A book dedicated to video games, and someone that campaigns on "video games are the best way to tell a story", should 100% steer away from calling Metal Gear Solid "boring."

Metal Gear Solid is one of the best representations of a real life example of the type of video game she was trying to create in these books. Its basically a movie and video game in one.

Her consistent need to promote political ideology, such as using the term "white boy" repeatedly, or, especially on guns, should be more consistent with her video game research. It's to be expected that she would hate on Football games, Halo, etc... but it would have been nice to deduce what her actual experience with the games were, aside from ... the Oregon Trail

Exactly she assumes her audience is dumb, and won't read it. The reality though is that it has half a million ratings on Goodreads. She's basically calling people dumb by spoiling the Illiad, that's what people aren't understanding.

This book has been called pretentious many times, and I tried to steer away from that train of thought throughout reading it, but the fact she just throws that out there is what justified my thought on this.

It is not discussion of the works, which you are reducing it to, but a flat out spoiler of how it ends for a main character (Hector).

The two works are gigantic, and there is a lot that can be told, but if you’ve ever been part of a book club, it’s pretty customary to relay some plot points, but NOT the ending.

Homer’s works are on millions of peoples to-read list, and without them we wouldn’t have gotten books like, the song of Achilles, Circe, or any other of modern adaptations. Both of Madeline Millers books are on my To-Read list, but I wanted to read Homers works first.

It is also still heavily used in modern TV shows, movies, etc. just because something is thousands of years old, does not mean is not relevant.

The amount of books and film that is still based on these stories today, or books that simply draw influence from them such as this one, shows that this book is still being read over and over again.

Would you recommend Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, to a 17 year old?

A person I know, who happens to be a book store owner, asked me if I would recommend reading Demon Copperhead to a 17 year old.

I told her that it's a harrrd question; that I would definitely recommend the person to be a book lover as it is longer than average and has more than several characters; and that I think a 17 year old would appreciate the authors writing style and tone. I even told her that I loved the Author's first book, The Bean Trees (which she wrote when she was pregnant), as a teenager.

But I also felt like I had to add the fact that there is a lot of drug usage and addiction in the book. I felt like since I didn't know the person's situation, I didn't want to take responsibility for how they felt about it.

After thinking about it though... I know I would have loved this book as a teenager and feel like it would be pretty hard to misinterpret the message here.

I also just happened, by chance, to be reading David Copperfield a little more than a month ago when I found out that this book was coming out and it was a modern adaptation of the story (set in the Appalachians). So it was total synchronicity that this book came out. So, what do you think?