I just got into reading and I feel like I am really behind.

[r4nd0m Variable]

So I just got into reading recently and I feel like I am really behind in comparison to other people. I am a computer science and mathematics student. I do my best to read during the school year, but it is pretty difficult sometimes. I have read Tolstoy, Cormac McCarthy, Hemingway, Wilde, Fitzgerald, and some nonfiction books. I am now in the process of reading Shakespeare. I recently read Macbeth and King Lear, and I am about to start Othello. I absolutely love literature and I wish I had started earlier. My goal right now is to finish Shakespeare's major plays and then move on to Don Quixote and then to Dostoevsky and Melville. Compared to a lot of people in this forum, I am not as well-read as I should be. I hope it changes soon.

[UlyssesE]

It sounds like you have made a pretty good start :)

One of my favorite books in all of literature is Dubliners, by James Joyce. It is a collection of short stories about the city of Dublin, and each is better than the last. Absolutely brilliant.

[togre]

Don't sweat it. I've reached the conclusion that no matter how much you read, there will always be "I-should-read-this" books that you haven't read. Rather than feel guilty or inadequate, enjoy what you have read and what you are reading. Give yourself a goal, if you enjoy that, but there's never going to be a time when you can simply kick back and say "I've arrived! I'm well read. If I haven't read it, its not worth reading." How boring that would be. No, there will always be a book that come up in conversation, that you haven't read or an allusion in an essay you need to track down. In fact, I suspect the more you read, the more books you'll find that you feel you'll need to read. Especially, in the non-fiction side.

[ladderandbucket]

Don't sweat it. I've reached the conclusion that no matter how much you read, there will always be "I-should-read-this" books that you haven't read.

Absolutely. I do feel a tension between reading for pleasure and reading for the sake of being well-read. 'Reading the canon' is a pretty harmless sort of obsession, but it's easy to lose sight of the point. Art should be savoured. Ideas need to be digested. There's really no point in racing through the classics just to tick them off a list. I have been guilty of that at times, and I suspect I am not alone.

[Pompey Bum]

That's a damn good start, rV. And don't worry about what you haven't read. It's like sex: go slowly, enjoy yourself, and don't think too much about how many it's been. As Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's girlfriend observed, there's always tomorrow. :)

[ennison]

So Reading's like sex! Ok! I never noticed. WTF. It's the diff between wee and big orgasms. War and Peace - big orgasm. Love on The Dole - Wee orgasm

[Pompey Bum]

Well don't give up, ennison. Many's the book won't split her binding till the second read. ;-)

[prendrelemick]

At least by reading "The Canon" (whatever that is) there is a chance of coming across a few good books. I wasted years reading pulp fiction - not knowing there was anything else.

[Pompey Bum]

At least by reading "The Canon" (whatever that is) there is a chance of coming across a few good books. I wasted years reading pulp fiction - not knowing there was anything else.

You didn't know there was anything else or you didn't know how much you'd get out the other? And if you enjoyed sleeping with easy books, were those really years wasted? People need to come to literature when they are ripe for it. Then, like you, they may ask themselves why they ever settled for anything less. But until then, a tart or two never hurt. Just don't let Esther Summerson find out about it. She's suffered enough.

[prendrelemick]

I bought my books from the supermarket. I vaguely knew of Literature, but assumed it was all boring and genteel and not for the likes of me. One day I opened a boring looking copy of Butcher and Lang's Odyssey at the very page where he starts slaughtering the wooers - and lost my virginity. That book had been on my mum's shelf at home for years.


Until I found this site, finding the good stuff was always a problem. I had literary Portnoy's Complaint.

[Pompey Bum]

I bought my books from the supermarket. I vaguely knew of Literature, but assumed it was all boring and genteel and not for the likes of me. One day I opened a boring looking copy of Butcher and Lang's Odyssey at the very page where he starts slaughtering the wooers - and lost my virginity. That book had been on my mum's shelf at home for years.

Touching story. Like stout Cortez, eh? (Or was that Chapman's Odyssey?) With me it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. I was 13: a bit young to be losing my virginity, but I didn't mind at the time. In retrospect, though, Ithaca seems a more romantic spot for it than Maple White Land. Damned Pterodactyls spoil everything.

[Emil Miller]

So I just got into reading recently and I feel like I am really behind in comparison to other people.

There is no need to worry about it. Each individual comes to literature in his own way and at his own pace. Chance, unless one has decided to study it academically, often plays a part in a person's progress.
At a very young age, I took to the printed word like a duck to water and read most, if not all, of the standard children's books that the library had to offer, but at the tender age of seventeen I had progressed to the adult section and because someone had mentioned a film called Great Gatsby, I chose to read it out of curiosity. I was bowled over by it and thought that it was great writing. Now, six readings and many years later, I know it's great writing.
It transpired that, through the French cinema, I became enamoured of France and learned French in order to read the novels that interested me in their original language.
My interest in European history took me into the realm of German writing and I learned German for the same reason I had learned French and had a lot of pleasure reading authors that supplemented the history books I had read regarding Germany.

So therefore, there's no reason to feel inadequate about your current literary status, you've got a great journey ahead of you and it will be entirely your own.

[Afriendinneed]

I would recommend starting with poetry. Buy yourself the 'Oxford Book of English Verse'. Don't try to get everything 'right'. Don't fuss at all cause it's gonna be a few months before you start seeing anything. Flick through it with the aim of HEDONISM. Whatever you find to be EASY, LAZY, FASCINATING, stick with that. Read out loud. Read it out loud so it pleases your ear. Then when you get bored, stop reading. And go play outside.

Don't set targets, limits, standards, any those nasty academic poisons. They make it all so much HARDER. In my humble opinion.