"Potato-chip Books"

According to the article, "On Campus, Vampires are Beating the Beats", the author claims that college students today are not reading books that impose radical thoughts of society today. In a way, this statement is true based on popular culture in 2010.

In the '60s and '70s, the author references how college students then read about and participated in the civil rights movement and antiwar protests (during the Vietnam War). Now, college students seem to be more interested in reading "potato-chip books", which are great books to read, but do not help the reader form a more significant opinion other than if they liked the book or not. For instance, during my freshman year, not only I, but my fellow peers, read the Twilight series (by Stephanie Meyer) as the first movie came out. Everyone loved how a young, teenaged girl desperately wanted to become a vampire and lose her virginity to her one vampire lover while her werewolf "friend" still had feelings for her. This clearly shows that Mike Connery's quote is true: "People don't necessarily read their politics nowadays". The way that college students suddenly "act" as children when it comes to reading "mentally-yummy" books displays an effect of how much society cares about politics today. Although the media feeds the public the news on TV and Internet, it is signficant how they do not care.

The author also addresses the fact that books by Greer, Rubin, and Thompson have disappeared from students' hands. It is not a surprise that the public pays more about celebrities today for their "great" acting than government officials for their reforms. This in turn causes the public to be indifferent toward politics once controversial issues are thrust upon them. Last year, in my pathway class, my teacher asked us for solutions to a question: What ways can we can stop world poverty? For the whole 30 minutes of discussion, very few classmates contributed any important solutions to the problem. The rest of us sat quietly, hoping to not be called on to answer. The indifference shown by high school students reflects upon their parents, whether they care about the world they live in today or not.

However, the author believes that books from great authors could take on a different form like Stephanie Meyer's books. Such a statement seems diagreeable to me in that her books are at the reading level of a fourth grader. At first, the series was interesting, but I regret reading them. Compared to classic literature, the books seem like a waste of time. As a result, hopefully by college, other students will see that world issues are more important to solve than figuring out if Vampire Diaries will have a third season.