Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.
It's a sort of patronizing idea that literature for children has to feature role models of exemplary behavior. I think not only is that bogus, but it leads to really boring books.
People say that the Bible is a boring book...but they don't say that about Shakespeare, because the people who teach Shakespeare are zealous for Shakespeare.
Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.
Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of 'genre books' of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary.
Scholarship was one thing, drudgery another. I very soon concluded that nothing would induce me to read, let alone make notes on, hundreds and hundreds of very, very, very boring books.
or simply:
