Friday, April 13, 2012

L is for Literature




Literature. Isn't that a scary word? For me it is. If you label something as "literature", I run screaming in the opposite direction. I have never understood why, though. I have always enjoyed assigned reading in school, except for As I Lay Dying and Oliver Twist. (I faked reading those sooooo well, but that's another story.) Other than those two books, I have found so many wonderful written works from elementary school to college.

I think I have such a fear of literature because I consider myself to be a lazy reader. I tell myself that I enjoy fluff stories that hand the plot to me and allow me to have everything served to me on a silver platter. However, if I read more than one or two of those in a row, I find myself picking them apart. And that is my favorite part about reading actual literature - there is meat to pick apart. Literature scares me, but once I pick it up, I love trying to figure out themes, symbolism, and all of that fun stuff. I even find myself pulling literature out of the recesses of my brain and comparing it to other things I'm reading, quite involuntarily. (I think my English professor buddy and I became friends over my being possessed by Mary Hood's "How Far She Went" while reading "A White Herron" by Sarah Orne Jewett.)

There are more authors and books that I could ever possibly list that I have enjoyed. Despite my disdain for As I Lay Dying and Oliver Twist, I have enjoyed other works by William Faulkner ("A Rose for Emily") and Charles Dickens ("The Signal-Man"). This is why I continually force myself to look for classics to experience or new bits of literature to taste. I picked up The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for no other reason than it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it became one of my all-time favorite novels. I know I'm due for more literature soon, but for now I'm sticking with my light reads. That is, until Tricked by Kevin Hearne comes out - that's totally literature!


3 comments:

  1. This phrase made me laugh. "If you label something as "literature", I run screaming in the opposite direction." LOL. Classic. I know exactly what you mean.

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  2. The word literature is a frightening word. It is due to the fact that it is something that you HAVE to do and not what you want to do.

    Your posts always make me smile..:))(see)

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  3. Haha, I love literature, but then I was a Lit major in college.

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You are going to put words in my box?! *squeezes you* Now I shall stalk YOUR blog!