I Don't Understand America's Love Affair with Books

I don't watch Oprah's show anymore, for quite a while now, ever since she replaced her hookers and lesbians with books. What's the deal there? One day the show is about giving women a forum to curse out they baby's daddy and the next day it's like a friggin' library or something. If I want a library, I'll go some place, like a book store.

Frankly, I've never understood America's fascination with books. Okay, there's a bunch of words. So…? If I want to read words, I can get them in magazines. Have you ever tried reading one of these books? They always start just boring as hell. "John Fancypants was stranded on an island. His food and water was limited and he could die at any minute." Yeah, so? Does he die or what? You want me to read the whole book to find out? I don't have time, pal, I work for a living.

Worse than that are books that start and don't even tell you what you're reading the book for. At least with the guy on the desert island book you know in the first few words where the guy is and what the deal is. Have you ever read one of these books: "Jane Fancypants was a twenty-one year old student at Midwestern College, majoring in Marine Biology." Aw, Christ, now we have to know everything about your stupid "character" before we can find out why we're reading about you. What bullshit. It's like a foreign film or something. If I wanted to read and learn slowly about characters, I'd go to a foreign film. At least I know how long it will last, two or three hours. A book I could be trapped reading for a few days, weeks, or years.

And why are all the characters named Fancypants? That's stupid and obvious. I'm not interested in any character with such a stupid name. On top of that, Fancypants isn't even the stupidest name.

I tried reading books before, really, so it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about. My tutor on the set of Who's Your Daddy? was really big on teaching me a love for books, which is probably why I hate them, it was the worst part of being a star. He assigned me a book called Moby Dick to read once. Wait, before you get all worked up, the shit's about a whale. No kidding. At least there was a picture of a whale on the cover. I got to the first line and was instantly lost. "Call me Ishmael." What the hell is that about? This dude is going to write a book and before he even gets into the story he wants some asshole to call him. A publisher or something? Man, get your shit together before you put it in your dumb book.

You ever heard of this one: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." You're talking about two different times, dickhead. Once again, get your shit together and then send your finished book, hopefully shortened, and maybe I'll try reading it again.

With all that said, I've gotten into the commune's new Book Revolt feature pretty well. It's cool that books can be shortened into magazine-type formats and printed in the commune. Really you're saving trees by doing that and, more importantly, you're saving my time. Just take the best part of your book and put it into a short form I can read and leave me the hell alone. I don't care if your book has 100 tips for beautiful skin or a cure for cancer or whatever, if it's more than a couple pages you're losing me.

Hopefully all of you reading this know what I'm talking about and together we can make a statement to these blabber-typing authors out there who insist on putting nuances and pacing into their stories. Then again, if you're really on my side, you surely didn't get further than the first few sentences without getting bored as hell and going off to search for celebrity pics of Josh Hartnett.

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