I was recently watching this video from Answer in Progress, and, while I found Sabrina’s research on adult-reading to be fascinating, I had a hard time relating to some of her difficulties, mainly, at marker 0:34 when she notes that reading often makes her wonder “am I better than everyone?” I personally do not encounter feelings of grandeur when I start reading. Quite the opposite, in fact. I start feeling like an absolute fraud. I get imposter syndrome about my books of choice being unsophisticated.
I’m not really sure where this started. I definitely had a way-too-big head on my shoulders regarding reading when I was a child when my AR (accelerated reading) points were twice to three times that of my fellow students, but it’s possible that I have failed to reach my childhood expectations for my ability to read when I became an adult. Let me explain:
The expectation for adult readers, especially those with college educations, is that we sit around in leather armchairs reading classical British novels and scientific analyses regarding our given academic fields. If we fail to do that, the only way to even earn a modicum of self-respect from reading is by checking off books from Time Magazine’s top 100 reads, (you can check out the 2021 list here). Honestly though, I find most respected fiction to be pretty depressing, and I will often find myself suffering nightmares and periods of grieving every time a character dies. It’s simply just not a conducive recreational activity for me.
I do, however, like reading three types of non-respected material. I absolutely love a good self-help novel. It’s not exactly like I can personally relate to Elizabeth Gilbert’s emotional, creative non-fiction novel Eat Pray Love. I haven’t lost a loved one and subsequently gone through a journey of self-discovery like in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. Even The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin seems only slightly tangential to my life; it’s not like I have two children and a roaring career to distract me from appreciating the day-to-day, yet these are the types of novels I reach for.
My guilty pleasure reading tends to also include steamy, fictional romance novels (don’t judge me, I’m not even reading them for the sex 😅). My favorite novels in this category are E. L. James’s 50 Shades of Grey series, and the three Grey novels that retell the story from Christian’s perspective. Helen Hardt’s Steel Brothers series has me totally enthralled, and when I read Mercedes Lackey, I prefer the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, which have passionate romances and happy endings. Even my husband, knowing my struggle to take my passion for reading seriously, can’t help but take jabs at my “mommy porn” reading (referring to the dollar store romance novels that tempt me with well-spun stories and relatable protagonists.)
If that weren’t enough to discredit my reading habits, the last category of reading that I reach for is children’s novels. As a nanny, I am constantly getting book recommendations from the children I look after, and some of my recent reads have included Bryan R. Johnson’s The Proto Project, Max Brallier’s The Last Kids on Earth, and Lauren Wolk’s Beyond the Bright Sea. I have reread Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven series several times, and I own the whole collection in hard-cover. One of my favorite books of all time is The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. Seriously, I even took Children’s Literature as a course in college, not because it was required for my major, but because nothing calls to me more in leisure reading like a happy ending.
I wonder if we need to broaden our expectations for what counts as “respectable” reading in order to make reading a more accessible activity for everyone. I know that some people feel that listening to audiobooks somehow discredits reading, even when they struggle with dyslexia. I wonder, too, if some people have given up on reading because they can’t comfortably attain the goals they set for themselves when they were children on the types of books they would like to read as adults. I only know that I hate explaining myself when people ask “oh, what book are you reading now?” I want to let go of that fear of saying, “I’m reading Anneli Rufus’s How to Stop Hating Yourself.”
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