl dating a stalker who’s hundreds of years old, right?
Not a fan of Harry Potter stuff, but for some reason my (older) sister is. I thought she was old enough to know better to be honest, but in the name of research I borrowed her books to have a read and see what all the fuss was about.
I hadn’t got very far before I began to get riled, went to the bookshelf and started cross referencing all of the plagarism I came across (and there was a fair bit), she has even lifted complete characters from Pratchett books, sometimes not even bothering to change the names that much, as well as lifting things from CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll amongst others.
They may say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, however in the amounts that she uses it, imitation amounts to little more than laziness. I read a couple more of the books then gave up as it was getting too annoying.
As to where Hitchhikers Guide Belongs…
I think its the graph itself.. Hitchhikers is everything on the graph.
Maybe not FanFic… But it should be Required Reading
I say this with all the love for the series.
I’m assuming that you don’t think that it’s a waste of trees, then? I definately don’t.
I had hoped to see ‘His dark materials’ on here somewhere…
It’s really not whether you like Harry Potter or not, but it is an outstanding example of postmodernist childrens’/youth literature, especially when it comes to pastiche, which is a literary device most of you have probably never heard of and will perhaps google now in order to prove me wrong.
And really, for the plagiarism complaint: It’s not like Tolkien invented all those mythical creatures, but nobody calls him a plagiarist. Nothing is ever new, intertextuality simply happens. (I just read Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and was delighted to find out two main characters where called Padma and Parvati.)
Anyway. Calling literature “good” or “bad” simply according to individual taste will never make you an expert in literature.
I like the graph.
lol, look at all those serious comments… you guys are so easily trolled it’s hilarious.
Ftr, I h8 harry potter too. Also, jane austen wtf lol.
Twilight’s biggest problem is that there are a bunch of people who hate it who won’t shut up about how much it sucks.
I beg to differ with the Twilight not being a required read… I was actually required to read it for my Studies in Fiction class, a 300 level English major requirement class at my university. It was a class based on Vampire literature. Yes, we all ripped apart the writing and the creepiness, but it’s amazing what a bunch of English majors can find in that book in terms of motifs and whatnot.
Mmm. Popcorn.
Got some for me? I didn’t know how long this movie would run.
so what books are actually worth reading?
don’t forget LOTR! It should be right where Harry Potter is!
I’m pretty sure you have no idea how to use this application. I’ve never used it but I’d wager that ALL the circles are supposed to touch, signifiying what they have in common. FAIL.
I remember the required reading in my sophomore year of high school. All Quiet on the Western Front, A Separate Peace, and Diary of Anne Frank. All about people dieing horrific deaths during or in world wars…
So, where does the Bible fit?
Fully in “Books that are a waste of perfectly good trees”.
Says you.
since when is harry potter a classic? ew ew ew
Amusing.
Though really, I think Twilight should be put underneath the Fanfic category, considering how it’s mostly just one really really long mary sue fanfic about vampires…
I woud rather drink pee than read twilight any time, any where.
Have you ever tasted pee? Gross.
I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book. They all have merit, but some are written (and/or marketed) better or by chance fall into the mood of the moment, or have sustainable themes. The same as any other of the arts.
Well, hey, Harry Potter will always be better than Twilight, that’s for sure.
i hate twilite but i nevr red it. am i kewl now?
Shouldn’t the title be “Literature”, since literacy is about whether you can read or not, not what you read?
I just think it´s funny. Why are we all freaking out? Is this diagram really going to improve or destroy our lives? Let´s calm down, eh?
It was all good until you threw Harry Potter in with the “good books” section.
C’mom… Harry Potter is just like Twilight… books for 10/18 years old people… Try to read Shakespeare…
It’s amazing how subjective the term “good literature” is.
Except, no one is going to remember Harry Potter either.
Harry Potter, and Twilight, are both poorly written pieces of literature.
Anyone that says that Harry Potter is going to be a classic is a freaking liar.
But neither is Twilight. You’ll have to get over it. And no, she’s not an AWESOME writer, she’s a cliche one, there are so many good vampire books, and mythical books. Find better ones.
You DO know that Harry Potter is totally gay, right? What are you, 12 years old?
This is a really badly designed graph.
How exactly do you get to the conclusion that Harry Potter is Christian propaganda, and Twilight is Mormon propaganda?
That’s not even rhetorical, I’m honestly curious to hear your point of view.
To add to the ever expanding list of “Oh god no why are we required to read these books”, I would like to bring up Great Expectations. Horrifying.
Harry Potter and twilight couldn’t be in better places
You forgotten to label the overlapping part of “What people acutally read” and “Fanfics” – it should be: “Only the good ones”
You know what I love? That the graph said “Good books, classics, AND actual literature” (which I’ve taken as a combined catagory of all three) and people are complaining that Harry Potter isn’t a classic. The graph doesn’t nesessarily say it’s a classic. It says it’s a GOOD BOOK, classic OR actual literature. No matter how much I love Harry Potter, I’ll agree it’s not a classic and the writing isn’t the best- but I think it qualifies as at least a good book.