"The books gave Matilda a comforting message: you are not alone" - Roald Dahl
One of the most life-altering, on/off, up/down, sometimes
difficult - though ultimately fulfilling - relationships I've ever experienced
has been with not, unfortunately, George Clooney, but rather...reading. And at the moment, reading and I are
getting along quite nicely. In fact, I’d say we’re experiencing something of a
second honeymoon, after going through a bit of a bad patch.
People sometimes find that while taking a relationship to
the next level – be this moving in together, or maybe even getting married –
may be the expected course of action, it isn’t always the best of ideas. All of
a sudden, things have changed: got more serious; become restricted somehow; lost
a bit of the original fun and carefree appeal. This is exactly what happened to
reading and me when I stepped things up a gear and made the decision - second
only in terms of seriousness where reading is concerned, I’d say, to embarking
on War and Peace - to study English
Lit at uni.
I know I know, it’s not exactly rocket science, and I’ll be
the first to admit that, relatively speaking, a BA in English isn’t the most
testing of degrees (though YOU should try getting your head around post
modernism - and no, I still don’t really know what it means). But importantly
for me, any association it had previously held with ‘pleasure’ went out of the
window when reading became just another of life’s obligatory tasks.
Admittedly, my frequently unwise modular choices didn’t exactly
help, and the compulsory ones often only made things worse. Let’s just say medieval
literature and I did not get on. This isn’t to say that I spent the entire
three years in the midst of an existential crisis, questioning my very point on
earth (or at least at the university) – I could recognise good literature when
I saw it, even if I didn’t necessarily enjoy reading all of it, and there were
some gems that I did like along the
way.
But all the same, I started to think that maybe reading and
I weren’t really meant to be. One of the blessings of doing an English degree
is that you became fairly adept at the fine art of bullshitting – or at least I
feel I certainly did – but it became apparent in seminars, as we sat there in all
our literary student splendour, sharing our oh so enlightened thoughts with the
group, that unlike me, some people had genuinely
really enjoyed reading Spenser’s Faerie
Queene. And my lecturer certainly must have, to devote his entire life to
analysing the shit out of it.
Luckily though, in recent months, with my degree over, and
these mildly torturous reading restrictions lifted, I’ve been able to remind
myself why I had once thought it was worth committing to what is really, when
it comes down it, just words on paper. One of my biggest mistakes at uni, and
one which went a long way in my fall out with reading, was to presume that just
because my lecturer clearly thought something was an enjoyable read, that I
should feel the same.
And, if I didn’t, that I should somehow see myself as less
worthy as a reader, and definitely of less intelligence (though admittedly my PhD possessing professor probably did have the edge on me there). Too many of
us are conscious of what we feel we should
be reading, and not just going for something we might enjoy. Obviously
there are some classics which it is possible to gain pleasure and entertainment
from, but for god’s sake, if you’re struggling through Middlemarch and every finished paragraph feels like nothing but a victory
over your better judgement - which is probably willing you to pick up the TV
remote - just PUT IT DOWN.
Abandoning a book halfway through is still one of life’s
last taboos. But why should it be? If you’re devoting your last waking moments
of the day to reading something, why bother if it literally bores you to sleep?
I'm about to be bold - brace yourselves - and confess that I recently gave up on A Tale of Two Cities. According
to Dickens, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but for me, it
definitely felt like more of the latter. I did the usual battling with my
English student conscience – Dickens is one of the best novelists in history! Giving
up would mean that I was both a failure AND couldn't recognise what is supposed to be some
of the best literature of all time. But then I essentially just thought...fuck it,
life’s too short.
People look for different things in a book – escapism
possibly, and something completely alien from their day to day reality, while
others might want something they can relate to; there’s certainly something amazing about
seeing a feeling you had previously thought you alone experienced, articulated exactly there on
the page in front of you. In recent months, I’ve been experiencing something in
the middle - working my way through the novels of women with lots to
say (which, if you’ve stuck with me after about 800 words or so, I’m sure you can tell
is something I might relate to), but with the kind of success I could only ever
dream of: Tina Fey, Lynn Barber, and pretty much everything Nora Ephron ever
wrote. Each one of them is incredibly talented and creative and inspiring, and I'm enjoying every word. Yep,
things are going well for reading and me – and I really hope it lasts.
