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Anyone who reads this blog can see that my reading taste stretches across a broad spectrum of literature. I read everything from paranormal romance (not often but I have), to chick-lit, to New York Times bestsellers, to award winners and finalists, to classics. I can be found reading young adult sometimes as well, and won't discount a good children's book.
I am a reader.
A book is a book is a book, and they all make my heart sing when I see them stacked on the shelves of a library or bookstore. I approach each one with the idea that I will like it. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But I can almost always find something good in every story. And I most often can't relate to people who don't feel the same way. And there are loads of people who don't feel the same way. I have heard them referred to as pseudo-intellectuals, but I wonder. I wonder if they are real readers at all if a reader is someone who actually loves books. These people who easily poo-poo genres that they think are below them and have greater respect for readers who line their shelves with not only the hippest new titles, but also some of the most gruesome or depressing because, let's face it -- be it film or literature -- depressing often equals award winning. And how, as a lover of books, can you slam so many so easily? I understand not liking a genre, I can get behind that. There are a few that I never pick up. But I still feel like I'm on the same side as the people who read those books that are unattractive to me because they are readers too. To better understand the people who so ardently categorize a worthy read by what they and they alone enjoy, I took it upon myself to look into this a little further. I started with the definition of the word reader.
read·er (n.): one that reads
Okay. That's not what I was thinking. I was thinking, hmmm... I am a reader. I am a lover of books. All books. And as a teacher, I was an advocate of children. I didn't choose to only spend my time on the smartest ones or the most challenging or the ones who would garner me awards or accolades for my work in the classroom. I tried to find the good in all children, and champion them all in anyway I could. And I feel, as an advocate of reading, that I do the same things with books. So again, a book is a book is a book. They all do the same thing, in general. Expand your mind. Whether it's helping you to see the world in a new way, educating you, entertaining you, helping you escape from an unpleasant part of your life, or all of the above; shouldn't we be thankful for the variety? So what does that make me? Certainly not just a reader. So I dug around a little and came to this conclusion.
avid (adj.): 1. having an intense craving, greedy
2. eager and enthusiastic
Ah, I am an avid reader.
And as far as I can tell there is a difference. A difference between those who love the ambiance of books so much that they can spend a day lost in the library {or stop into a bookstore in a foreign country even though they can't read the titles just because it feels like home to them, or someone who sees another person reading a book and can't help but try to see what's being read and wondering if it should be added to one's own reading list} and the ones who somehow miss the magic. A difference maybe noted more plainly in the books that regular readers would have missed out on if avid readers didn't first make them popular enough for regular readers to "waste" their time on. And let's face it, that non-readers would never have known about at all. But that is another story, one in which I am completely baffled and more than a little judgmental, so we'll leave it at that. Or rather we'll leave it at this, my ode to the avid readers of the world, who help books become history...
- Jane Austen wrote what would be considered the Chick-Lit of her time; satirical novels about modern women (of the time) and their lives and struggles. She is sometimes called the grandmother of chick-lit.
- Henry David Thoreau was considered strange and not taken very seriously during his time. The work that he became so famous for (Walden) was written while he was trying to live an entirely self-sufficient way of life that was fashioned after his forefathers rather than his contemporaries in 1800's Massachusetts.
- Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights was met with harsh critics and thought to be a strange, violent romance novel when it was published.
- William Golding's Lord of the Flies was considered "absurd... fantasy" and was rejected before being published later on.
- Joseph Heller (Catch-22) was dubbed as not being intellectually funny enough.
- George Orwell's Animal Farm was considered an animal story and rejected before being published because "it is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA."
- JK Rowling's Harry Potter series came to be because an 8 year-old daughter of an important CEO liked it.
- Sylvia Plath was thought to "not (having) enough talent" at the beginning of her career.
- Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl was noted as "a dreary record of a typical family bickering, petty annoyances, and adolescent emotions" by some readers.
facts taken from Wikipedia, Los Angeles Examiners, and The New York Times
Bookshelf Lust!
photo source: booklover
Talk about bookshelf lust! My heart almost beat out of my chest when I saw this. I don't want it, I need it... can you imagine having this in your house? And imagine having it as a child -- oh! it's almost too much to think about.