What are you reading? Seems like an innocent-sounding question, especially among friends. But do you ever hesitate and wonder how your friend will react to what you’re really reading?
We used to use terms like “highbrow” and “lowbrow” to differentiate books like War and Peace from a trashy Gothic novel, but those terms are out of vogue.
But still, sometimes we have “book guilt” that what we’re reading doesn’t have sufficient “heft” or isn’t meaningful enough. I liked how Erin Smith addressed this in the Wall Street Journal:
Nearly everyone who considers themselves well-read, or just desires to be, has a book, or several, that haunts them—the classic they haven’t read.
Some take that one book on vacation, a seemingly surefire way of plowing through, and never crack the cover. Others keep an ever-lengthening list of books they feel they must read, or never forget the one they lied about completing in high school, or lied about at a cocktail party last week.
Is book guilt effective inspiration, or should it be left on the shelf with that lonely copy of “Ulysses”?
Amazon senior books editor Chris Schluep, previously a longtime editor at Random House, suggests people dealing with book guilt stop beating themselves up. If not having read a particular author is causing you stress, he says, choose the author’s shortest book.
Mr. Schluep also often reads works by Herman Melville and Daniel Defoe when waiting in line—a few pages at a time over however long it takes counts as reading. And before you dive in, Mr. Schluep suggests, get a second opinion from someone whose taste you trust. It may just be that the book isn’t for you.
Mostly, he thinks readers should just let the book guilt go. “People are way too judgmental about books,” especially the classics, Mr. Schluep says.
And if there is one particular book you just can’t struggle through, there is a way to get the gist of a classic work without doing the work. “Watch the movie,” he says.
