My Un-scholarly Book Pile

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Our Tuesday fox posed this question: “Is there a book that you have always wanted to read but never have? What has stopped you from reading it?”

There are countless titles that I could list to answer the first question. Now that I’m retired and the kids and most of the grandkids are on their own, I have a lot more time than I did twenty years ago. And even though I keep busy with lots of hobbies as well as my writing, reading is what keeps me sane. Even when I was a busy working mom, I’d often spend the last few hours of the day reading. But my book choices were usually short (fewer than 200 pages) romances in which I could lose myself in someone else’s troubles and then rejoice in their triumphs. 

But there are many that I wish I could say I’ve read. Most of them are what are known as classic literature. My wish to read them is not because I’m truly interested in doing so; it’s because I am embarrassed that I am not as well-read as most people might think, due to my education and career as an educator. When Literature is the category on Jeopardy, I am rarely able to answer the clues because I simply have not read best-sellers and/or classics. So to answer the second question, it’s because because they usually fall into one of these categories:

Length of the book. I’m just not good at sitting down to do anything for an extended length of time, and unless there’s a lot of action and entertainment, I have difficulty focusing on a long story line. Gone With the Wind was probably the only book of its length that I’ve been able to read in its entirety. It’s very rare that I’ll complete a book over 300 pages. My daughter and son-in-law devoured the entire Harry Potter series, but I wasn’t able to do so. I suppose that’s why most of my own books tend to be on the shorter side. I simply can’t stick with it any longer than that.

Genre. I would love to say that I’ve read classics such as Dracula, Frankenstein, or books by Stephen King or Anne Rice. But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to stomach them. I don’t want to stay awake all night because I’m afraid to close my eyes. I also have difficulty reading books in which nothing much happens. I don’t care to know every detail about the garden outside a house before a character walks through the door. I suppose that’s why I haven’t made work of reading regency romance written during the regency period, or those written in that style. Some of my granddaughters fell in love with the Twilight series, but it never appealed to me.

Difficulty. I do enjoy a mental challenge but like everything else in my life, I need to take things in short spurts. A long book full of vocabulary I need to look up (such as legal or medical thrillers) is one I won’t be able to stick with for long, so I’ve had to pass on books by Dean Koontz, Harlan Coben, and other well-recognized authors. Books with hundreds of names that are similar (either beginning or ending with the same sound), or with so many characters I can’t keep them straight just confuse me, and I stop reading.

Subject matter. I guess I view reading as a way to wind down and escape from my concerns and troubles. Even when I’m reading a murder mystery, I don’t care to “see” the gruesome details. I suppose that’s why I stick to cozy mysteries. Books with serious themes and endless suffering are important, but like the books I described under the Genre category above, I tend to limit myself to reading reviews about them, rather than reading the books themselves. 

So there are my excuses for not having read books that most people consider “must reads.” I checked out Time Magazine’s 100 Best English Language Novels from 1923 to 2005 on Goodreads and I’ve read only three. Two of them, 1984 and Lord of the Flies, were high school English class assignments! 

What keeps you from reading a book?

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