Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Too current

I guess I shouldn't find this so jarring, but twice in the last few weeks I've been surprised by finding something that seemed overly current in the books I was reading, though on reflection neither was particularly new.

First was the advance reading copy of Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath. Before each chapter is an epigraph; they come from various sources, and one was from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Okay, okay, after my first feeling of surprise I realized that it has been more than 10 years (!) since the first in the series came out.

But then, on the first page of It Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley, there is a reference to Stephenie Meyer. Twilight was published in 2005, so it's hardly brand-new either, but it still seemed a jolt. Maybe it was the thought that these works are becoming (or have already become) so much a part of the cultural fabric. Or maybe they seemed more current because the last book in each series was published more recently? I'll have to ruminate upon this.

1 comment:

holdenj said...

I have been mulling this over ever since you mentioned this. I did hit Harry references earlier this year, but figured it had been a decade, so it didn't jump out at me too much.

I think a Twilight reference would have startled me as well--almost seems like they're trying to hitch their wagon to a star, you know?