Evil cannot create, it can only corrupt

Yes it’s real. Apparently it’s not selling well because the venn diagram of “Mr Beast fans” and “people who read” are two circles that just barely touch.

His target audience are minors, so that tracks.

Tbf he has a point. Getting to read something you like vs having to for an assignment can be very souring.

Can't be worse than teens reading the fountain head either.

It is: status/2094837479861792791
I recommend the original although:

We don't think teens want to read at all, esp. his addicted demographic.

I don't think I've seen a book written by just Paterson in a long while. It's all co-writes.

I wish he wrote more in the Daniel X series that first one was one of my favorite sci fi books of all time growing up.

Pretty sure they have nothing to do with each other.

🥁

IIRC, I think Paterson has always been a team of ghost writers.

Both my kids (13 and 11) aren’t fans of reading, but there are some books they can’t put down (One Piece and Jujutsu Kaizen manga). And honestly, I’m all for it if it gets them excited about reading and not glued to their screens.

I even read the books once they are done with them. It’s kinda like a little book club. 🤷‍♂️

~My only complaint is that the selection at the library is thin and incomplete.~

TL;DR: talk a bunch of shit about James Patterson, but the dude puts his money where his mouth is.

My partner is a retired bookseller. There's a lot of history and context over which I'm hand-waving. But Patterson has an annual [thing] wherein he awards a grant to employees of an independent bookstore for that employee's cause du jour. I forget the numbers, but it's significant. Like... life-changing quantities of money relative to the bookseller's position and proposal.

My partner has won the James Patterson annual award for [some things she was getting into before we met] about five (seven?) times. She is assed out and is not responding to my poking her to ask. Patterson has funded things like my partner's hand-painted/drawn shelf-talkers, even if they weren't for his books. Patterson funded my partner's friend's launch of an independent bookstore.

Hate on Patterson all you want (oh... and I do). But the dude really gives back.

Do minors not read anymore? I read a lot as a kid.

they do. The "kids dont read anymore" come from i don't know where.

they read books, book tiktok is a thing. Youtuber as well. They read journal articles online or otherwise, they text each other so... they read same for social media.
Audiobook is on the rise. In my book it count as reading a book. You are aware of each line of content of the book.

The most "kids don't read anymore" come from politicians that attribute the closure of library to young people instead of amazon, policies that does not protect or recognize librarians, etc.

I thought Patterson, like a lot of fiction genre authors was a pseudonym that's shared by many different authors.

Not hating on that, I think it makes it cooler but I wonder how they decide what to donate

time to complete the library then😁

unfortunately😔 it seems to be the case

Should have released a Mr. Beast audiobook then instead of a bookbook; narrated by da beast himself, now streaming on TikTok in 490 parts. That would have sold much better. Market research.

That's nice and all, but then there is the fact that he partnered up with Mr. Beast about a book.

I don't know if this is real, but James Patterson is known for partnering with famous people to write books with them. My impression (guess) is that he does the writing while they provide inspiration. I read both the books he did with Bill Clinton. The first one was okay. The second one was forgettable. Or maybe it was the other way around. I can't recall which was which. Maybe they were both mid at best?

He's done a few that had me curious. I just don't find his writing to be all that great. The story can hook you, but if you forget it shortly after, did it really make an impact?

Also, I don't fault MrBeast for saying books were boring growing up. They didn't pick fun books in anybody's school, I believe. We were not taught to enjoy books. We were taught to enjoy movies and video games. We were taught that books were boring. That's a failing of our education.

Not at all.

😔

He has a very successful series of YA called Maximum Ride and he has done a ton of thrillers.

I love the comment, I hope it is satire.

Saw some people go through it and it has pretty much all the markers for shitty AI writing. Em-dashes, 'it's not just x, it's y', rules of three, everything. It's AI slop.

Oh, I know. My wife loves them. I mean, recently, most of his books have been him and someone else. Full marks haven't really gone to him in a while.

The thing is james patterson barely writes his own books anymore. At this point his popularity just sorta has its own momentum. So slapping his name on a book that a team of writers or ai vomits out is guaranteed sales.

