[lbo-talk] kids today

[socialismorbarbarism]

Mark Bennett <bennett.mab at gmail.com> wrote:
> I read "Steal This Book" in high school in the early '70s, but I only knew
>  one other student who also read it - and he stole it from me.  On the other
>  hand, just about everyone was reading, or had read, "The Lord of The
>  Rings".  If the Harry Potter and Meyer series had been around then I'd
>  venture to say that they would have been just as popular as they are now...

I heard the prototypical late-60s/early 70s (white, male) college dorm
reading list in a song/shaggy-dog story, the identity of which is left
as a trivia question:

"A leather-bound five-year collection of Playboy magazine, featuring
the entire Playboy philosophy by Hugh M. Hefner (schmuck);
A copy of The Whole Earth Catalog;
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse;
The Trilogy [sic] of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien;
All four volumes of the teachings of Don Juan (and the fifth in manuscript!);
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (autographed!);
Some Spiderman and Fantastic Four comic books (featuring Dr. Doom!);
Some Zap comic books with the pages stuck together..."

with the Don Juan referred to here being, of course, Castaneda's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda