lou's library

Having studied literature in uni, I’ve often wondered what makes some books worthy of the canon and being called classics, while others are looked down upon and called trashy. As most things, I guess it has lots to do with racism and the patriarchy (surprise surprise). Big chunks of the Western canon consists of books written by old white men who lived centuries ago. That’s not to say these books aren’t good, but that historically, a lot of great literature has been excluded because it was written by marginalised people. Things are changing a little, but at a painfully slow pace, if you ask me.

What bothers me the most about this (apart from large parts of society not seeing themselves represented in the books they read) is that is suggests there are books more worth reading than others and that if you choose to read something not deemed good by the critics, you’re essentially wasting your time. In my opinion, reading is pretty damn great and we should encourage as many people to become readers as possible. Not everyone is going to enjoy the works of Kafka, Joyce or Shakespeare, and that’s okay. Part of the joy of reading is sharing your thoughts with others and wouldn’t that be boring if we all agreed on everything?

If I’m being honest, this mindset of good vs bad literature was so omnipresent in my education that I sometimes catch myself thinking along the same lines. Whenever I read a classic I feel very good about being able to tick another one off the list. Being able to say I’ve read Moby Dick makes me feel smug, when actually, I didn’t enjoy it all that much and perhaps would’ve been better off reading Sarah J. Maas.

That’s not to say we can’t learn something from classics, or that persevering through a book you don’t immediately enjoy can’t be a good thing. But reading should be for pleasure, if you ask me, and if I don’t gain any from reading all the books you apparently should have read by the end of your life, then that sounds like a big waste of time for me. Especially because the rules regulating which books qualify as classics seem so arbitrary.

I don’t want to feel guilty about reading fantasy, or romance novels, or children’s books, if that’s what I feel like reading. And I don’t want to silently judge someone if I see them reading Colleen Hoover on the train, just because I don’t like her books and they’re not considered high culture. I think that woman has single-handedly turned more teenage girls into avid readers than Shakespeare in the centuries since his death, and she deserves some credit for that.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love Shakespeare, but his work isn’t exactly accessible (particularly not for people whose mother tongue isn’t English). Without the help of professors and fellow students, I don’t think I’d have grown to appreciate his work the way I do now, because I wouldn’t even have known where to start. And I think it’s also okay to just want to read for fun without having to look up the meaning of a word every other page.

Basically, what I’m saying is, I’m fed up with judging other people’s reading, or even judging my own. As long as I’m reading, I’m happy, and sometimes that will be a classic, and sometimes it will be so called women’s fiction (don’t even get me started on my issues with that term. where exactly is the men’s fiction section in a book shop?? hmmm?). I don’t believe one to be superior to the other, and I’m done with the patriarchy, the book industry, or fellow readers making me believe the opposite.