Am I a Bibliophile or a Snob? (A self-centered post)

The individuals I encounter who consider themselves bibliophiles will not stop reading a book once he or she starts, regardless of how bad.

I do not have this patience. I have dropped books as a few as 10 pages in and as far as 200 pages in because I no longer care.  

Here are my snobbish traits that will make bibliophiles cringe and my defenses.

1) I will stop reading a book after 50 pages. 

If a book cannot be interesting, compelling, whatever appropriate adjective in 50 pages it does not deserve to be read. 

2) To me, a book should ideally be within 300 pages, and should avoid being 500 pages. 

There's a quote by Elvis Costello, that "If you can't write a song in 3 minutes then you can't write" (that's more of a paraphrase). I feel there is some justification of this with Ockham's Razor, and in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition," where Poe puts forth the ideal prose work as being one that can be read within a single sitting for the "unity of effect." Like Poe, I feel a prose work loses its value and "unity of effect" after an extended period of time, often times becoming cluttered in unnecessary details and diluting dramatic action with filler. If William Faulkner, Julian Barnes, Kurt Vonnegut, and other writers can detail great insight into character under 300 pages (often under 200 pages), then most writers can. I do have exceptions, but they seem to be consistent in having a great deal of dramatic action (a la Harry Potter novels and Les Miserables). 

3) Great stories need to be dynamic

There should be a balance in great works. Reading a book shouldn't be the literary equivalent of listening to Metallica's 'Death Magnetic,' where the music is so loud that it loses it's dynamic qualities. Great literature shouldn't just be all aria and no recitative. 

4) I do not think there's something inherently wrong in not reading "Classics"

I won't lie; I do not like most 19th Century and early 20th Century English Literature. I tried reading 'Far from the Madding Crowd' by Thomas Hardy; at first it was mesmerizing to read Hardy's description of the English countryside, but he does this throughout the novel to the point where after 100 pages one says "I get it, England's beautiful. Move on." Likewise, if you read one Jane Austen book, you've read them all. Somewhat well to do but still not as rich women strive for independence and choice under the circumstances of dealing with deranged, possibly inbred, aristocrats and such. Make no mistake, it's good, but just read one and be done. Charles Dickens; melodramatic, forceful. Joseph Conrad; boring, boring, boring, racist, boring. Seriously, these are classics. Make no mistake, this period of this country has great works, like the Sherlock Holmes novels and 'Jane Eyre.' Yet, I hate seeing facebook posts with "100 Books You Should Read" listed and selected works that have been read, with this underlying pretension that you're supposed to read this. Reading is great; it enables one to become articulate, self-aware, culturally aware, and deeply critical thinkers. But a list like that is one heavily rooted in the Western Canon (ignoring Akutugawa, Lu Xun, Naghib Mahfuz, and others who are not in the Western Canon), and two asinine. There are several works of literature that can enable a person to be self-aware, and are not on that list. Roald Dahl can do that, so can Eric Carle. So can Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, Ursula Le Guin, and other scifi/fantasy/genre writers. So my personal list of "classics" would not be agreeable to this list of works that should be read. So screw that. 

Essentially I do not believe in the conventional pretension of developing into capable people, nor in the pretensions that you have to read this to be smart or know about this to not be a philistine. I'll discuss my theory of literature later, but ultimately I think this post legitimizes my snob status.