I’ve been thinking about being a book snob recently. Generally speaking, I think being a book snob is usually a fabulous thing. I like meeting and hanging out with my other book snob friends, I like reading books written by fellow book snobs – there’s lots of great things about it! But lately I’ve been thinking about one little negative thing about being a book snob.
I’ve started noticing recently that many of us book snobs might be taking our snobbiness a little too seriously. I’m worried we might have fallen into the book snob version of the “my-life-is-harder-than-yours” syndrome. You know what I mean. If you ever say to a co-worker or friend, “Gosh, I’m so tired this week,” you can almost always expect them to say something like, “Girl, you have NO idea what tired is! This week I’ve had to….” If you take a vacation day there’s always someone who says, “Gee, tough job!” If you have one kid, you can count on your friends with five kids to tell you how easy you’ve got it. You get the idea. All of us have heard these things from others, and we’ve all said these things, too. Why do we want to brag about how tough we have it??
The book snob version of this syndrome shows up when we hear a fellow snob tell about a book, series or author that we would “never” spend time reading. (If you’re Southern, that would be “nevah”). Maybe you’re a non-fiction lover and you think it’s a colossal waste of time to read fiction. Or you love historical biographies and you can’t imagine spending one minute on the Twilight series. (Team Jacob!!). Everyone has their favorites, but what’s with our need to high-five ourselves on how much more sophisticated our reading selections are than the next snob’s? I know I’ve done it. And if I’ve ever been a little too proud of the number of books I’ve read in the last month, I can usually count on a fellow snob to tell me that if I had a real life I wouldn’t have so much time to read. What is that??
This syndrome isn’t just for book snobs! Those who are not on Facebook congratulate themselves on being “above it all” - usually because they “have no idea who has enough time for that!” Some who are on Facebook want you to believe they only get on it once a month and would never stoop to the ridiculousness of changing their profile picture. I suspect those people check it daily, but instead of sharing their lives with their friends, they’re just spying on ours. (Confession: I understand this a little… I’ll never tweet! See… we all do it!) Our culture certainly helps those of us with a tendency toward snobbiness – Starbucks addicts snub those with Folger’s in their cups, green tea drinkers think those who like a classic cup of Lipton are “so last year.”
In light of all this, my mid-year resolution is to try to be more affirming to my fellow book snobs in their reading choices. Thank goodness they are reading anything, right?? So what if I bailed in the 4th book of Harry Potter because I just didn’t get it? I’m obviously the one out of the loop since a gabillion people on the planet have read and loved this series. What difference does it make that Stephenie Meyer spells her name funny and started every single paragraph in Twilight with “I”? She’s not wondering how to fill her gas tank with two weeks left until payday!
So, if you’re a book snob, coffee snob, music snob, writer snob, ski-doo snob or any other kind of snob you can think of – let’s all try to reign in our snobbiness just a little and be glad there are other people in the world who like the same kind of things we do – even if they prefer a different version of it.
Unless it’s thrash metal music. That’s just unacceptable.
Read on, Snobs!
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