2017 is the year I graduate--hopefully.
It is also the year I plan to start a reading program FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER to keep up my reading, and further widen my reading habits.
I say for the first time because I'm afraid I've always been pretty cynical (but then, that's an occupational hazard for literature students!) about reading programs. Why force yourself to finish a book you don't enjoy just for the sake of being able to say you've read it? At any rate you probably won't even make it to the halfway mark. Reality kicks in and the last thing you will find time for is reading a book you don't even like.
I told you I was cynical.
These three years of being a literature student, I had to read so much, under so much restriction. Whether it was time period, genre, or simply deadlines--speed reading is one of the most valuable skills a lit student can begin with--it forced me to read stuff I would never have voluntarily picked. Partly because I didn't know about it. Partly because it just wasn't my taste.
I learnt to respect and even appreciate what I could not enjoy, which has been one of the most valuable takeaways from this whole university experience.
As I jotted down on my phone once during a random bus ride, what I love about literature is finding out more reasons to love books I already love, and learning to appreciate, if not love, books that I wouldn't have been drawn to otherwise.
As a result, I resorted to Gene Edward Veith's advice for when you have to do a lot of reading for study or work: Read whatever you enjoy in your spare time, just to keep alive your love for it. Don't worry if it's 'literature' or 'relevant.' Read to remind yourself why you made this decision in the first place.
For me, that meant--since I didn't have the time to source out new authors--haunting the P.G Wodehouse and Agatha Christie sections of the libraries.
I came out of the libraries with stacks which were unapologetically all Agatha Christie, until to my sorrow I realized I'd read almost all the libraries had of the Queen of Crime. There is nothing like a good crime novel by a writer you're so familiar with you know when she's reusing certain characteristics or plot lines, and get confused. Eh isn't this the third slim young impulsive girl called Pippa. If a woman (usually a young servant girl) swallows poison but appears to look pleased before hand you can be sure it's a manipulative man she's in love with (who is the murderer, of course) who sent it to her and told her it was a love potion, in order to dispose of her under the appearance of suicide. This discovery, of course, will be made through the salvaged ashes of the incriminating letter (which he told her to burn) in the grate.
It's like streaming movies--an adrenaline rush in the comfort of your own home. You can get hyped while comfortably dressed in your pajamas, or take a break for the bathroom or abuse the villain at the top of your lungs. I almost know what to expect, still haven't given up trying to guess who the culprit is, and she still manages to surprise me. It's delightful.
In starting this reading program I hope to expand my reading tastes, this time in non fiction, which has never been my strong area. Funnily enough the few non fiction books I can boast of having read have all been good experiences, yet obviously wasn't enough to motivate any progress. Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, for one.
But come on. As long as a story was one of the options, I would go with the story. There is something about story craft that runs in my marrow. My first instinct on reading a book (which I learnt with immense difficulty to suppress when reading postmodern literature) is always to judge it by the quality of its story. Hence my instantaneous dislike to most of modern fiction, in which the story (content) is of much less importance than the form.
Also, in modern writers, which I have an old-fashioned bias against. I admit my can anything good come out of the twenty-first century prejudice. Through having to read and study them, I have learnt to enjoy and appreciate some modern and postmodern literature, which I am very grateful for; but reading modern authors--not exactly literature--for fun is quite another thing.
I realize that writers truly do need to read, to be able to write well. That was the main reason I wanted to do Literature. I debated with studying Creative Writing but (probably the fact that Singapore had no options for that, and also the huge expense of studying overseas had something to do with it) ended up with my gut feeling, literature. But it's true. I have not written very much creatively these three years, but I have read so much. Each year's book list puts me in debt for the next half of the year at least, and when at the end of each year I celebrate by stacking them all up on my desk, it's quite a sight. A true Tower of Babel. Shakespeare and Milton and Ben Jonson jostling alongside Calvino and Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie. All I've read has helped me as a writer. Taught me to be more sensitive, to understand, as my lecturer once said, your context; all that has come before you in the history of literature--so you know what is the significance of certain genres and techniques, and who were significant because they pioneered such genres and techniques. When you learn how to read thoughtfully, to discern each book's what and how, you're also learning how to write.
That is, I comfort myself with that thought every time I remember the unfinished novel lying patiently gathering dust.
And so I have started my book list for this reading program I intend to start after finals and university life is behind me. That--and downloading an e-book app (Oodles Books) my brother recommended, are my first steps towards this very adulty and mature sounding resolution of a reading program. Admit it. If someone tells you they've started a reading program, don't you feel convinced of their maturity? Simply because the idea isn't always pleasant, even to book lovers. We like our freedom to throw a book aside, to keep circling within the comfort zones of our favourite genres, or simply read everything one author has ever written and then lament that we read everything too fast and didn't save anything for the future (me discovering I'd finished Dickens' last novel.)
Here are some hors d'oeuvres from this ambitious menu I'm preparing for myself:
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
...anything by Wendell Berry
Violinists of Hope (a nonfiction on Jewish musicians during the Holocaust which my ex violin teacher recommended)
John Grisham, for the simple reason I can't seem to get away from his name. Someone or other is always mentioning or raving about him.
Outliers by Malcom Bradbury
Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, because my brother recommended it! (otherwise, I've long since been disillusioned, and accepted that Pygmalion is not an accurate representation of Shaw's plays. It was like how I read The Hobbit and expected Lord of the Rings to continue that delightful world of handkerchiefs and second breakfasts.)
...some good science fiction, which is a genre I haven't dabbled much in for the simple reason that I have no idea where to start!
I hope this menu will turn out to be a balanced one; an omnivorous diet that will demonstrate the best of vegetables as well as meat!
**Update: thanks to Oodles Books's genre recommendations, I have plunged into the Golden Age of Crime Fiction and devoured four or five ancient crime novels, which feel like the dustier precursors of Agatha Christie. So much for a balanced diet.