What I remember – people with drug problems reading Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire. High schoolers reading Shogun, the Stand. Books went to road trips, books went to sporting events. Lots of people reading Nietzsche or pretending to.
Everyone reading Dragonlance, the Lord of the Rings, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Visiting book sales with a girlfriend, a girlfriend reading Middlemarch. Always scanning someone’s bookshelf when you visited their house. Mothers telling their daughters never to date someone who didn’t have a bookshelf in their house.
“Philosopher” kids who debated Foucault and Aristotle (best represented by Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites). People reading books based on popular movies or inspired by movies (Trainspotting comes to mind). Discussing King Arthur and Shakespeare at length, jocks talking about Oscar Wilde. Jocks reading the Quran and the Bible and discussing the different religions.
We’ve gained a lot too, but this is what we’ve lost.
Basement Whatever 
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