My recent struggles with great literature

Wednesday, July 4, 2007 3:22 AM

I became an avid reader while in junior high. My main fare being fantasy novels. Over the years my tastes have matured somewhat but I still enjoy a good epic fantasy. Give me some sword & sorcery and I'm usually a happy camper. A few years ago I picked up a leatherbound copy of "Lord of the Rings" from the SFBC. This instantly ignited a passion for leatherbound books. As luck would have it I received a mailing from Easton Press who just happen to produce such books at fairly reasonable prices. Needless to say I jumped at their "100 greatest novels" offer. Even better I would only have to select the ones I wanted upon signing up. I checked off 29 out of the 100 selections confident in my choices. Here's where my trouble began.

The first book I received was "Moby Dick". I had the perception that the story focused on Ahab's obsession with hunting the white whale. To my dismay it turns out that 90% of the book details the minutia of whaling and operating a ship. This being of no interest to me I had a very hard time getting through the book, something I haven't experienced in a long time.

If that had been the only such occurrence things would have been fine. To date I have finished 8 books with about half not living up to my expectations. Even more frustrating is that I remember enjoying some of these works having read them earlier in my life. I can't quite figure this out. Either these books are terribly overrated, I'm not as bright as I'd like to think, or my years of reading lighter stories has damaged my palate with regards to the finer works of literature.

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