Pride and Prejudice – part 1
Music connects us (Hey ho, lets go!), movies connect us (Stella!) and books connect us as well. There a lot of things in this world that connect us all, but I am going to focus on books. When you pick up a book, for example, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” on its release day and read through it as fast as you can, do you think about how millions of others are doing the exact same thing at the same moment? When you read “Romeo and Juliet” for the first time do you ever marvel at the effect it has had on culture since it written all those centuries ago? When I was 22 I had the privilege of seeing “Hamlet” in Stratford and I remember thinking, “that’s why people say there’s something rotten in Denmark!” I heard once that if you read the Bible, even if you’re not a christian, you will see it’s influence all over western culture. I have not read the Bible, but for academic reasons it is on my list.
When I was fourteen years old I can remember a reading list being handed out in my english class at school. It had quite a few books on it, some I can remember (Beowolf, The Odyssey, Lord Of The Flies) and some I cannot (?). I think the teacher said it was required reading for university students or something like that. It was not in me to care about such a list at this point in my life because I was too busy not caring about shit like that. At 14 I read comic books and Dragon Lance novels. So basically, unless a mutant was involved, or a dwarf was forging an axe to defeat the mighty Orc army, i was not interested. About a year later in life I would start smoking pot and “reading books”was to be placed on the back burner for the next 7 years or so (that’s a whole other blog though).
Anyway, I am 28 now, and have always wanted to read the “classics” but have never gotten around to it and while I loved my X-men comics and my elven legends, I feel like missing out on reading classic literature is like missing out on a huge slice of what makes being alive so great. It hit me last night when I started reading “Pride and Prejudice.” I was on the stair master at my gym and right from the beginning I fell in love with the Bennet family. The way Mr. Bennet teases his wife and daughters, pretending to not be concerned with seeing them married, and Mrs. Bennet with her description of Mrs. Long (“she is a hypocritical and selfish woman and I have no opinion of her”) made me snort quite loudly. Now ten chapters into the book I keep thinking which one is Keira Knightley (I know now she is Elizabeth, thank you imdb.com)?
Speaking of Hollywood, I have not seen “Julie and Julia” yet, but I do know the story of the Amy Adams character and her blog about attempting all of Julia Child’s recipes from “The Art Of French Cooking,” and I have to say I think it has inspired me. A friend tagged me in a note on Facebook regarding a list of books the BBC believes that the average person has only read 6 of at most. I had read nine. While I have read a lot more books than just 9 in my life, I haven’t really delved into anything that is older than 70 years. I joked with my friend (Brianna) about screwing Oprah (I love Oprah!) and starting our own book club. So we decided to start at the top of the list. I am so glad we did. I’m not going to read all of these books in a year, but I with help of my blog I hope keep going until I am at last “well-read.”
Not sure what reading all of these is going to get me, but sometimes what I can get is not what’s important, so here goes.
J
PS. I can’t believe i have academic reasons!
