How I feel about reading.

When I started this blog, I didn't expect anyone (except perhaps my father) to ever read it. It was, admittedly, just a place for me to put all my thoughts about what I was reading. A place that my annoyed close friends could go if they did, in fact, care about what I had to say. Not that I find my friends to be callous; I simply know my own tendency to go on and on and on when they have nothing to contribute to the conversation because they haven't read said book. This blog was like a humanitarian gesture.

Slowly, more people have started reading this blog. As a result, I feel I should say a few words about myself as a reader (or a general appreciator of the arts).

Every time I post about a book and write that it's "recommended," a little voice in me says, "You recommend everything. You are not a critic. Why would anyone trust the opinion of someone who likes everything? Can you even have an opinion if you don't reject things?" It's an annoying voice that I'd like to beat up.

A critic is defined as one of three things. Formally, a critic is someone who a) expresses a negative opinion of something or b) judges the merits of an artwork, often professionally. Informally, a critic is "a fucking douchebag."

I never want to tear something completely apart, because I've noticed how books and movies that mean nothing to me can mean the world to someone else. I don't think my opinion is right enough to be followed as the general standard of evaluating things. I'm not Immanuel Kant, for the love of god. I refuse to codify arbitrary standards of evaluation just so I can make my opinion (read again: OPINION) seem more respectable and objective. I read books of all kinds for my own enjoyment, why pretend I'm after anything else?

Since I'm predisposed to excessive thinking and feeling, saying I prefer books that "make me think or feel" is redundant. Streetlights can make me think or feel. Mailboxes. A withering flower. A newspaper article about iPhones. An episode of "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends." I like when an author describes an event or emotion better than I could have. I like when an author respects my intelligence and abilities. What a reader craves and what satisfies that reader depends upon, surprise! the reader.

The reader is more important than the author. The difference between Dashiell Hammett's academic acknowledgment and Jim Thompson's seemingly unalterable "pulp fiction" designation is about who read them, not which of them wrote better.

If anything, my interests in writing here, or talking about books in general, are twofold. One, I want to find value in books that have been denied recognition by the canon or mainstream. Two, I want to emphasize that a book is not an entity truly enclosed within its covers - a book contains roughly the same amount of mental energy that the reader brings to it. I, as the reader, have the power to turn a bad book into a good one, and vice versa.

What I'm trying to say is, I rarely dislike a book because I rarely dislike myself. I want to enjoy myself, I want to see value in things, and I'll insert it there if I'm able to. If you're not interested in finding value yourself, but in reading what your dinner party guests have already accepted as "excellent" or "dreadful," this is not a place to come for recommendations.

Phew, talking about this has a tendency to rile me up. Had to be done, though.