Things that annoy me...

[fleetfootmike]

The DJ on Lite FM this morning was discussing movies with one of his studio guests and the lady who read the traffic news. He asked the latter what she'd seen recently, and she commented that she'd seen the Lord Of The Rings, but preferred the book. His comment:

"You've read the book? Cor. You must be really brainy."

They're running a competition this weekend, to win the top 21 books in the BBC Big Read . I am so tempted to enter, and, if I win, present him with all 21.

Comments

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Sheesh.

It's not as if the Professor even used any particularly difficult-to-understand words.

--
Gimli

[hrrunka]

Heh!

There are way too many folks out there who just don't read books at all. I wonder how much the "must be really brainy" misconception has to do with it?

[ian-myatt.livejournal.com]

Well, I've never read it, and have no plans to.

I must be really stupid!

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

You have a LiveJournal. QED.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Must be why its called "lite", the brain-free version of radio? :>

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

The trouble with words like "King" is that everyone else can understand when you're getting it wrong. It's like "President" and "Prime Misister".

Compare and contrast Denethor and Theoden, either in the book or in the film, Tolkien did some complicated stuff with words. And Peter Jackson hides a lot of it in plain sight on the screen.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they should change the name from Lite to dim?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

About what I'd expect from something called 'Lite' (with that spelling), really. There are plenty of people with that attitude, and it's not specifically LotR, it's "You read books?" And lots of them are not only DJs, I've known professionals who don't consider books something to read for "fun", outside work.

[ian-myatt.livejournal.com]

I don't read fiction. Hardly at all, almost never.

I see it as a waste of my *very* limited mental capacity to fill my head with fictional stories and characters.

So this makes me less intelligent than someone who does read?

The DJ's comment was a little silly, and I suspect that he actually meant something else and couldn't express it.

I think he was probably struggling to find the word "Geek".

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"I see it as a waste of my *very* limited mental capacity to fill my head with fictional stories and characters."

Your call. What do you use to relax? Personally I find that filling my head with the details of sports, or knitting patterns, or soap operas (more fiction, but a form in which I am not interested), etc. is a 'waste' because I am not interested in those things. There are people who regard practicing music as an amateur as a 'waste' (there are some who regard listening to music as a waste as well).

It's a matter of taste what you use for relaxation (some people regard going to parties and getting drunk as relaxation, I regard it as a waste of time, money and braincells).

"So this makes me less intelligent than someone who does read?"

You're the one who emphasised your limited capacity, you call it. The DJ who seemed to think that anyone who read was 'brainy', he seemed to think that reading was only for 'intellectuals' (or geeks, as you put it). It's that attitude, that reading for fun is only for 'brainy' people (by definition, somehow above the 'normal' ones in brainpower) to which I object. Yes, there are some people who have defects which mean that they literally cannot read, but I believe that for most people it's the social conditioning expressed by the DJ which stops them, the same as it stops many girls from taking up "boys'" subjects like maths and sciences.

(Using 'geek' is no better, incidentally, it means roughly the same as 'brainy' or 'swot' did when I was at school, that is a person who somehow has "more brainpower" than the normal person.)