What do you read for?
I’ve confessed in the past a tendency to read things because people say they’re great. Sometimes this results in grave disappointment (Hello there Toni Morrison, I’m looking at you), sometimes in indifference (Yeah, the three times I’ve read the first 100 pages of the Grapes of Wrath come to mind), and sometimes in abject delight.
Which, in reality, doesn’t prove anything at all except that enjoying a book is tied more to personality than to the book itself.
I’m reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I started it because, well, it’s a classic. I realized 20 pages in that “it’s a classic” is a dumb reason to read a book. I gave her 30 more pages to make me care about the story. She did that, by proving the environment to be interesting, the characters to be interesting — not in a human sense, but in an archetypal sense.
So, I’ll let you know how it goes, but I’m glad to say that I’m reading it for the story, not for the “classic.” Here’s hoping the story delivers.
