I love words. I love books. I love reading.
It is my way of escaping the world and it’s sometimes all too awful realities: within the pages of many novels I have found the man I’ve been searching for all my life, the NYC lifestyle I aspire to, the places I long to visit, the jobs and children I wish to have. My bookshelves are bowing under the sheer weight of my need and desire to escape.
I’m rarely happier than when I am in bookshop (and love the American trend that has taken over bookshops of the world; the inclusion of great coffee right beside the books bringing two of my greatest loves into a threesome that poses no moral ambiguity or real physical risk.) My shelves threaten collapse under the weight of the books other book lover’s have urged me to read; and small spaces await the return of volumes I’ve loaned to friends in the hope that they’ll love them to.
An indecisive by nature my book collection (like my that of my DVD and ever more so of my CD) is eclectic: books from my English degree at Queen’s are heaped side by side with political biographies, childhood favourites and realms of popular fiction: including many examples of what is patronisingly described as chick lit.(A Carrie O’Hara chick lit definition: scorned as book versions of chick flick films: emotional drivel only suitable for girls at a certain stage of their menstrual cycle as an outlet of frustration against the world in general and men in particular). And in the latter we meet my literary stumbling block.
As an English graduate and English teacher: I’m often asked for book recommendations and often when people are asked about or offer information about their own reading material it is accompanied by a muttered apology: as if I represent some sort of Literature Police: whose job it is to walk the earth and tut at the mediocrity of the book choices of others. At the very least I should be able to quantify what makes great literature great.
I can’t.
Beauty or greatness in literature as in all art (and physical beauty in our ‘objects’ of sexual desire) lies in the eye of the beholder. For some that beauty will only be contained in the works of the established literary canon. And while we are tiptoeing across this much lauded plain, I have to confess that three years of ‘reading English at Queen’s’ didn’t quite establish the factors required to have your writing included in what is, I believe, quite an extensive list; instead I hid behind the viewpoint of one particularly feminist lecturer who demeaned the canon, and I paraphrase, as: ‘Yet another historical example of the patriarchy quelling the voice of the feminine’. This saved me from having to read more Dickens or ever having to read Thomas Hardy.
People are judged by their bookshelves, much like their houses, cars and fashion sense. In fact I love pouring over the books in other people’s houses; delighting in what the list of titles suggest about their owner. I often wonder if the readers of Plato and Dostoevsky have celebrity ‘biographies’ and chick lit hidden away under tear stained pillows: items scurried away with embarrassing photographs and dirty laundry when visitors come a calling. (The paperback equivalent to carrying The Sun wrapped up in The Guardian)
But as I stand and gaze often in wonder I can’t help but think of my own collection on my achingly full shelves at home. Often I find myself making a comparative literary study as I stand there only half listening to the chatter of my hosts: does my choice of titles measure up? Am I less intelligent if I haven’t studied various world religions? Does my lack of books of philosophical merit suggest I’m actually an unthinking bimbo? Does my penchant for popular fiction suggest I’m unworthy to enter into any debates of literary merit? What does my book collection say about me?
A closer look reveals many of the books I ‘had to read’ at Queen’s and in personal truthfulness I should rid myself of those that I never did and never shall read. Within these relics of my misspent youth are volumes and volumes of poetry: words I use for comfort; words I’ve read at weddings and funerals and transcribed upon cards to those I love hoping to somehow encapsulate the feelings I myself lack the creative power to order and articulate. Within these anthologies lie examples of great literature.
And yet alongside the meritorious lie childhood favourites I can’t let go and having lost my original copies have bought various replacements: many of these: the Anne of Green Gables collection and Little Women amongst them are also considered classics: works that have stood the test of time and continue to delight each new generation of library goers. Not having quite found their rightful place in my collection; are a collection of political biographies / books of contemporary political significance and also books of religious searching: the former help me find a reality I often loose between the English classroom and the Drama room and the latter are all too often disappointing as I remain a reluctant non-believer.
But this brings me to the point of contention: my contemporary literature/ popular fiction section. What distinguishes The Kite Runner and Boy in the Striped Pyjamas from the numerous Marian Keyes and John Grisham editions I’ve thoroughly enjoyed (and given that Ms Keyes and Mr Grisham have made handsome livings out of their ‘those who can do’ epistles and I’m firmly in the ‘those who can’t teach’ category do I have the right to condemn them by even the mildest of ridicule?)? Is the hint in the genre title: this particular piece of fiction is great because it is popular? What makes a modern classic: is it selling figures alone? Does a book have to appear on a bestseller/ Oprah’s or Richard and Judy’s book club lists to gain credibility? Or should literary opinion rise above the purely mercenary? Should the books that make it all the way to Hollywood sound stage (and I’m purposefully avoiding the ‘What is better the book or the film?’ argument: feeling that only in the exception does the film win out: but I realise that for many without my ‘leaping imagination’ or free time, find cinema a much more engaging medium.)
