This postI decided that instead of doing homework tonight, I would spend a few delicious hours reading — something I haven’t been able to do as much of since school started. And so I spent an hour or so with Anne Elliott in Persuasion, marvelling at the shallowness of Sir Walter and Mary and hoping anxiously that Captain Wentworth will wise up. (I’ve seen the movie, by the way, so I do know how it ends.) Then I dipped into War and Peace for a few pages, reading about Rostov and the purse theft incident.
By that time I was thoroughly enjoying myself, and I was poised to pull The Brothers Karamazov off the shelf and start reading it, but I decided that two Russian authors at once was perhaps too much. But when I looked up at the shelf, I noticed my copy of an English verse translation of the Aeneid. Now, for my Aeneid class (Latin poetry) we’re supposed to read an English translation, and I’ve been eyeing the Robert Fagles one in the bookstore, but it’s $40 (hardcover, with no softcover available) (and yet Fagles’ Iliad and Odyssey translations are only $12 and $15 or so) (but truth be told, the margins are way too small in those editions and the font is less than perfect to my eye), so I’ve been hoping to run across another translation. And voila, I’ve had one all along! It’s a nice direct translation, which proves invaluable when I get into a tough spot while translating. (Though I’ve got to admit that it’s way more fun to brave it on my own. So far it’s worked out fine, and I’m ever-so-slowly getting to the point where I can read the Latin instead of translating it. Before long I’ll be thinking in Latin. Maybe.)
Anyway, reading all of these classics demolished my plan to stay at home for the evening and instead lured me up to the library, primarily to find a copy of A Tale of Two Cities that wasn’t falling apart. (Mine is.) So up I went to the fifth floor, hunting down the Dickens shelves. Couldn’t find a copy of ATTC, but I did find a luscious little copy of The Pickwick Papers, printed at the turn of the century by the New Century Library. (Go figure.) I then made my way down to the reading room, just off the staircase on the main level, and burrowed in at the back with Pickwick. There’s something tinglingly exciting and wonderful about the reading room — it feels somehow like a drawing room in an English mansion, even though it’s clearly not. Maybe it’s the faux-leatherbound books at the back. Maybe it’s the wood panels on the walls. Maybe it’s the lighting. (Probably not; it’s the same as elsewhere in the library.) Regardless of what it is, it’s an ideal place to read — falling short of perfection only by the lack of a fireplace — and I began to read about Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman and Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass. The first chapter had me wondering what I’d gotten myself into, but then it became positively delightful. I’m sure I would get along splendidly with Dickens — great sense of humor.
After around twenty pages of that, I decided I’d better do at least some homework, so I pulled out Tomas Rivera’s And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, a rather interesting (read: sad) book about Mexican-American migrant workers in the 40s and 50s. Good writing, but not so much my style. I’d much rather have Austen and Tolstoy and Dickens, thank you very much.
Having said that, recently I’ve been in more of a modern-book mood. I think what happens is that I subconsciously assume that the older books are harder to read — which is true, to a degree — and therefore avoid them at times. But every time I start reading one, getting past the first couple of pages and into the story, I find them riveting. And they come along quite easily once you’re in. Right now I’m liking the classics so much that I want to return all the other books to the library and focus just on these. I really ought to stop reading 20 books at once, because it takes forever to finish any, but I can’t help it. (You’d think that I’d have trouble keeping the plots separate, but for me that really isn’t an issue. Within a few pages of a book I’m quite at home again with its plot and characters, even if it’s been months since I last picked it up.)
I’ll wrap things up by recommending C.S. Lewis’s essay “On the Reading of Old Books”. Said he:
It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Old books are scrumptious. :)
