White whales and secret shame

My friend Katie is worried she doesn't read enough books each year, but does the quantity matter if you're tackling the literary equivalent of Mt. Everest?

The Washington Post book critic is asking about readers' literary challenges. His are staggering accomplishments (Beowulf in Old English, anyone?). While I'm proud that I'm a dedicated reader, I don't feel obligated to tackle long, arduous works just to make a point. I need to enjoy the process, too. 

When I think of books that I've struggled with, Faulkner comes to mind. In high school, I waded through The Sound and the Fury; I wonder  if I attempted a re-read now, would it go any smoother?

There are books I've given up on -- Seeing, by Jose Saramago, is one. The long paragraph structure, the lack of character names, the endless sentences. The promise of a later payoff in the bookwas not worth my pain. 

Do you have a white whale, a book you just couldn't get through? What's your shame? Or maybe you'd rather brag about the one that you conquered, owned, dominated and now brag about to your literary-type friends. So... which is it?

How to Write and What to Read

While I was in Ireland, our rental house had a small library with travel guides, discarded paperback mysteries, and a few old gems. I was mightily tempted to steal a book called How to Write and What to Read (written by Richard Ferrar Patterson and W. Kersley Holmes), but my husband shamed me into leaving it in the house. Still, I snapped some images of a few pages so I could consult some of the words later. Today, I share a tiny snippet contained in that book:

"We cannot all be Shakespeares; but we can all learn to express ourselves; for who knows what, in the course of our lives, we may be called upon to express.

"Words and sentences are the writer’s tools, and as most of us have to be writers at some time or another, if only writers of notes to our friends, or applications for posts, we must learn how to make those tools serve our purpose."

Did you read...