I will be the first to admit I do not read enough books. I can name dozens of shows, movies, albums, even paintings I’m obsessed with. But I do not read books like I did when I was younger. Honestly, I don’t read books because I don’t see the need to most of the time. For school, sure I’ll read books my professors say we must read to do well in the class. But outside of school, I can only think of one book I’ve purchased and read for pleasure in the past year.
That book is Black American Psycho by Ernest Baker. Baker is a former music journalist who is best known for his work for Complex, Four Pins, Gawker, and Rolling Stone, and most importantly being friends with Drake and naming his mixtape with Future What a Time to Be Alive. Baker became a internet sensation solely for being himself. He shared his radical music opinions to Twitter, which would spawn hundreds of RT’s and many angry reactions. He wrote about loving Drake unashamedly, he wrote about being depressed when amazing nights ended, he wrote about being black dating white women, he even wrote about the greatest movie of all time: Mean Girls. Ernest Baker, to me, was the most relatable, interesting writer. And then he was accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend, who was a well known Complex editor. For months, he stayed off social media, only returning this past summer to announce she lied about the alleged assault (and dropped all charges before the assigned court date) and to expose all of her lies. He did so in an unforgettable Twitter rant and the “novel,” Black American Psycho, which I purchased for $15 on Amazon immediately and read in one sitting. It is people like Baker, who have impeccable stories, that to this day connect to the hyper-digital youth and still sell books.
For this reason, I believe that though libraries are irrelevant, books are alive and well. They certainly do not sell the way they once did, but there are still lots of people with interest in reading. There is a reason why Amazon’s book department is so wildly successful and why they (among other book outlets) developed technology like the Kindle to make reading easier in the digital age.
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