Seeking Joy in Reading—M.G.Sondraal

When a child, I was cautioned about those in my friend circle citing guilt by association. Even if I didn’t participate myself in bad behaviour, I’d be forever suspect if I counted those who did in my social network. Best not go down that path.

A scholarly youth, I spent my high school resolutely reading a list provided by the librarian of classic books “for the college-bound”, an exercise that fostered my appreciation of the written word that continued unchallenged until exhaustion from new motherhood made those complex sentence structures, complicated plots, and big subjects too much for my frazzled brain to comfortably explore, and so I returned to genre books and modern fiction. These novels are all straight-forward and quick reads.

Like the parental admonishments predicted, I noticed changes. Violence, discrimination and misogyny were commonplace and I shrugged it off as I became desensitized to such antisocial behaviour. I’m happy to report, I haven’t become a racist, belligerent person and all violence remains abhorrent to me. Good thing since I’ve now read a lot of books featuring a serial killer. I’ve wondered in a previous blog if killers read crime fiction and if that contributes to their own missteps. I don’t know the answer to that.

What has been alarming to me is how the language in novels has crossed over into my real life. Most notably, after reading stories liberally sprinkled with profanity, those words percolated through my private thoughts and then into my public speech.

Mindful of this, I looked deeper. Though the plot may be complex, the language is simple with few “low frequency” words. I think my working vocabulary has diminished. Much of what I read currently has language that is too casual, too colloquial, too common for my taste.

I’m not a stickler about grammar, but basic rules should be followed, and I judge authors (and people in general) on how they break those rules, some being utterly egregious. Sentence fragments, not in character conversations, are everywhere now. The sentences themselves are short and direct without need for complex punctuation. I recently read an entire book where quotation marks around dialogue were omitted, a choice which distracted me from the story itself and probably raised my blood pressure as I see no value to this.

I’ve made no secret of my dissatisfaction about the works I’ve been reading lately. The DeadLies members, my beta readers, friends and family, all hear myriad complaints and suggest books for me. I have read more modern literary works, some of which I enjoyed. Most I did not.

Underlying all this angst is a deep concern that my love of ‘literature’ has been eroded on this steady diet of “easy reads”. I decided I would put that to the test and re-read books on my shelves untouched in forty years but kept because the story burrowed into my mind and is remembered with love and appreciation. I expected to get something different from the books after a lifetime of experience I didn’t have when I first encountered them. My fear was that I’d find them pretentious and stodgy as my new impatience to get to the end and on to the next burgeoned. That would shake me to my core and challenge the image of person I thought I was.

My reluctance to uncover that shame held me back for eighteen months. Finally, I decided, with the world as it is today, I’d at least revisit favourite dystopian novels: Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, 1984, Lord of the Flies, and The Handmaid’s Tale.

I approached my task with trepidation. Long, complicated sentences with complex punctuation required a second, or even a third, read to fully understand what was said. The vocabulary elevated the story, each word carefully chosen to convey exactly what was imagined. Concepts challenged. I needed to pause to contemplate the meaning deeply. As with all literature, these are slow reads, meant to be savoured.

And what an utter joy it was to read and relish them.

What a relief to discover I can now revisit Of Human Bondage and The House of Mirth without apprehension. Variety is the secret. Though the cover of War and Peace will not be re-opened (liking only the and Peace sections), I look forward to interspersing hoarded favourites amidst the new and modern and my friends will be relieved that the complaints will subside. My humble gratitude to them for putting up with me.