Problematique: Is the To Be Read pile a sign of failure on the part of a booklover, or, on the flipside, is it a badge of honor signifying inane bibliophilia and devotion to the physical book?
Any biblophile worth his or her salt has a To Be Read pile cluttering up the stacks. It starts small, commencing with the thick, ambitious Umberto Eco tome, picked up on a whim at Powerbooks. Then come the others: Sedaris, a Gaiman-edited anthology, an unfinished Murakami, the copy of Gone With the Wind bought for P80 in a bargain bin. The end result is an impossible, shameful collection of uncracked books: books which represent buyer's remorse, wasted money, and a little bit of guilt.
Is the To Be Read pile a sign of failure on a bookworm's part? We were all taught as kids to finish what we start, whether it was a coloring book page or a slice of pizza. As kids, bookworms are those anti-social tykes who read faster and better books than their classmates. If you hand him or her, say, Harriet the Spy during homeroom, chances are it'll be finished by lunchtime. As many Bookworms get older, though, the bad habit of impulse buys and literary promiscuity (read:continually shifting from one book to the other) tends to set in.
The To Be Read pile leaves me conflicted, as I am both a lover of reading books and also a lover of good ones. I've heard it said (and I believe in it, on some level) that to read bad books is a waste of one's time. Would it be sound to say that I simply do not finish books because they aren't any good? On some level, maybe. Perhaps it's the unpretentious, let's-not-be-English-majors side of me who simply sees the classics are overrated. I haven't finished critically acclaimed works such as The Great Gatsby, White Teeth (4 years and counting!), or Cannery Row. I can never really get past certain points in the book, no matter how long or short the book is. On the other hand (and this is where I hang my head), I've finished "lesser" books in a very short span of time. The first time I got my hands on Harry Potter 1, I finished it in one night. And I can breeze through a Gossip Girl novel in one day, maybe even two (ssshhhh!).
The To Be Read pile is sometimes about decadence, symbolizing the Bookworm's ability to buy books (how painfully nouveau-riche), as well as a mania for books. The first one is less prevalent, as it's only done by the immensely pretentious or the immensely wealthy. There's even a company in New York which will design a custom "bookshelf" for you, with the "right" books to suit your home and your personality--or the one you want to project. The second reason is less about saying, "Look how much money I have to burn!" and more about saying, "I love books so much I buy them in bulk and forget to read them!" The volume of books on your shelf, plus the idea of a plethora of unexplored possibilities, is thrilling, tantalizing even. It gives the facade of being well-read, or, in the case of the volume of unread books, your future intentions to be such.
As much as I'd love to rhapsodize on the symbolism of the To Be Read pile, we have to remember that at the end of the day, it is merely a pile of unopened books. Left unread, books are merely bits of inked paper stuck together with glue. The utility of a book is maximized when it is read and read to the end, and not when it sits idly on the shelf. After all, the book wasn't published to serve as a paperweight, or to match the wallpaper. Therefore, using the book for all purposes except reading could be classified as abuse and a disservice to the author.
As for my own reasons for my To Be Read pile, I'll concede that the main reasons behind mine are impulse buying, poorly evaluated choices, and some unwillingness to think. (I read and seriously analyze novels and poems in almost every class, is it too much to ask for some light reading once in a while?) While the idea of slogging through great books I've attempted over and over again is gruesome, sometimes you've got to trust the hegemons (The NYT Review of Books, my professors for example) and just go with it.
A bit of the To Be Read Pile:
Amsterdam (Ian McEwan)
The Outsider (Albert Camus)
Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
The Complete Works of Willa Cather
Living to Tell the Tale (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
There are about 20 more titles, but posting them all is breaking my heart. Oh, knowing yourself hurts so much.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Where it all starts
This blog will be different from my personal blog. Instead of the whining, bitching, and unstructured thinking, Book Smarts will be about books. Reading books, how books are made, book trends, and maybe a few pieces on writing here and there. Some literary stuff might pop up from time to time, in the event that I come out of my three-year literary coma.
