Well, even though I spend way too much time watching the Housewives shows on Bravo and reading teen books about demons and werewolves, I finally got it together to start this blog. Over the past year or two I’ve been trying to fill in the gaps left by my illustrious art school education. How could I have missed out on so many of the best novels ever written? I guess my time has been monopolized by Candace Bushnell and Lauren Conrad. A woman my age shouldn’t even know who LC is! But I love her.
All the same, it’s time to take inventory on which great works of literature have escaped me so far. Going over Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list today, I counted 52 that I’ve read so far. The list is limited to the 20th century of course and doesn’t have many female authors on it. A lot of my favorites aren’t even on there, but it’s a place to start if you want to read classics that you’ve somehow missed along the way.
I’m a 33-year-old avid reader and librarian and I can’t believe how many great books I’ve never read! It’s frustrating. I wish everyone would just leave me the f alone so I could read! It’s daunting. I know I can’t possibly finish all the books worth reading in my lifetime. But I am trying to cover as many as I can.
Adding to the time crunch is the arrival of my first baby next November. I have this fear that once I’m a mom I will never have the luxury of sitting down with a book ever again. I know this is silly, but no doubt my life is about to change a hell of a lot. When I do have time to read, I want the books to be worth my time.
But are all quote-unquote classics worth the time? I’ll go into more specifics in future posts about classic books that didn’t live up to my expectations. Imagine my surprise when I finally read Anna Karenina, expecting a scandalous love story, and got bogged down in tedious passages about farming. There was not even one sex scene in it! WTF? And how stupid could Tess’ (of the D’ubervilles) parents be? Someone should have explained the birds and the bees to this chick before she was allowed to leave the village. And what was with all the Jesus poems at the end of Doctor Zhivago?
It’s not that I don’t appreciate all of this great literature. I’m just shocked at how much of it is not what I expected. It’s not as highbrow as I used to think. There’s a lot of melodrama, unbelievable plot twists and weird tangents. These novels once served the same purpose for bored folks as reality TV does today. Well, okay, I guess the Brontes are a little more sophisticated than the Kardashians. But sometimes I want to yell at these characters the same way I shout at the idiots on my TV.
Just wait until I have my say about my husband’s favorite book, Atlas Shrugged. Who is John Galt? He’s the guy who’s been irritating the hell out of me for weeks, no, months. Finishing that beast of a novel will be worthy of a celebration.
A Modern Librarian Reads the Classics 