I know that as much as enjoy the chick lit I read it is something of a guilty pleasure: to switch on only my emotional intelligence and escape; not to learn about war torn Afghanistan, not to re-engage with the horrors of the Holocaust or the lives of women in Tehran: sometimes I need my escapism to be just that: a trip to world where I’m guaranteed a happy ending. I make my book choices (from the two shelves of books I’ve bought but ‘have yet to read’: I’m Carrie and I’m a book shopping addict) based on my proposed emotional capability in the coming few weeks it will take me to read it: recently and probably the impetus of this meandering mouthful, because I knew I would be lost in that infuriating tidal wave of exam fever: the last two choices belong firmly in chick lit territory: and I loved every page of each of them: in fact I’m still recollecting my emotions from the tragic end of My Sister’s Keeper.
I love words. I love books. I love reading
Literature can be great, bad, indifferent and miraculously life changing: but as to which book falls into which category I don’t’ feel it is for me or anyone else to quantify. Literature is as diverse as humanity itself: what a reader brings to and takes away from a particular work is as individual as that reader: and there, within the endless pages that stretch across time, place and culture; is perhaps the very quality that makes literature great.
Ooooh Carrie, an excellent post, a subject so close to my heart…
I’m sure I’ve told you how much it galled me when Vox rearranged MY fiction into ‘classics’ and ‘other fiction.’ His only means of deciding on its ‘classic status’ was whether or not it was published by Penguin…
In this crazy mixed up world view, ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ ‘American Pastoral’ to name but two, fail to gain the respect they deserve.
Some afternoon when I have nothing to do, I will rearrange them correctly. Controversially I believe Cecilia Aherne and Marian Keyes do have the right to sit spine to spine with Tolstoy and Dickens.
Let me clarify that however, they only deserve equal shelf status if at one time, the person who owns the bookshelf has lost themselves in the imaginary worlds within.
If an author has moved me, impressed me enough to keep their book, they have the right to be deemed as literature. As you say different moods demand different genres, different tones. A place for all.
Some books offend me however and would never earn a place on my hallowed shelves. Sci-fi and horror genres do not belong anywhere but the trash.
I conclude it is all purely subjective, while I admit to my own literary snobbishness towards geeky literature I cannot be snobbily dismissive of both the chick lit that will always be my friend and the works of the greatest minds that ever lived.
Both enrich my life and we all need our secret pleasures.
Last week I stood in Waterstones and hid while I read Katie Price’s autobiography, truly gripping. I confess that it was with enormous smugness and self satisfaction that I paid for Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’ and ‘History Boys.’ I was proud of my purchases and secretly thought she must have known I was a well read English specialist who only bought ’smart’ books.
Oh how far can one’s head go?
Firstly, I didn’t classify classics as “books published by Penguin”.
Secondly – Cecilia Aherne and Aristotle’s Ethics….. There has got to be some sort of test of time feature… I know I know dead white males and all but Aristotle was Aristotle you know. These are often translated works of literature considered to be the top of a country or particular’s era’s writing.
I know its subjective but we can still classify can’t we?
And I read Graphic Novels (Wolverine anyone?) …
Lily, I awaited your response with great anticipation and dear Vox yours with a similar amount of dread… I knew that the ONLY person I knew who has ACTUALLY read Aristotle would have a very different view on ‘great literature’ than a lowly high school English teacher.
Can I just say, though, that classifying by publisher (even if it is a cute bird who extends as a far a line in gorgeous coffee mugs) is really only relinquishing your right to a literary opinion to someone else’s (even if that someone is a collective agency)…and I am apalled that you re-arranged Lily’s books; this is the sort of behaviour that makes me want to dance around MY apartment in pyjamas in celebration of being Queen of my own domain. Yet I digress…
Lily I’ve never read ‘American Pastoral’ or ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ but I still hope I hear your point. Like Tabitha Fortis (the fictious Poet Laureate in an episode of The West Wing) who states: ‘A writer’s job is to hold your attention for however long they have given it to you.’ I feel that a book that engages the heart, mind and soul of the reader is quite possibly the best quantifying feature.
Let me know what you think of the ‘History Boys’; it is for me upon the ever-growing: Things to Read before I die list.
Vox: I’m don’t prescribe to the idea that ‘you can only be great after you’re gone’: the test of time is somehting for the generations that follow and I refuse to limit my reading material to books that belong to other centuries. But I think that writers such as Aristotle have not only defined writing, but culture and human thinking for all the centuries since time began: and as such they belong to a category all of their own (and one I probably will never venture near.)
I laughed and laughed when I remembered the diverse nature of the books we each suggested for our short lived book club: a million years ago.
As for Wolverine, even Hugh Jackman didn’t provoke me to wander into the uncharted territory of what is Batman comics for ‘grown-up little boys’…but I applaud the honesty and the literary possibilites that allows your love of Aristotle and picture books to feature in the same blog response.
