All of the memes that have been floating around have served to illustrate to me just how decidedly mainstream my taste is. I am not hip. I didn’t listen to Sigur Ros before ITV started using Hoppipoller for bed tracks. I like me some Beyonce. My reading habits are the only exception to this.
It’s an interesting question – what gives a text meaning, worth, what makes it critically valuable? The populist view is that all texts have as much worth as is ascribed to them by the masses, no more, no less; while Theodor Adorno and friends told us that it was the very influence of the ‘mass’ and their consumption of ‘mass culture’ that resulted in the ‘lowering’ of the quality of texts being produced.
I could say I read some of the canon because I find it relaxing; I don’t. I find it challenging. But then, when given the choice of movie to watch, I’ll generally take the lazy route, forgoing Tsotsi for Inside Man, leaving The French Connection out of the DVD player in favour of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, clicking the ipod wheel up from the In Our Time podcast in favour of The Killers.
Perhaps it’s the influence of 2 years of English Lit at uni, perhaps it’s just because I love the feeling of a heavy book in my hand. But look from my book shelf to my tiny collection of DVDs and the contrast appears; Finding Nemo, Shrek, Shrek II (of course), Bring It On, and soon Firefly season one – not the heaviest of viewing by a long, long shot.
Maybe I should face it - I am Pixar's wet dream.
This is a 
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