Month: April 2021

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Bad Books and Reading Slumps

“Never force yourself to read a book that you do not enjoy. There are so many good books in the world that it is foolish to waste time on one that does not give you pleasure.”

Atwood H. Townsend, Good Reading

I’ve been MIA lately, and I apologize for that. I’d like to have a really good excuse, but if I’m being honest, I’ve been enduring a pretty intense reading slump. I dread reading slumps. It makes me feel terrible when I know that there’s all of these amazing books on my To Read list and I don’t want to read any of them. Even worse is when I start a book and find no enjoyment in it.

For years, I refused to give up on a book. I was of the opinion that to do so would make me miss out on some amazing literature because I wasn’t able to power through. That’s true to some extent. There are definitely books that I wasn’t in love with at first that I grew to appreciate after I finished. Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece A Hundred Years of Solitude was one of those books. It took me a long while to get into it, but as I read the last sentence and closed the book I was profoundly grateful that I’d stuck with it.

But if I’m being honest with myself, those books are few and far between. Most of the books that I didn’t like in the beginning did not improve upon further reading. I can’t tell you how I wish I could get back the hours I spent reading Wuthering Heights. (Actually, I read it twice because I hated it so much that I was convinced there was something about this classic that I’d missed. “It must be a classic for a reason,” I thought. “Maybe I’m just too ignorant to appreciate it. I should give it another read.” If possible, I loathed it more the second time around.)

I was well into adulthood before I gave myself permission to stop reading books that I wasn’t feeling. And even though I’ve told myself I’m allowed to give up on a book, I still struggle with it a bit, especially when the book is a recognized classic. Case in point: I was reading Crime and Punishment for longer than I probably should have before I returned it to the library. I wanted to like it. So many of my friends have given it five stars on Goodreads. It honestly makes me feel a little stupid to not like a book that everyone else raves about. And this isn’t a Wuthering Heights situation where I hated the book and to heck with everyone else. This is a case in which I was just bored out of my mind and was wondering the whole time what everyone else saw in this book. So I pushed on and got increasingly irritated with Dostoyevsky.

I caved eventually. I have a friend who often paraphrases Atwood H. Townsend’s quote. She says, “Life is too short for bad books.” Now, that’s not to say Crime and Punishment is objectively a bad book. I’m sure it has a lot of really great qualities. But it wasn’t what I needed then. It wasn’t what I was looking for, and I wasn’t getting any enjoyment out of it. Reading, even serious reading, is supposed to be joyful. So I walked away from Raskolnikov and his guilty conscience, and I’m at peace with that decision.

Having left Dostoyevsky to other readers, what was I to read instead? Enter: the reading slump. I borrowed books from the library and returned them without even cracking them open. I downloaded audiobooks and listened to ten minutes before sending them back. Nothing I picked up could satisfy me. It was like I was searching for one book in particular but I didn’t know what it was or how to find it.

I wish that I had some words of wisdom about how to get yourself out of a reading slump. I’ve seen other blogs have posts that tout different methods of turning things around. Personally, that doesn’t jive with me. I think reading slumps, infuriating as they can be, are healthy. They give me time to listen to a podcast, to try a new TV show, or to do some research on a topic that interests me. Books are a way to learn, but they aren’t the only way to learn. And every reading slump ends eventually. Soon, out of the blue, you’ll find a book that makes your heart sing as you turn the pages. I’m currently reading the last book of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy, and I’m devouring it. My reading slump is officially at an end . . . for now.

So put down that book that you feel obligated to push through. (Unless it’s for school or something. Then do your homework.) Embrace your reading slump. Explore other interests for a while. The books will always be there when you’re reading for them again.

Happy Reading! (Or not!)

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Circe, Madeline Miller

“So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure to not dishonor me.”

“I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”

Madeline Miller, Circe

My love affair with Greek mythology started in elementary school. My dad used to watch the TV series “Hercules.” You know, the one with Kevin Sorbo in it? No? Was it just my dad that watched it? Anyway, I was intrigued by the stories of the gods, goddesses, and heroes. I checked out this giant book of Greek myths from my school library.

I think I had this book on constant checkout for months. I read it over and over again and tried to explain to all of my classmates why the books they were reading were inferior to D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. And then when Disney released the movie Hercules, I spent all of my time enumerating the things Disney had changed from the original myth. Yeah, I didn’t have a ton of friends in elementary school.

The point is, I was hooked. I eventually allowed myself to return the book and move on to other things, but Greek myths have always held a place in my heart.

Which is why it’s weird that it’s taken me this long to read Circe by Madeline Miller. It’s been on my radar for a long while. It won a Goodreads award in 2018, so I’m late to the game. But I’m glad I finally got around to reading Circe, because it was exactly the kind of book I needed to read right now.

If you read any of The Odyssey in high school, you may remember that Circe is a witch Odysseus meets on his journey home from Troy. She turns his crew to pigs. That’s pretty much all I remembered about her until I read this book. In Circe, Madeline Miller expands on the lore around the infamous witch to give us a deeply intimate portrait of rejection, loneliness, and self-acceptance. Circe is, at its heart, a book about self-love.

Circe is the daughter of Helios—the sun—and a water nymph. The other gods consider her to be ugly and untalented. They hate the sound of her voice, which they describe as thin. So Circe grows up as an object of scorn. She tries to make herself agreeable to her parents and her siblings, but she’s rebuffed time and again. Eventually—and if you read the book you’ll get all of the juicy details—Circe is banished to an island to live out the rest of her life in solitude.

But her ouster from the halls of the gods doesn’t end up being the punishment her father thinks it is. Alone and away from the malicious gaze of her family, she’s able to develop her talents and find that she’s not the untalented, worthless waste of divinity that her family has always allowed her to believe. Then, as she begins to interact with visitors to her island, she learns the joys of companionship for the first time.

What I loved about Circe is that Madeline Miller gives us the coming-of-age story of a goddess. We watch as Circe grapples with the nature of love and loss. She learns the value of vulnerability. She is stretched almost to the breaking point, and in her extremity she learns to stand up for herself against those to whom she always kowtowed. I think one of the most beautiful parts of the book is where she’s able to look at the ugliness within herself, try to make amends for the wrong she’s done, and allow herself to move forward.

If you’re up for a book that’ll suck you in and make you think, this is it.

Happy Reading!