Tuesday, November 25, 2008

If Amazon says so, I won't argue!




When I hear the word "classic" being used to describe literature, my mind immediately thinks in terms of longevity and staying power; simply passing the unmerciful test of time. My brain conjurs up authors like Hemingway, Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and all of the other greats we had to read (or should have read) in school; books like Lord of the Flies, The Grapes of Wrath, and A Christmas Carol, which are enjoyed again and again with each new generation. So you can imagine how shocked I was when my Paper Bag Christmas popped up in the top 25 downloads (e-books) in the "Classic Literature" category on Amazon.com, with higher customer ratings than The Bard!
Whatever. I'm flattered, but I'm also guessing that someone accidentally fat-fingered my book's category in a lonely database somewhere. Still, it's fun to see it listed among the greats, no matter how it got there!!
[For posterity-sake, the following were a few of the other authors/books in the top 25: The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), Jane Austen's complete works, Lord of The Flies (William Golding), The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway), A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens), War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy), Little Women (Louisa May Alcott).]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! I didn't know I was in the company of such excellence! But that is pretty cool, no matter how it got there.

Benjie said...

That's great company. Go ahead and hold your breath, The Paper Bag Christmas only has to survive a few more years to fit the traditional definition of "classic".

Personally, I think you've got the potential for those years, and you don't have to be dead fifty years before your work is seen as classic.

Thanks for stopping by, and happy Christmas to you and yours,
Benj.