What Won't You Read?

My profile says, "I'll read the back of the cereal box if nothing else is handy," so you might wonder if there's anything I won't read.

In a physical sense, no. If my gaze falls upon a line of print, that baby's read even before I'm aware of having done so. It's that involuntary -- though once I'm aware of what's on the page, I can mentally cross my eyes and block out the rest of it.

But in a voluntary sense -- being a creature of free will and practicing good old fashioned custody of the eyes -- I can and do refrain from reading certain things. Sometimes, it's merely a matter of taste; other times it's a question of integrity. I don't read:

The Uninteresting -- because life is too short to read things that bore you. Like the sports page or auto repair manuals. But dull comic strips are perhaps the greatest offenders because by nature they are supposed to be funny. (I bet Thomas Aquinas has written something about this.) For me, the most boring comic strip in the world is Marmaduke. It has only one joke: The Dog Is Big. But Ziggy is a close second: it has no joke at all. Neither does Love is . . . , though it was never intended to be funny, I guess. (It is, however, very boring.)

Hate Literature -- especially the kind Jack Chick leaves tucked under your windshield wipers. (Okay, so I have read a couple. That's how I know they're hate literature. Though some are merely inept, another reason to give them a miss.)

The Inept -- again, life is too short. Unless the work in question is so bad as to make me giggle.

The Icky -- anything in the horror genre, erotica, pornography, or the depiction of torture . . . that kind of stuff. Also anything with "Precious Moments" illustrations!

What won't you read?