To all the books I've loved before... and the ones I hated.

     I enjoy reading, though I don't read as much as I feel I should. The only complete books I remember reading in high school are To Kill a Mockingbird and The Scarlet Letter. I had had a brief but traumatic experience with Great Expectations my freshman year, but that was during my attempt of AP English after moving to a new state during the Summer. I was given two weeks to read the entire book and do all the assignments that other students had their entire break to do.

     Because I would like to end the post on a positive note, I'll start with the two books I hated. Number one, as you may guess, is Great Expectations. I'm aware that Dickens is a literary icon and I'm sure that if I tried to read it again today I would enjoy it, but the memory has been tainted by the unfair deadline I was given and all the pressure tied to it.  It was also at a reading level beyond anything I had read to that point as in middle school I had mostly read Harry Potter and Gerald Morris' King Arthur-inspired young-adult fantasy novels. I was clueless in classroom discussions, made uneasy by the number of assignments and frustrated by the dated vocabulary.  I was eventually made semi-aware of the plot by a parody episode of South Park so... "Close enough, right?" He said, sarcastically.

     The second book I did not enjoy is The Scarlet Letter. Much like with Great Expectations, I had little patience for the unfamiliar vocabulary and challenging writing style. Math was more my thing at the time, as I felt it allowed me a more active role in learning.  It was an objective problem to be solved with a concrete process that was on me to discover and implement.  Reading is so subjective and books feel so monstrously large and analysis leaves so many open ends that I don't always feel the closure of a definitively-solved math problem.  All that is fine when reading for leisure or for interest but academically I found it frustrating.  I like to think I'm better about all that today.

     And now it is time for the books I loved.  Though we didn't read the entirety of Homer's Odyssey, I did enjoy reading about Greek mythology.  This doesn't surprise me as it really isn't all that far removed from the fantasy settings I immerse myself in today.  Many elements of the movies I enjoy and the video games I play were inspired by Greek mythology, or in the case of God of War, entirely based on it.  I enjoyed the grand adventure of it all and especially the fantastic monsters and characters Odysseus came across. I am to this day disappointed by the lack of art depicting Scylla and Charybdis readily available online.  Sea monsters add a layer of alien mystery to the already interesting world of mythical creatures.

     Another book I enjoyed was Macbeth.  I know it seems contradictory to despise Great Expectations and The Scarlet Letter for their prose and enjoy Shakespeare, but I feel the main difference is how poetically Shakespeare wrote.  The rhythmic flow of the words drastically affected how I perceived them.  I am tempted to keep reading even if I don't fully process the content because of how well the syllables tie together.  As for the actual content, who doesn't enjoy some tragic, self-destructive vengeance?

     When I think about it, I spend a considerable amount of time scrolling up and down my computer's video game library brainstorming reasons not to play every single game I own. That time could be spent much more productively reading, or even writing, god-forbid. If I could motivate myself to start reading more maybe I'd have more ideas for my own writing.