Book Snobbery

This year I'm taking a class called Great Books. In it we read some of the best works of literature from the different ages. At the beginning of the semester my teacher said to all of us that "by the time you finish the course, you will be a book snob"  because after reading authors like Plato and Dante, other books won't seem as rich.

At first this thought didn't sit well with me. Granted, some books I never want to read, either because of the content in them or the synopsis doesn't appeal to me.  More specifically, Not want to read books that have really interesting plot lines?

The more I thought about this statement though, I started to think maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all. There's millions of books that have been written, and no matter how hard we might try, we'll never read them all. As book lovers, the phrase "too many books, too little time" is common. We read so that we can explore new worlds or expand our understanding. The fact that we might never finish our TBR piles isn't the most pleasant thought. (I most likely will be reading some of the books on my shelf so I can know what happens before I lose the desire to pick them up.)

That's where the idea of book snobbery comes in. While it can be viewed as being picky about books for bad reasons, like stubbornness, there is also the flip side. This is where acknowledging the fact that time is precious and that we have a huge list of books comes into play. Instead of wasting time on books that aren't well written or are more shallow, there's more time to devote to books of greater worth, where what's inside the pages won't be viewed as a waste of time. Book snobbery allows us to read better books and save ourselves from pushing through others.

What do you think? Is book snobbery something that book lovers should look at with disgust, or is there a side where it's actually a good thing? Let me know in the comments.