There’s a snobbery around length of books that’s been around for decades to my knowledge and is silly. The length of a book has nothing to do if a person will like it, it’s the same with covers. I’m reading a book at the moment that I purchased because it was 99p. Thats the only reason and I’m loving it. I read when waiting for appointments and have had loads of people commenting on how pretty it looks! Same goes for genres. I just READ!!
I’ve read short books that have been rubbish and great! Likewise long ones!!
I found and got as a present for a friend of mine and me a copy of the ‘mysteries of uldolpho’ for us to read and discuss (we had both read northanger abbey and she wanted us to do a book club) and she simply looked at the size and went no way. I think she thought it’d be a short book but given the time it was written it wasn’t as all novels then were huge, and, the language could be a challenge as not like we speak today.
If Isabelle had done GCSE English like she claims then she would have been reading books like Dickens which were rarely short (obviously I’m excluding his short works like the short stories/Christmas books and Christmas stories) like ‘great expectations’ (which I did at that level) and done a critique of it.
People change over time too and like different books at different ages. Classic doesn’t mean boring. I know people with classics on bookshelves to show off. It’s pointless.
Is she trying to rebrand as some kind of book influencer?