I enjoy reading, although I don't do enough of it. I spend too much time on this damn computer nowadays, and I realize it. However, when I do get off the desktop computer and take on something bound on paper, I usually focus on two categories.
Category One: Authors I've either heard are good, or the authors that I've already read something by and enjoy. For example, take Christopher Moore. Someone had once suggested that Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore was a good, funny read. So I looked it up on Amazon, read an excerpt which made me audibly laugh out loud, and I bought it. After reading that novel, I tore through the rest of his stuff until I read them all. Unfortunately, once I read them all, I now sit around impatiently waiting for him to write his next book. I did the same with Dan Brown, after reading The DaVinci Code, but he probably made so much money off of that he'll never write another book.
Category Two: Authors (or books) that are so popular (like The DaVinci Code) that I figure it's something I should read. This doesn't occur to often, usually around a book that transcends "bestseller" and becomes a type of phenomenon - like the Harry Potter book series - but it does happen.
Now, I've tried getting into reading "classic" books lately, authors like Voneggut and Poe. I'm not sure which "category" this falls into, because obviously they have been vastly popular (over time), while many others have said they're good. I also might have to read *something* by them - be it for a college class, or for a book club.
Most of the time, though, I don't enjoy reading "classics" because they're harder to understand, and therefore less enjoyable.
It's not that I don't understand the words - I'm rather adept at understanding this English language. In my opinion, I shouldn't have to put a lot of effort into understanding the paragraph, let alone the whole book. I should be able to read and be easily immersed in the descriptions of the story and the characters. Overtly descriptive words that embellish descriptions of things make the sentences too wordy and to me are just unnecessary.
To be clear: I enjoy good, in-depth descriptions that are well written.
For example, in The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe writes: "The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within."
I get it, and in two simple yet descriptive sentences, Poe lays out the room for the reader.
However, from the same novel he writes: "I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few whose trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium - the bitter lapse into every-day life - the hideous dropping off of the veil."
Yes, it's descriptive, but overtly-so. It's too wordy for my tastes, and makes me have to work at understanding what Poe is trying to accomplish with this description. Is it any better than the preceding example in communicating the scene? From both examples, one can conclude that "the room is big with black floors and big windows" for the first, and "the house was bleak and hungover-like" for the second. Some would argue that the second example is classic Poe. Great. Then I'll leave classic Poe alone, thank you, especially when the latter example of embellishment is more indicative of his work than the former.
What's my point with all of this? Between the "classics" and the "Dan Browns" of the world, I'll gladly choose another Dan Brown book over a classic when given the choice. Will I rob myself of the literary classics such as Shakespeare and Poe? Certainly, but why waste my time reading something I don't enjoy when I could be reading something I do?
Signed,
patiently waiting for the next Dan Brown book.
