“Maybe you can tell I
gravitate toward fiction rather than the newest Christian titles? I was formed
(since second grade) by C. S. Lewis, who taught that it's story rising to the
level of myth that puts us in touch with our deepest longings. I can see
Jesus everywhere, hiding in plain sight: The Lone Ranger (who fights for
justice while always being taken for a criminal), Superman (a deliberate Christ
figure if ever there was one), Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon (who wins
through weakness), The Iron Giant (who wins through self-sacrifice), Balto (who
was despised and rejected but is the savior), Miles Vorkosigan in the
Vorkosigan Saga (whose disability enables him to triumph), Tavi in the Codex
Alera series (who, well, that would be a spoiler), Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn
(prophet, priest, and king), and so on.” – Kathy Keller
I am an armchair escapist. A story addict. I don’t know if I
just like good writing, or have an overactive and empathetic imagination, but I
live in stories and live for stories. It’s been that way ever since I pulled
all-nighters in middle school reading Pride and Prejudice and then Jane
Eyre and then Count of Monte Cristo. If I’m not reading a good book,
it feels like something is missing from my life, and in a sense, good fiction
has ruined my appetite for most other forms of entertainment.
Sometimes there’s a bad side to good things, and the problem
I got into early on was reading the junk food equivalent of the book world.
Stuff that is more sensation than edification, that drags you down, makes you
less content with the real world rather than more invigorated for it. Mostly
for me this meant novels with too-explicit sexual tension, ranging from romance
to thriller to fantasy genres. It’s like getting a hit: it feels great, mostly
for the first fifty pages, when you get into characters and plotlines that
exist purely for fantasy-fulfillment; then it sort of tanks as the
ridiculousness of the plot and shallowness of the characters become obvious.
Then you search for the next hit.
Eventually, in my search for some kind of novel, I’d go for
whatever was easiest to lay my hands on, which meant borrowing free e-books
from the library onto my kindle, which meant mostly junk-reading. Cheap, easy,
probably popular stuff, and sometimes stuff I would be too embarrassed to be
seen holding the book cover of, but that was the great thing about the kindle: you
could be reading Dostoevsky or Nora Roberts and no one can tell the difference.
All my life, I’ve had the niggling feeling that I needed to
rehaul my book diet, and through a series of events, I finally grabbed the
conviction to do so. For me, it meant giving away my kindle and returning to
the accountability of paper: putting books on hold at the library, and
carefully investing in pieces for my library.
And it means renavigating the book world, which I’ve always
found confusing. I’ve never met anyone with the exactly same book tastes as I
have: Annie Proulx, Juliet Marillier, Annie Dillard, Lee Child, Tolkien, Anne
Lamott, C. S. Lewis, Robin McKinley… Sort of a motley mix of reliables, with
the occasional nice surprise (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie
Society, The Night Circus). Contemporary novels but only if the
subject is not too depressing and the writing amazing; fantasy but preferably
if the world is not too odd and there is compelling romance; historical but
only if not too archaic; mystery and thriller but only if not too gory or
scary. And I probably could be pushed beyond my comfort zone sometimes to read
something worth reading.
Lately I’ve been finishing the Jack Reacher novels (just
read Worth Dying For which was excellent). I’m contemplating rereading Watership
Down or The Good Earth, both of which are good enough to own. I
started rereading Lord of the Rings but can go back to finish that. As
far as new tries, I remembered Kathy Keller being a fiction reader, found this helpful page, and now have on hold at the library Master and Commander, Storm
Front, and Young Miles. We’ll see how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment