Garbage in, genius out.

My mom's nurse, without noticing that I have Twilight in my hand, says that movie is "trash." She doesn't say it the way that we all do; she says is hatefully, satisfied that she has said it.
We both smile bleakly, the way I did a few months ago when a stranger or near-stranger discussed the status of Barack Obama as heathen, anti-christ, etc.
Unencouraged, she continues.
"I don't know why anyone would make that. It makes me sick to see the name of it when I drive past the movie theater."

"Oh, yeah, it is kind of trashy," I say, wishing the conversation would end so that I could keep reading it.
I mean it; it is.
I hold it up, and defend my honor quickly.
"I'm and English teacher, though. I deserve the occasional mental recess."
"Garbage in, garbage out," she says. To my face.

My mom steers the conversation in a different way, discussing all of the good books that I teach, all of the funny or clever things my students say, the way my students are affected by my teaching.

I know that it would make me a better person, is some way, if I were reading a better book, one of the many I have on my shelves. But I also know that any book can do what all books, even good books, are supposed to do.

Feel. For the characters, for myself, for the people around me.
Think.
Re-contextualize.
Examine. My motives. Another person's feelings. A relationship. A book I read two years ago.
Make connections. Between anything that the books sparks in me.

If my brain is really on, and if I am really critically thinking, any book can do that. Well, maybe not any book, but certainly these books. They are well-written, thoroughly conceived and wrought with genuine emotion. Not just adolescent emotion.

In a manner of speaking, Edward and Bella's tragic tale is garbage. But that is only a small view of it. And that is only if the person reading the book is only thinking of him or herself. Or only thinking of what happens next. And not what all it means, implies, says about the fictional or real world.

If you have a brilliant mind following the pages, then it's not garbage at all.