I LOVE this post! The last couple of sentences summarise perfectly why English teaching is about more than literacy…I’m picturing them displayed in the English/Drama dept in the Academy.
I’m with Lily, I’ll put anything on my shelves – I even have one sci-fi book (The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy) but only because it was pretty much the ONLY work of fiction KBE brought to our marriage; he is not a reader.
However I do cull on a semi-regular basis and dispatch any book that I’m unlikely to read again to a charity shop , and most of those rejects tend to be chick-lit. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about it, I shouldn’t waste my money buying a book I’m only going to read once. On the other hand I tend to pick up those books in a supermarket for about £4 – less than the price of a cinema ticket to see the latest romantic comedy. To me that’s a sort of chick-lit equivalent; escapism and entertainment.
Literary fiction can provide both those things too, but is more enduring, thought provoking, beautiful, uncomfortable etc.
For what it’s worth here is the patented Jones system of book storage/display:
A non-fiction section with subdivisions of travel writing, biography, Christian books, and then general
A children’s section, and specifically sections for children’s series: Harry Potter, Narnia, The Chalet School etc.
Anthologies
Textbooks/ books that are only ever used in a boring work context
Fiction: in chronological order up to about 1950, and in alphabetical order thereafter – so books more or less with their contemporaries regardless of genre or ‘quality’- probably a remnant of the more traditional university I attended!
I admit to being a bit anal about this – it’s pretty much the only area of my life which displays any level of organisation, and I get annoyed when the boys move books. I can immediately put my hand on pretty much any book within about 10 seconds though.
To me the problem with ‘classics’ and ‘other’ as categories is where the cut off point which defines a classic would be. I am utterly convinced my shelves contain many books which will be future classics, to consign them to a second rate shelf simply because they are modern seems wrong. I imagine I’ll probably reorganise in a few years and increase the chronological section to the 1970s or something. Equally I have quite a few ‘classics’ which I didn’t particularly enjoy, and can find many faults in from a literary standpoint, but which have stood the test of time. In some cases I’ve only read them once but have kept them purely because I might use them in teaching rather than for pleasure.
Lots to think about, but I will finally admit I am a bit of a snob when it comes to books – Marian Keyes is a stage too far for me. Whether it’s logical or not my chick-lit reading is confined to Jane Green with a smattering of Meg Cabot and Sophie Kinsella for more teenage level escapism. I have also been known to remove a copy of PS I love you from a pupil’s grasp in the school library and replace it with something more ‘challenging and suitable, and just better really.’
Just read your comment Carrie and thought I should add: I’ve read Aristotle (for Politics at uni).
Also, I’m currently really struggling to finish, or even get half way through a biography of Edith Piaf for book group; but in general I’ve really liked reading books chosen by others, some of which I’d never have read by myself. It’s good to step out of our literary comfort zones now and then.
Oh, and is Jodi Picoult chick-lit? I’m not sure because in general I’d say her books are more literary, but are probably crime fiction – like Alexander McCall Smith actually – add both their names to my escapism reading list.
Some clarifications… I can see how lilyt has spun the story successfully in her favour.
I did NOT rearrange Lilytodd’s bookshelves. I got every single box of books from the garage and arranged them singlehandedly into FOUR large bookcases. ON my TOBLERLONESOME. My sweat alone entitled me to a split second decision to go with “general novels” and “classics”. Lilyt has given her opinion on what should or should not be a classic since then but has not bothered her *rse to take the books out and in to where she deems them. I’m happy as long as they are in alphabetical order by author. Her offense has not led to action and thus they remain categorised by the sweat of the first to act.
Rant over. Any summer escapist novels to suggest for me .. I want gripping from the word go, nothing depressing just gripping?
Just read this story about chick lit on the BBC – seems topical! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7463417.stm
smoothstones I’d forgotten your very own version of the Dewey Decimal system! You should have written this post…as ever I’m incredibly under-qualified.
I apologise for not realising you (and probably anyone worth their literary opinion) have of course sat with Aristotle as bedtime reading. I’ve only ever dipped in and quickly drowned… more mea culpa.
For me, Jodi Picoult remains unclassified, in fact it was finishing my first Picoult read that prompted my meanderings on the subject in the first place.
PS I loved ‘PS I love you’: escapism of the most treacley kind!
Vox
I have been thinking about book suggestions for you…may I introduce you to Mr Harry Potter? No?
I presume you’ve read The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
Have you read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, or The Time Traveller’s Wife? See I’m still faced with the same problam…not knowing how escapist your escapism needs to be…let me know if any of these suggestions suit!
It’s so easy to fall into the ’sun wrapped in the guardian’ syndrome isnt it. My book shelf is blatantly arranged to show credible books at eye level. Mrs Monkey puts me to shame by not caring a jot that all her chick-lit is front and centre… even though , to my annoyance she actually does have a credible reading history!
“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.”
-Elizabeth Drew
I found this tonight and thought it fitted the theme…
Happy reading x
can you please differenciate the great literature to classical literature?