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I Am A Picky Reader
There’s simply not enough time to read everything and so I have to narrow it down
I read an article by Roz Warren about the kinds of books she reads and recommends, and was glad to learn that I wasn’t the only one that didn’t much care for popular books. I have my own distinct tastes, not to be a book snob but because I can’t read everything and so I narrow it down.
My masters degree is in English and creative writing, and so I had to study a lot of the so-called classics, which were predominantly written by, and chosen for the literary canon by white men. Very few of them were worth the amount of time and effort that went into studying them.
I could only study the theorists chosen by the college instead of ones that had better things to say. I am not interested in Freud and his creepy fascination with the phallus and insisting boys want to have sex with their mothers. Who thought this guy had anything worth reading or listening to after all the stuff that screams “pervert?” While still a guy, at least Carl Jung has decent things worth studying.
There were some great authors outside the white man box, and those I enjoyed. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was considered scandalous in her day, and I enjoyed the story because it spoke to me deeply. I enjoyed Toni Morrison’s The Bluest…
