Long Books

Dear blog,
I've been ignoring you.  I apologize.  But I haven't been ignoring my reading (really), so I feel like we can pick up about where we left off.  This summer has, for all of my unemployed-ness, been uncharacteristically busy.  Most recently, I went home for my ten-year high school reunion, a fact which has little to do with reading and this blog, but it was so unexpectedly fun that I wanted to mention it (and to throw out a theory that Facebook and other social media make things like reunions way less stressful, given that any high school friend you are Facebook friends with already knows what you look like now and what you've been up to lately).

But really, we're here to talk about books.  I did make it to the midpoint of David Copperfield and have been taking a little break to breeze through Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne's House of Dreams, and Anne of Ingleside.  They are a different kind of charming than the earlier books and filled with more adult scrapes and triumphs and heartbreaks and amusements.  Still, I find them delightful and I continue to bask in their old-fashioned charm (and marvel at the descriptions of housekeeping and entertaining that are sprinkled throughout).

I think what I wanted to talk about in this post (and alluded to somewhere in the morass of the previous one) was being one of those people who read long books.  Classic books.  I've always been a little uncomfortable with dragging out these tomes in public, not wanting people to think I'm showing off.  I also prefer to avoid the questions and comments that arise when I get over myself and read what I want, when and where I want.  I hate being asked if I'm reading things for class (especially by people who know what classes I'm taking and must know that, though I wish I could read Joseph Campbell for one of my classes nowadays, it isn't going to happen).  I hate when people tell me I'm brave for reading long books.  No.  This is not bravery.  Nor is it masochism.  They are the books I want to be reading, and why would one assume anything different.

I certainly don't want this to come off bitter and rant-y (though I suspect we're approaching that territory).  What I want to convey is a certain sadness that a love of reading, especially a love of reading books that have been widely acknowledged to be great, is considered suspect by so many.  I would so like people to understand that I have come to love these "great books," and to believe that there is something in there for them as well, something they could connect with and immerse themselves in.