Book Smarts is my foray out of the literary and into the slightly academic. Whenever I'd try to start on a short story, I'd be stuck because of the very little life I've had to draw upon. I don't have the ascendancy to write about great existential dramas if I haven't had an existential drama, right? In the end, I decided to stop forcing it and go with what I know, which is books. I don't have any weird trips, I don't have any great loves, I don't live the bohemian artist lifestyle, but I do have a lot of books.
The only thing I can say about my reading habits is that I'm eclectic. I'm not drawn to a particular genre or author, since I've hopped from interest to interest depending on what age I am and who I was hanging out with.
As a reader, you can consider me:
The 80s-90s Kid, who read and collected a lot of the old Young Adult series available at the time. I was exposed to a lot of books from the 80s because of my older sister and brother. Choose Your Own Adventure, Sweet Valley (Kids, Twins and Friends, High, Junior High, University, and even the Sagas), The Babysitters' Club, and then some of the series that quickly went out-of-print: The Sleepover Club (shudder) and GirlTalk.
Of course, my childhood reading wasn't all fluff. I read a lot of the classics, like Afternoon of the Elves and Harriet the Spy. Judy Blume, E.L. Konigsburg, and Madeleine L'Engle were some of my favorite authors. I also inherited a big collection of Enid Blyton books (Brer Rabbit and Animal Tales), and when I reached the "big kids library" in elementary, I borrowed the Malory Towers and St. Clare's books.
Admittedly, my childhood reading was very colonial. There were efforts from my parents to make me read more Filipino books, so I had whole sets of Adarna books. Unfortunately, I only remember snippets of each book, not even whole storylines. However, one particular set of books stuck with me: Nick Joaquin's Pop Stories for Groovy Kids. It was a holdover from my brother's and sister's childhoods. (Expect a bigger post about those books later on.)
The Bimbo, who can only read books with shiny lettering and bare chests on the cover. Actually, I exaggerate. My trashy reading was limited to VC Andrews and Sidney Sheldon, which, for some reason, my sister pushed on me. The Flowers in the Attic was a brilliant piece of plotwork, in my opinion.
I also read some cleaner stuff, like those pastel-colored chick lit books. Again, because of my sister, who's in a chick lit phase right now. Chick lit is a dime a dozen nowadays, so I try to stick to the best ones. I'll own up to cracking open The Nanny Diaries and the Shopaholic series more than once.
The Pretentious Intellectual, who can only read "world literature". On my shelf, I've got Murakami, Allende, Garcia Marquez, Neruda, Mahfouz, and a lot of other authors I have yet to start on or comprehend. I guess it's the pressure to be "intellectual" as a literature major that gets me to start these books.
The Lover of Dead White Guys (and Girls), who sticks to the canon. As a (pending) Anglo-American Literature major, I like to explore the classics: Dickens, Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Fitzgerald are on my current reading list.
The Teenybopper, who will read anything with a trendy, anorexic girl on the cover. I read a lot of Gossip Girl, the Princess Diaries books, the Georgia Nicholson series, and a lot of Sarah Dessen novels. The one I enjoyed the most was the Jessica Darling series by Megan McCafferty. For a teenybopper book, it was extremely witty and well-written, and Jessica was a really complex character, unlike the stereotypical heroines in other teenybopper books.
The Mainstream Bookworm, who'll read anything on a bestseller list. There's a lot of crap on the NYT Bestseller Lists, but there's also some good stuff. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold was great, apart from the awkward ghost-human sex scene. Memoirs of a Geisha, for all the flak it gets for the throwaway ending, had really vivid descriptions and mood-setting. A reading for CW10 if I ever saw one.
So there. Anything's fair game for me when it comes to reading, as long as I've got the time. I've been looking for a niche for quite a while, and I'm hoping this is something I can stick to. For now, though, I've got to tear myself away from the books into less pleasant obligations. Cheers.
