Sunday again,relaxing with friends.

I like this little lizard. http://www.sharkbay.org/Thornydevilfactsheet.aspx that is the address for a good site for kids to find out more about The thorny dragon or thorny devil (Moloch horridus)which is also called other names. Wikipedia has a good page too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorny_dragon I am enjoying rediscovering our amazing flora and fauna for this sketching challenge and adding a Holiday flare to them. I can't imagine being able to catch a thorny dragon nor adding a bell to it's tail. Speaking of dragons,I am looking forward to seeing the desolation of Smaug in the coming weeks and trying to avoid any mention of it by the doomsayers. I wonder sometimes why people expect entertainment to also be academic literature?
I have seen a lot of reviews, scathing reviews of books and films over the last year and it puzzles me. Why were they going to the movie in the first place? Why did they buy the book? Were they working for the united nations and looking for a way to change the world or were they wanting a bit of escapism and entertainment? I know why I went to see the Hobbit. Firstly because New Zealand is beautiful and Peter Jackson's work is visually delicious, secondly because the actors are gorgeous, thirdly because I have a huge crush on the character of Thorin, fourthly due to the entertainment value of a bunch of oddballs setting off on a seemingly impossible quest, fifthly because I wish we still had eagles that are big(that bit always makes me cry because I remember eagles that were much bigger than the ones we have now but people shot them), sixthly because the music is sumptuous and sends tingles down my spine and finally because I get to step away from all the day to day concerns of my life for three hours and follow an epic journey of the imagination.
In the past few years, or even the decade I have read the Twilight saga and seen the movies. I read all the harry potters and own copies of all the movies as well as all the books. I had five copies of the first book because we all read at different rates and no one was willing to wait for anyone else to finish. I read the twilights to my daughter as her bedtime story for weeks and she loved the books. I read and purchased several Dan Brown's and those fifty shades as well as more than a thousand other books and videos including all the George RR Martin winter is coming(Maybe it is George's fault we are having climate change?). I estimate that during my lifetime I have read fifteen thousand novels which works out to be one novel per day per week for forty years. I could read fluently by four years of age and my favorite memory of primary school was being able to sit in the library corner and read because I always finished the work well ahead of any other child and my reward was to read. I can usually read a novel in a night and know it takes eight hours of reading out loud to get through a Narnia or Harry Potter. So I am under estimating my number of books because my tally only included books I read for myself and does not include text books for the many many many courses I studied, nor does it take into consideration the hundreds if not thousands of children's books I read to, well, children.
I don't like poor writing. I don't like that poor writing is published and there are no gatekeepers halting the flood of substandard prose. I am saddened that the new generations are being encouraged to feast only on graphic novels and not encouraged to feast their brains on beautiful words that will fire the imagination and encourage thinking.