I wonder if I will ever learn to stop falling for clickbait on Facebook.
First of all, I am usually not their target audience. I’m part of the generation that has been hated by the most people of any American generation — the Baby Boomers. When we grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, when we came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, we had an exaggerated opinion of our own importance. Now that the youngest of us are turning 60 and the oldest are pushing 80, a lot of younger people wish we would just go away.
One of my least favorite clickbaits was describing things that boomers love that won’t go away.
No, not boomers themselves. Horrible decor-type things boomers supposedly love. Food dishes no one under 60 would eat. Fashion styles only the old could love.
The thing is, most of that stuff was imposed on us by our parents or grandparents. Wood paneling in our rec rooms, Sansabelt slacks, Jello with little chunks of fruit and vegetables inside.
Heck, just Jello.
There are things boomers do — and maybe even the Gen Xers after us — that may disappear when we’re gone. Things like landline telephones and cable television, but there are other things that will go away that will be truly missed.
A big one would be books.
Another is newspapers.
Most Americans don’t read anymore. It’s one reason bookstores are vanishing and newspapers are going out of business. It’s one reason I wrote a novel 30 years ago, had people tell me just a few years ago it would have been can’t miss. It finally got published in 2022, and as many copies have been sold as ebooks for Kindle as were actually books I could put on a shelf.
My parents’ home was filled with bookcases and so is mine. I have about 2,500 books, but maybe 75 percent of them are ebooks on my Kindle. I have enough actual books to fill a dozen bookcases, and I have no idea what will happen to them when I die. For the last 15 years or so I have been collecting anthologies of my favorite newspaper strips.
I have the 25 volumes of Peanuts that cover 50 years from 1951-2000, 16 volumes of Little Orphan Annie from the 1920s into the ’50s and all eight volumes out so far of Pogo. I’m one volume away — one that comes out this fall — of having all 30 years of For Better of For Worse.
Of course it’s real books that matter, and that brings us to the purpose of the piece.
Clickbait.
There were 40 books listed and 13 of them were books I haven’t read. Only one, the first one on the list, was one I had never heard of.
Some of them are books I read before finishing high school and would rank very near the top of the list for me. Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird are just seven of them. Wonderful books all.
The one that really surprised me to see on the list was Huckleberry Finn, which might just be the greatest American novel ever written.
We’re told high school students would be bothered by the racism in the book. We’re told the same about Mockingbird, but how are kids supposed to learn from history if they don’t learn about it?
Of course that’s the MAGA mantra — those who ignore the lessons of history don’t have to feel bad.
And it makes it a lot easier when you don’t read books or newspapers.