Addictions and books

I would say that everyone's addicted to something whether it's something as harmless as technology or as serious as drugs. Though, I would say I've never been addicted to anything serious like that. I've been addicted to mainly technology like watching tv or going on the internet. I finally got a Facebook this week; my friend insisted that I get one because everyone has one. But that's the whole reason I didn't want one in the first place. I like to do my own thing and not mindlessly follow a crowd. It's better to stand out than to blend in; I liked the idea of being different from everyone else. I think it's just a matter of time before I start to get addicted to Facebook as well.

Over the years I've gotten addicted to reading fanfiction and for those of you who don't know what fanfic is, it's basically a site where people write using ready made characters. For instance, some people write their own stories using the characters from Harry Potter or tv shows or other characters from different forms of entertainment. You can use characters from books and even games and movies. My friend told me about the site when I was a sophomore and I became obsessed with it, but I limited myself to only reading fanfic during the summer. I've always loved to read, but most fanfic is usually really shitty writing. The writers that are good are usually writing romance shit that always seems overdone. The fanfic I read is usually writers that are better than Stephanie Meyer, her books are basically the shittiest fanfic like writing ever to hit the face of the earth. I looked her up and found out that she had never even written a short story before writing her precious Twilight series. Everyone knows that before you can actually embark on writing a novel, you have to at least write shitty short stories before you can jump in to writing something so time consuming and long.

What I want to know is what happened to people reading the classic novels that sparked more interest. The books I read in high school had more literary merit and they were really good novels. The books that I fell in love with in high school include: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, Lord of the Flies by William Golding and How to kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I know not a lot of people would agree with me on these specific choices especially since most people I know have always said that they didn't like Lord of the Flies mainly because it was just one big metaphor and about savagery. When I was in middle school I used to get tutoring at Sylvan learning center; one of my tutors turned out to be an author and her pen name is C.S. Friedman. She said that judging by my personality I would probably really like that book and she was totally right. I've never actually read her books, but I hope to one day see if I can. I tried looking for her books at the library and couldn't find it. I'm not sure if any of you have ever read her books, but since she was right about my taste in books I'm probably going to enjoy reading hers as soon as I find it. I also know that most people prefer not to read nonfiction books and The Devil in the White City is a nonfiction book, but it's about a serial killer named H.H. Holmes and it talks about how he grew up and how he killed his victims. That story's really quite interesting and even though it's a little long about four hundred pages or so, it's still pretty amazing.