The book project

For Christmas 2010, my partner got me my first Kindle reader – a prized possession for someone who reads as much as I do, and a welcome change from carrying heavy tomes around (as I often did in my pre-Kindle days). One of the features I liked best was the rather large library of free books one can access, which led me to a lofty idea.

There are tons of classic books out there that have caused a lot of controversy over the years, ones that are referenced frequently in heated debates on everything from evolution to racial relations to politics. What really stood out to me in college was that with as much as these books are tossed about in argument, very few people I knew had actually read them (even the ones who used the works frequently to “support” their arguments). That’s when I decided to start my book project: I started a list of different books that are liberally quoted from or referenced, but highly controversial. Among the ones that made my list were Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Qur’an, Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, The Declaration of Independence, and the American Constitution (which, to be fair, my mother had us study in junior high so technically I have read in its entirety already, but  adult perspective is a lot different from that of a 14-year-old). I’ve added to this list as I came across new ones, but the idea was that I would try to read through as many as I could on top of the other works I plow through (the Kindle is GREAT for this).

Now, a lot of these are pretty heavy works, so I intersperse them through my reading list, and readers of some of my past posts may note that sometimes it takes a very long time to work through some of them. Ulysses, for example. This one I started prior to getting my Kindle, getting a paperback to read in my car during my lunch breaks – after three months of that, I had gotten through half the stupid book. Someday I vow to finish it, if for no other reason than to see it through, but I just want to take a second to say how much I really hate that book so far. Who knows, maybe it will turn out to be an experience like when I slogged through Paradise Lost for one of my honors classes – I hated that book until the very last chapter, when suddenly everything made sense and the poetry of what came before became apparent. On the other hand, I’ve read bits from Dubliners too, so maybe Joyce just isn’t my cup of tea.

At any rate, as I started on these project books I realized why most Americans now a days don’t read them: they are tough reads. I’m not talking about just the prose, I mean the topics themselves as well. As I mentioned before, these are titles that are thrown out in passionate arguments (well founded or, in a lot I have witnessed, not) on  topics that we are emotionally tied to. What makes the books tough reads are because they challenge our thought process, supporting or refuting ideas we as individuals hold sacred.  That is why they are classics, and why they are so powerful even decades after their publication. I suspect this is also why most people who do read them now do so as assigned readings for college classes – classes that are designed to challenge you to think at a time when traditional college students (young adults) are still forming their own opinions on these topics. But even then, few courses require reading the text in full, or (if they do) there are synopses and Cliffs Notes for busy students to get the gist without really reading in full.

How dangerous, to rely so heavily on the interpretations of others…