Former president Donald Trump called Melania ‘Mercedes’ as he praised his wife during a speech in Washington DC. The crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gave the former First Lady a standing ovation as Mr Trump described how “people love her”. “Oh look at that Mercedes, that’s pretty good” he said as the audience stood and applauded. The GOP presidential hopeful was making the keynote speech on 24 February on the same day as voters head to the polls in the South Carolina primary.
Not everyone has had the privilege of being raised by the landed gentry. Good day sir.
Ok I’ll stop being an obnoxious dick now. First of all I just want to agree that I enjoyed the prose/flow of the Count of Monte Cristo. It was enjoyable to read but as a story I felt that it had some major issues and seemed to go on and on. Which I guess makes sense given it was serialized.
I think you’re vastly overestimating how much the average person reads, and what sorts of books they read. In my experience, very few people have experience reading anything more challenging/obscure than something like 1984 or To Kill a Mockingbird, which we were forced to read in high school and hated.
I think a good amount of people (myself for example) eventually fall back in love with reading and realize those books are really good, but in my experience the majority of reading most people do is non-fiction. I’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo because I quite like fiction and because I became aware of the story in high school through the movie, but reading a 1200 page revenge novel written almost 200 years ago is so far outside the interest of basically anyone I know.
I’m sure more literary sorts of people have had different experiences but I think my experience is a decent indicator. I grew up with privilege and have nerdy interests, so interacting with people who had the time/interest/access to literature was not unusual.
Even as a big fantasy/sci-fi reader Jules Verne hardly seems to be a “must read” these days. Certainly a name that is known and mentioned but not at the top of people’s recommendations. But I generally hate all the fantasy/sci-fi I see recommended so maybe it’s time to read some Verne.
Not me either, just asocial, ha-ha.
School program and literature similar to it are what I’ve read the least. My approach was to look through it 30 minutes at home and 5 minutes before the lesson, listen what others say, and try to improvise when asked questions.
Yes, recommendations and “must read” are not what I’m thinking. Rather nature, power of human mind and human courage, scientific progress of course. These books are very captivating for boys. Seeing them mentioned in some matching context may be sufficient.
Yes, it scares me to think that most good things I’ve read, especially in my childhood, I haven’t found and chosen consciously. Some were given to me by my mother, some by my father, some accidentally stumbled upon on the Web or elsewhere, some I’ve read, yes, after seeing movies.