Word Glutton

I have been reading non-stop since school dismissed Friday. I've plowed through two and 3/4 novels between house cleaning, eBay perusal, construction projects, and catching up on overdue appointments and obligations. The sheer luxury of taking a few hours to rip through a book is almost intoxicating.

This is summer, and if I do nothing else in summer, I always feed the word hunger inside me. I'm not talking about lofty literature. I'm talking about the simple pleasure of letting pulp and ink sweep me away into someone else's life, someone else's dilemma. I'm talking about armchair travel, finding out whodunit, and what's going to happen next.

As I've probably mentioned before, I read almost everything. Most of my students probably think all I read are the lofty classics, but the simple truth is I love pulp fiction, chick lit, sword-and-sorcery, general fiction, Southern authors, biography, history, mystery, and so forth every bit as much as I love Jane Austen (okay, mostly as much...Jane's a special case). The only books I studiously avoid are those with a political or philosophical mission. I can think for myself, thank you. There's nothing more dull than a bunch of allegorical characters blathering on about the dark, pointless nature of existence. Please. They always strike me as anorexic models with no grasp on the realities of life. I can almost see them, their frail bodies draped in black, cigarettes waving through the air in exaggerated arcs of gesture, having conversations that mean nothing to anyone, not even themselves.

I also don't like books that focus entirely on "man's dark struggle to survive." As I've said time and time again, every individual's daily life has enough darkness in it to meet whatever universal requirement there may be for that. There's no need to wallow in it and seek it out in fictional doses. William Blake, fantastic looney that he was, believed in an Organized Innocence, an acknowledgment of the evils, a willingness to fight them, but an absolute refusal to let that darkness close off the windows of light and good. Good for him. So many works people tout as "essential" have far too much of that focus on dark to the exclusion of good. I find it depressing and pointless most of the time.

I am looking forward to a summer of good reading. It may not all be reading of AP's "works of literary merit", but I am quite sure that my brain cells will survive the insult. It's time to dust off the library card, fling the cats from the crocheted comforter, pour a big glass of Red Diamond, and luxuriate in the selfish gluttony of the written word. I think I can balance my addiction with the feelings of guilt and the need to do something "productive" and get my summer to-do list checked off while I catch up on my books. Well...most of it, anyway....