Book Smarts is my foray out of the literary and into the slightly academic. Whenever I'd try to start on a short story, I'd be stuck because of the very little life I've had to draw upon. I don't have the ascendancy to write about great existential dramas if I haven't had an existential drama, right? In the end, I decided to stop forcing it and go with what I know, which is books. I don't have any weird trips, I don't have any great loves, I don't live the bohemian artist lifestyle, but I do have a lot of books.
The only thing I can say about my reading habits is that I'm eclectic. I'm not drawn to a particular genre or author, since I've hopped from interest to interest depending on what age I am and who I was hanging out with.
As a reader, you can consider me:
The 80s-90s Kid, who read and collected a lot of the old Young Adult series available at the time. I was exposed to a lot of books from the 80s because of my older sister and brother. Choose Your Own Adventure, Sweet Valley (Kids, Twins and Friends, High, Junior High, University, and even the Sagas), The Babysitters' Club, and then some of the series that quickly went out-of-print: The Sleepover Club (shudder) and GirlTalk.
Of course, my childhood reading wasn't all fluff. I read a lot of the classics, like Afternoon of the Elves and Harriet the Spy. Judy Blume, E.L. Konigsburg, and Madeleine L'Engle were some of my favorite authors. I also inherited a big collection of Enid Blyton books (Brer Rabbit and Animal Tales), and when I reached the "big kids library" in elementary, I borrowed the Malory Towers and St. Clare's books.
Admittedly, my childhood reading was very colonial. There were efforts from my parents to make me read more Filipino books, so I had whole sets of Adarna books. Unfortunately, I only remember snippets of each book, not even whole storylines. However, one particular set of books stuck with me: Nick Joaquin's Pop Stories for Groovy Kids. It was a holdover from my brother's and sister's childhoods. (Expect a bigger post about those books later on.)
The Bimbo, who can only read books with shiny lettering and bare chests on the cover. Actually, I exaggerate. My trashy reading was limited to VC Andrews and Sidney Sheldon, which, for some reason, my sister pushed on me. The Flowers in the Attic was a brilliant piece of plotwork, in my opinion.
I also read some cleaner stuff, like those pastel-colored chick lit books. Again, because of my sister, who's in a chick lit phase right now. Chick lit is a dime a dozen nowadays, so I try to stick to the best ones. I'll own up to cracking open The Nanny Diaries and the Shopaholic series more than once.
The Pretentious Intellectual, who can only read "world literature". On my shelf, I've got Murakami, Allende, Garcia Marquez, Neruda, Mahfouz, and a lot of other authors I have yet to start on or comprehend. I guess it's the pressure to be "intellectual" as a literature major that gets me to start these books.
The Lover of Dead White Guys (and Girls), who sticks to the canon. As a (pending) Anglo-American Literature major, I like to explore the classics: Dickens, Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Fitzgerald are on my current reading list.
The Teenybopper, who will read anything with a trendy, anorexic girl on the cover. I read a lot of Gossip Girl, the Princess Diaries books, the Georgia Nicholson series, and a lot of Sarah Dessen novels. The one I enjoyed the most was the Jessica Darling series by Megan McCafferty. For a teenybopper book, it was extremely witty and well-written, and Jessica was a really complex character, unlike the stereotypical heroines in other teenybopper books.
The Mainstream Bookworm, who'll read anything on a bestseller list. There's a lot of crap on the NYT Bestseller Lists, but there's also some good stuff. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold was great, apart from the awkward ghost-human sex scene. Memoirs of a Geisha, for all the flak it gets for the throwaway ending, had really vivid descriptions and mood-setting. A reading for CW10 if I ever saw one.
So there. Anything's fair game for me when it comes to reading, as long as I've got the time. I've been looking for a niche for quite a while, and I'm hoping this is something I can stick to. For now, though, I've got to tear myself away from the books into less pleasant obligations. Cheers.
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