As anyone who reads this blog knows, reading is a vital part of my life. Therefore, so is the library.<\/p>\n
I love the town I live in, but it has a woeful library. It’s very small. I suppose the real<\/em> readers in the town have their needs met by the libraries at the colleges<\/a>. I’ve been in the town for three years now, used the inter-library loan system a number of times and haven’t quite exhausted all the books yet. But I was getting frustrated and feeling\u00a0confined when certain books I had in mind were not at hand.<\/p>\n It was a relief to find out there was a reason. The library arranges its books into categories, and some of these were unexpected. Fiction here and non-fiction on the other side, okay. I expect that–Dewey\u00a0system of decimation and all.<\/p>\n I had sort of figured out that there was a special section for mysteries, and for science fiction. Don’t read much of either, I just realized that there were several rows of shelves that came after the ‘z’s in the fiction section.<\/p>\n What I didn’t realize until about a month ago, is that they have a special section for “Classics.” A ton of books I had previously been unable to locate are in that<\/em> section. Unfortunately, it’s really small. Plus, I have a problem with this arbitrary dividing line. What criteria puts these titles here and those over there? Books want to commingle, and it’s a wonderful surprise to happen upon a great book while simply browsing the shelves. I think putting a special section in for “Classics” places unecessary barriers and\/or pretensions on the books and the readers.<\/p>\n My literature professors would refer to these as the canon<\/a>, which was a derisive word for the most part. I would like to be derisive too, and I guess I am being derisive. But I’m also being a hypocrite at the same time, because 95% of the time, I really really like the books that are considered “Classics” or part of “the canon”.<\/p>\n I recently finished reading Dr. Zhivago<\/em>, a tough and rewarding book. It’s a book I should have purchased, because it is very hard to read in the time alloted by the library lending rules. I had to check it out twice, and even so I owe some money to the library. I had to fall back on skill I learned in college, to plow through a book to get to the end by a deadline.<\/p>\n So naturally, I was ready for a little mind candy after I finished. Something pleasing and moderately mind-expanding, not mind-blowing. No 500+ page tomes this time around. After remembering that this can be harder to achieve than it looks, I found a few.<\/p>\n I remembered I’d been wanting to read some Jhumpa Lahiri, who has won some prize or other.\u00a0 Oh, the cover tells me: Interpreter of Maladies-<\/em> Winner of the PULITZER PRIZE.<\/p>\n I’d been running into some pulitzer winners recently. I read Gone with the Wind<\/em> earlier this year, and The Known World<\/em> a couple years ago. Now, I’m almost done with Interpreter of Maladies<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Pulizter for novels (now called Fiction), has been around since 1917 and it’s strictly American. Including the ones above, I have read these Pulitzer winning books:<\/p>\n Looking at this list…I\u00a0didn’t know they were pulitzer winners when I read them.<\/p>\n The first book I read was The Good Earth<\/em>, which was recommended to me by my mother when I was about 14 because Pearl S. Buck was the child of a missionary and therefore the book was probably full of good Christian thought. Don’t think mom ever read it, since\u00a0prostitutes and concubinage\u00a0featured large in the story.\u00a0But it was a vivid book and I remember it still.<\/p>\n I guess the books were all good enough that I remember them now, and for the most part I remember what I was doing when I chose and read them.<\/p>\n But…There are many books I’ve read that I feel are better than those particular books. That’s the thing about awards, I guess. They are just one set of opinions.<\/p>\n Maybe I’ll go through and read the rest of the Pulizter books. Just to cross them off the list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As anyone who reads this blog knows, reading is a vital part of my life. Therefore, so is the library. I love the town I live in, but it has a woeful library. It’s very small. I suppose the real … Continue reading \n