E50:Reading novels is a waste of time. Discuss

The designation novel covers a very wide spectrum of literature. It comprises the classic works of fiction of all countries. By definition, a novel is a prose piece of over 60,000 words. Many are much longer. Anything shorter is a novella ; if much shorter, a short story. The genre grew up independently in many countries, particularly those of Europe, though since this is an English General Paper it is the English (or British) tradition that will generally be referred to, with occasional references to countries which have produced fiction in some kind of English, such as the USA.
Fiction of course is not limited to the classics, which form a relatively small part of it. For at least three centuries the bookshops have always been full of the more ephemeral kinds of prose; the American block-buster , the J Arthur Clarke type of space fiction, the ghost story, the detective whodunnit ?, the romantic novel, the psychological thriller, the historical novel, the adventure story, the war story. The list is endless.

It is quite possible to become hooked on novel reading, and this has two dangers. To read novels when you should be doing something else, e.g. study, or practical chores, is indeed a waste of time. And it is never courteous to have one's nose in a novel when visitors arrive! Secondly, there are some people who find in a novel a means of escape from reality. This has other dangers. Too much relapse into fantasy may destroy one's ability to face facts.

If reading novels can be a waste of time, reading bad novels is always a waste of time and can be positively harmful. A really bad novel is not easy to define, but for anybody with intellect it has some, or even all of the following features: unreality in characterization and situation, poor construction, concentration on sex and violence for the sake of it, bad sentence construction, a boring approach, expletives and bad language generally, a biased attitude to people, situations and issues, and stereotyping of characters.


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