Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate Christmas!
There are a lot of classics I haven't read. There is a lot of Shakespeare, poetry, Plato, etc etc that I haven't read. That list of the top 100 books of our century...I've only read 37 of them. And I don't feel guilty at ALL. Not even a little bit.
I want you to stop feeling guilty for all the books you haven't read. If you're anything like me your TBR pile is long enough, without adding the guilt of the "classics" or even the top 100 books of this year to your TBR.
I don't feel bad about books I haven't read. My family is full of avid readers and what I like best about them, is that they don't care if it's a classic or not. My family reads for pleasure and/or to learn. We don't read because we "should". That's a terrible reason to read and frankly why I think so many people say they don't like to read. You get to read for pleasure all the way up until roughly junior high. Then you get stuck reading, mostly, dull books. I have friends who teach English at all grade levels and you know what they tell me? :Let kids read what they want to read.
Here's what I remember reading in high school:
L- Loved LL- Liked E- Eh H-Hated
- A separate peace - E
-Frankenstein - E
-Jurassic Park -LL
-Sylvia Plath(all of her work) - H
-Lord of the Flies - E
-To Kill a Mockingbird - E
-Great Expectations - H
-Romeo and Juliet - LL
-The Odyssey - E
-Farhrenheit 451 - E
-Animal Farm - H
-Of Mice and Men - E
-The Alchemist -L
-The Glass Castle- E
- The Grapes of Wrath- E
- The Catcher in the Rye- E
As you can see- I had an Eh relationship with most of what we read in HS. Mind you I was still going through 2-3 additional pleasure reading books per week. But seriously, I can tell you basic plot of maybe a few of those books, but most I barely remember. These books- considered classics for the most part- are so students can create analysis of the content, plot, characters, literary mechanisms etc. 90% of the books on the market a student could analyze for those things. But we keep kids in a box of what they "should" read. This is why we have a society that has forgotten how to read in favor of bingewatching Netflix.
Anywho...the whole point of that was to remind you, dear reader, that you should read what YOU want to read, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Pleasure read for yourself. It can be hard when you see 100k copies go off the shelves of some book and yet you have no interest in it. Don't feel bad. Go on with your fantastic reading life. Let the 100k people who wanted to read that book, read it. You read what you want.
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