This book is brilliant in all kinds of ways, including the prediction and the effects of a pandemic in 2010, but I found this extended passage quite descriptive of my eldest son (I lost paragraphs):
"In fact, he’d never read a whole book all the way through, not even when he was supposed to for school. He would read only as much as he had to in order to do the assignment. Depending on the book, he might skim all the pages or he’d read a chapter or two from the beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes he’d just Google or SparkNote the book. He’d never once got into trouble for not reading a whole book—proof that reading every page could not be all that important. He wasn’t making any kind of statement. He was truly bored by most of the reading assigned at school—and he wasn’t the only one. Besides, he thought his parents were wrong. The kind of reading they did was something almost no one did anymore. Lots of successful people didn’t read books and the smartest kids at school weren’t necessarily the biggest readers, either. Things had changed, and Cole knew you didn’t have to feel bad anymore for not reading novels or poetry. Even his parents didn’t read poetry. And no, he didn’t feel proud that his parents had tried writing novels themselves (his mother had finished hers but couldn’t get it published; his father had quit before finishing his but was planning to get back to it that summer); he felt embarrassed. Whenever he tried to read a book recommended by one of his parents, it could keep his attention for only so long. He’d put it down one day and then never pick it up again. And just because so many other kids thought Harry Potter was dope didn’t mean he had to think so, too. All those hours Cole spent on the Internet apparently didn’t count. That wasn’t reading, that was viewing, his father said. To his parents, Cole’s failing—weakness, whatever—was so bizarre, so unlikely (“ It’s in your genes!”), that they’d had him tested. But: “I’m afraid there’s no excuse, m’ boy,” said his father. Cole didn’t have dyslexia or any other learning disability. He was just intellectually lazy. And: “If you don’t start reading more—if you don’t develop a love of literature while you’re young—you’ll probably always be an underachiever.” Which was what everyone seemed to agree he was now. But there was one kind of literature he already had a love for, and that was comic books. He’d always loved comics, a love his father shared—it was his father who’d given him his first Marvel comics. But unlike his father Cole also liked sketching and doodling. He’d always wanted to create his own comic book, and once he’d even tried. They didn’t know it, but it was his parents who’d given him the idea. It began with his mother talking about how many women these days—even very young women—had thinning hair. “At first I thought I was imagining it, but Shireen” (her friend who also happened to be a dermatologist) “confirmed it. There’s an epidemic of hair loss among women of all ages. No one knows exactly why, but it must be something in the environment—they think maybe plastics.” Another time, his mother had brought up something else she’d noticed. “When I started middle school, I remember there were just one or two really busty girls, and it was such a big deal. Now it’s the flat-chested girl who’s the exception. And look at Krystal” (the ten-year-old next door). “She’s got more cleavage than I do.” In this case, too, the cause was thought to be contaminants in plastics. Cole hadn’t noticed women losing their hair until his mother had said something. As for early breasting, he had noticed a lot—you couldn’t help noticing Krystal—but he hadn’t realized this was something new. Some of the girls in his class were so big he had trouble believing they weren’t in pain. And how could you not feel bad for them? Never to be able to sleep on your stomach—because of growths on your chest? It wasn’t exactly vomitous—after all, ginormous breasts were a big part of what made a lot of apocalyptic girls apocalyptic—but it was close. His father said, “When it’s warm out and the girls come to class half naked, it looks like something out of a men’s mag. I know it wasn’t that good when I was in school.” He roared with laughter when Cole’s mother said, “I guess that’s how women will look in the future: humongous boobs and no hair.” And instantly they sprang to mind: a race of supergirls . . . bald, blimp-breasted, disc-eyed . . . with long muscular legs that they could turn into laser swords . . . supernaturally smart, although, because of some genetic defect, unable to read the alphabet . . . The Dyslexichicks, who communicated not with words but through a kind of music, like birds . . . engaged in never-ending battle with the evil Stubs, a race of short, bushy-haired bookworms (Cole envisioned something like troll dolls) who wished to rid the world of all music, even the music of birds . . . His parents had stood by him, but still it was awful."
"Salvation City" by Sigrid Nunez
"...how could something that makes you so happy also make you feel like you were being beat up? This was love, but it was also terror..."
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