For a brief and magical sliver of time, I read a lot of fiction.
I didn’t read a whole lot of books growing up that I can remember – I recall enjoying The Diary of Anne Frank and something about Eleanor Roosevelt; but sadly, I watched far too much television and otherwise just preferred to play. Reading always felt like homework. I didn’t fully understand the experience of falling in love with a book, a wondrous story, until I was oh, about 24 years old.
I should probably blame my parents: they encouraged me to read, but they never turned off the television in favor of reading literature themselves, so why would I turn out any different?
Or what about my teachers, and the ridiculous curriculum I was forced to suffer through all the years of my primary and secondary education? They sure didn’t help me to understand how to love a book. Even in middle or high school – as a teenage girl, did they really think I was going to relate to Shakespeare, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald? Really?
Say what you will about Harry Potter, it got people reading en masse. Did you know that one in four Americans read ZERO books? Explains a lot, doesn’t it? Children (and their parents and pretty much everybody not living under a born-again-Christian rock) learned that sometimes, a good book about wizards and witches is far better than a sitcom or a video game. Hooray.
Now that I think about it, maybe I’ll blame all the authors and publishers of crap books. But I don’t really even want to do that because at least they’re trying.
Okay fine, I blame myself. I am not well-read due to sheer laziness. I’ve grown intellectually lazy, ignorant even. Sure I read lots and lots of blogs and non-fiction, but I know that fiction is important: it is the only way we can climb inside the imagination of another human being, combine it with our own experiences, biases and beliefs, and create something that is simultaneously uniquely individual and shared with everybody else who reads it. We form a deeper understanding of ourselves, others, and humanity through fiction. Sounds hokey perhaps, but I’m totally not shitting you that I believe all of that to be true.
I didn’t (and still don’t) give books a chance if I don’t connect with them in the first few pages. While I know I should read more, I am far too snobby to enjoy reading most pop fiction, I don’t find pleasure in simple writing and simple characters and simple thoughts. I am trying, though! A friend recently asked if I only listen to the symphony every time I turn on the radio, or PBS every time I turn on the television. Yah no. So why do I put books put up on such a pedestal? Why do I feel if I spend my time reading an Ann Rice or John Grisham novel that this is time wasted, that I should be reading one of the hundreds of more important books I’ll never get around to. Tolstoy, Bronte, Joyce.
If I read pop fiction, I need to know without a shadow of a doubt that it won’t be a waste of my time, and that my friends is no small feat. I have given all genres a chance at one time or another - romance, westerns, mysteries, horror, you name it ... the problem is, most of it, to me, is like watching a Lifetime original movie on a Saturday afternoon when there is nothing else on television besides bass fishing and so you try to convince yourself to just keep watching, it’ll get better. Only a book takes up far more than 90 minutes of your precious time, and I get really mad at books when they waste my time!!
The Bridget Jones books come to mind as examples of incredibly smart, witty and intelligent pop fiction. I’d love to find more page-turning, fun, easy-to-read books. But I’m so annoying(ly picky).
So in 1994 I was living in the suburbs of Chicago with a job in the city, I commuted a total of 3 hours each day and I never did understand how to negotiate a traditional newspaper in a small space, so I read fiction. This is the sliver of time when I really read. The existential, the historical, the philosophical, the funny, the well-crafted, the important.
I fell in love with reading so much that I fantasized about becoming a writer myself. I devoured so many books at such a rapid pace that on my meager salary, it became a financial burden. I found myself seeking out lending libraries and begging co-workers to let me borrow their favorite reads.
The books that I never read in school but changed my relationship with books during this time include, just to name a few:
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Yeah I know, a bit of a trend there, all dead white guys (R.I.P.), and that’s a main complaint I have about literature studies, but whatev.
I’m making it my point to read again, to seek out books that will change my life. I want to read more books written by women: Rand, Woolf, Austin, so forth. I want to read every day, not just before bed, but instead of television and LOLcats. Who knows, maybe I’ll even resurrect my dream of writing something some day.
If you met a person that never loved a book, which book would you recommend to them? What books define you? What books have moved you? What books have you been truly thankful to have experienced, that you will never, ever forget?