JJK actually does require decent reading comprehension. I'm glad that your are letting them read what is essentially a comic book. I even had a hatd time reading JJK. I stopped reading right before the end sinply because they introduced too many characters too quickly and it felt like they expected me to tremendously who was who. One Piece is a much easier read and still deals with deep themes.

My kids read constantly; but none of their friends do, AFAIK.

I saw him read a book when he was a kid. The dictionary. For like 24 hours straight on a webcam.

What data are you using to come to this scarcely creditable claim? IM texts and street signs would be rather moving the goalpost, I think.

Sadly untrue. False bravado on the part of evil's victims.

The article i read about this yesterday said that kids read a huge amount of very short texts, but hate reading more than like 10-20 pages of text at a time.

Comic books are doing really well at scholastic because the text is broken up by images throughout.

iirc, they have a podcast for this exact reason.

“I never read any books when I was growing up”

Fair enough, guess I didn’t remember correctly 😅

People somehow don't realize how MrBeast got his start. He performed superhuman feats of boredom and endurance to get his channel certified. I seem to recall he counted to a million in another stream. I was really confused when the popular media started talking about someone I knew as a sideshow freak in a similar genre to LA Beast. The guy isn't dealing with the normal human configuration of brain goo. His relationship with human suffering is fucking WEIRD. It's like he's lost the ability to comprehend what it is, and he just walks around faking it. It kinda scares me that he is so powerful now. Both in the immediate, "he's going to fuck shit up," sense, and also as a microcosm.

I'm convinced that James Patterson isn't a real author. I was a huge fan of Maximum Ride as a teenager. Honestly, looking back, it had the obvious fingerprints of a team of ghostwriters all over it. A disjointed plot that just kept going, ballooning plotholes, forgotten powers and abilities. Hell, the main character's hair even changed color for no apparent reason.

He's always been just a cheap brand.

Hi. I was a Maximum Ride fan as a teenager.

It's ghostwritten. And not by just one author, it's ghostwritten by a couple of them. Plot points get forgotten, powers and abilities just change without warning, characters start making erratic decisions, and the status quo varies from book to book. Hell, Max's hair even changes color once for no particular reason.

Well there is some of my own experience, some friends that are librarians, the wonderfull book "sois jeune et tais toi, une réponses a ceux qui critiquent la jeunesse" in english "be young and shut up! an answer to thoses that mock the youngs" from Salomé Saquee that goes above and beyond explaining that most stereotypes abount youngs are just that, stereotypes. https://world.edu/yes-young-people-are-still-reading-but-differently/

But i believe that reading is important, i believe you do too.

Do you have other sources? we could have a complementary vision of the world ;) Or both learn something ;p

I think at one point he wrote his own books. But I’d be surprised if he even writes the outlines for his novels anymore. His publisher is using his name as a brand now, and slapping it on books “co-written” by celebrities. Who knows how involved the celebs are past book promotion.

Is it yet another ripoff of squid game?

That's quite hilarious and I hope, if Hollywood driven by their desperation decices to make a Maximum Ride movie, then in it now and then Max switches hair color with no apparent reason and without anyone addressing it.

I never considered AI writes his books. Would we even know?

It is the best seller in amazon's Men's Adventure Fiction.

So this is the original, I liked the mildly enjoyable Ice-T and Gary Busey movie Surviving The Game.

Yeah! I went back and found the link posted on IRC yesterday. See what you think!

https://www.the74million.org/article/many-young-adults-barely-literate-yet-earned-a-high-school-diploma/

EDIT: I liked this one even better: https://www.the74million.org/article/why-are-so-few-kids-reading-for-pleasure/

Also, if you are interested in reading theory, i found this study quite interesting as well, though it is focused on approaching difficult texts in an academic setting

https://www.scribd.com/document/868947219/project-muse-922346

Last but certainly not least, this critique of the "whole language" method of teaching reading, in the context of other methods of reading instruction, was eye opening for me. Could easily slip into pearl-clutching territory, but i think it was well supported throughout.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-and-fall-of-vibes-based-literacy EDIT: This is not the article i remember reading -- that one was much more dramatic and fun. But it covers much of the same content.

I can't wait to read your reference as well and discuss it hopefully, in the theme of both learning something.