Here we go…

I was going to turn 60 in February – and I did!

I guess the only thing you need to know about me at this point (I’m bound to overshare as the time goes on) is that I love to read. I’m a writer too, but reading has always been…a passion seems too trite. It has been an essential part of life, like brushing your teeth.

At any rate, like many of you, reading became a drag throughout school, having to jump between Beowulf and Jane Austen. But then, upon graduating, I discovered anew the joys of following whatever authors I felt like and that has led me throughout my life.

Thinking about it, I’ve always loved bookstores for that reason! Leafing through books among kindred spirits, all of us sharing the same delicious secret to happiness – a great book.

Then last year, I discovered PBS’s 100 Greatest Reads. I voted on a handful of the titles over the summer. And when I watched the final results of the order of the list, based on the voting of thousands of us, I realize what a truly great list it was. Multi-ethnic, old and new, books meant for teens as well as books only a 60-year old might like. And I realized I should read the whole list in my new decade of life.

Now let me say that this list scares me. Truly.

Oh sure, I can’t wait to read Charlotte’s Web and A Confederacy of Dunces again. I’m stimulated thinking of

revisiting Invisible Man, a book that I read as a kid and though I can’t remember it well, I’m relatively sure I had no context for it in my life at the time. I’m yearning to revisit The Color Purple and The Sun Also Rises…

But I’m scared of a lot of them too. First off, reading Lonesome Dove again is scary because it was my favorite book of all time! So, to read it again, it feels like there is a lot to lose.

I didn’t watch Game of Thrones because it felt positively icky. And if I didn’t watch it, would I be able to read it?

Also petrified that I won’t be able to finish stuff like Moby Dick, Crime & Punishment and War & Peace? Yeah, I like to read, but those kinds of books scare me from page one!

And what about Handmaid’s Tale and those books that have unbelievably prescient and dire warnings about the culture, when we are seemingly headed in just that direction with no way to stop it? Although, having said that, I love the late Roger Ebert’s take on creative ventures. He says that something truly brilliant is never depressing. Guess I’ll get a chance to test that out!

I’m scared I’ll read Kurt Vonnegut and not get it.

While I don’t mind reading Siddhartha or Little Women again, my heart is filled with dread at the prospect of reading Beloved again – brilliant but way too dense a prose for me. Or trying out Grapes of Wrath one more time, which has always seemed to be the dictionary definition of relentless. But then again, nowhere to go but up from there! Most of these were read a long, long time ago, Who knows? Maybe I’ll love them! Then again…

And my biggest fear is this. I live an incredibly busy life, with lots of work and people in it. My abilities to focus are minimal and dwindling! So I’m scared of abandoning my mysteries that I can pick up mid-page and know who everyone is and what’s happening – and going to true fiction which demands and deserves true focus. That fear, however, comes with a tiny hope that my focus will be enriched by my commitment to this process.

I determined that I would write all the titles on scraps of paper and pick the next title when I was finished with the one before. This has been absolutely great so far. Even if I could barely get to the end of something, I always couldn’t wait for the next title to be picked!

These are most assuredly not reviews. Every one of these books has already been tried by the court of public opinion and found to be a classic. So these are just my truthful takes on what I read. I welcome your comments as well.

My personal warning: I am fairly intelligent and perceptive at times. And at other times, I am a dip shit. Technical, I know. No one who knows me would agree with that second self-perception but I know better. So the point I’m making is that I may miss the point of the book entirely! Or I might come up with a slightly different twist on a book, based on ignorance and/or a lack of depth of history and respect for the way it should be read. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

I will tell you what I love about each, what stays with me, what I don’t get, what happily surprises me, what hugely disappoints me. Whatever. I love what I love. And I’m sure you are the same!

I’m no expert. I’m just a girl who reads a lot.

=======================================================

Stopping to add something here. I wanted this to be a blog, so that I would really stick with it. And I have done so for months. The reading is well underway. The blog is the part that is only starting now. So my apologies for going between past and present tense with no seeming linear continuity. When I start to write about the books themselves, I will be speaking about them in the present tense, keeping it the way I wrote it at the time. Part of doing a blog is not changing it later, right?