I have got to stop clicking on these links for lists of books that you have got to read by the time you die or you’re a pathetic illiterate lazypants. Really.
I mean, I’m 56-years-old and I’m still falling for book recommendations from people who don’t know me, my reading tastes, or my penchant for sarcastic literature critiques. I’ve read more than 500 books since I graduated from high school, so I think by now I know what I like and what I don’t like in reading material. So why do I continue to read lists of books that an Internet content provider (read that as housewife hoping to make $5 per piece — I can say that because I was one) says should be on my Bookut List?
The other day I opened another one. It was Time (the magazine not the fourth dimension measure) and the list title intrigued me: “29 Books That Will Enrich Your Inner Literati.” And intrigued I was, until I got to Fifty Shades of Gray and The Hunger Games. The latter included the note “Better than Twilight.” I got all indignant, as if including two books of which I don’t have a high opinion was somehow wrong. I began to question the entire contents of the list. Was Catch 22 really “gorgeously ironic?” I mean I thought it was, but now? I can no longer trust.
For an obsessive lister, this is going to be tough, but I think I need to get myself off book lists and I think it’s going to have to be cold turkey.
So I guess I won’t be looking at the 10 Best Top 100 Book Lists. Not to be confused with the 100 Best Top 10 Book Lists, I could have gotten all hot under the collar about the Time list being included and the NPR list not being included. Soon, I would start looking for the 10 Best Top Lists of Lists of Book Lists.
It was a lot easier when recommended reading wasn’t recommended at all, but instead mandatory and forced down our throats like salisbury steak on a plastic tray. That’s right; I’m talking about school reading lists. When I was in high school, if you were in Honors English, you had a list of books that you had to read in the summer. We would get the list on around the last day of school. This was in the ’70s, before pacing yourself was invented. We didn’t have planners or calendars or goals. We spent the first 70 days of summer vacation going to Glen Echo to swallow stagnant bacteria-laden lake water and get sun poisoning. The next four days we planned our first-day-of-school outfit and gearing up for the blisters our new leather shoes were going to spawn, and the last day of summer vacation we read all five books for Honors English.
You didn’t question the list. Our parents didn’t complain about the books on the list. You didn’t march your bell bottoms into Mrs. Dulaney’s classroom and say “These recommended books aren’t really what I like to read. I’m not into 19th century American literature. I’ve been reading a lot of dystopian fiction and 1940s noir crime novels. Also Elmore Leonard.”
You read what was on the list and if it was something stupid (which it inevitable was — I’m talking to you The Greek Way and The Roman Way), you fake read it, got the Cliff Notes, and did whatever you had to do.
Now that I’m all grown up (and out of the Size 3 bell bottoms, thank you very much) I get to choose my own books, and it’s not so easy. I do have some friends and family who have similar reading tastes and I’ll take their recommendations gladly. Otherwise, I’m going to skip the lists and go with my normal MO: Judging a book by its cover.
