An Epiphany--I Need a Novel (or Two) to Read

Writing and/or updating my course syllabi usually take up me days longer than I expect them to, and this semester hasn't been any exception. I had a few projects I wanted to start/finish/blog about/work on this week, but instead the whole week has been dates, assignments, tests, etc. There are worse ways to spend your working days, of course, but it did put me behind. Just the way to start the new year, right?

Well, I did manage to check out the blogs occasionally, and one thing I read today really did grab my attention. In fact, it gave me an epiphany--pretty appropriate for the day, I guess. It's a blog series being written by Michael Austin, an old friend of mine and a fellow academic here in Wichita (he is, in fact, the provost of Newman University, a Catholic school less than a mile away from my office here at Friends). He's reflecting on his recent completion of Tolstoy's War and Peace one of the very few "big classics" he'd never read before. He read the book on his Kindle--and now (partly, I flatter myself, because of the praise I heaped upon Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, a book which strongly questions the consequences of during literature and all communication into a wholly virtual phenomenon) he's wondering about the implications of that decision. How did reading War and Peace on a Kindle affect his reading experience...and what does the fact that so much of our reading these days is done on the interest mean, in anything, for our ability to read (or write?) such novels in the future? He is saying some great, thoughtful things; let me quote from his first entry:

War and Peace conveyed more moments of insight, not to mention genuine pleasure, than I could possibly discuss in a brief essay. But when I finished reading it, neither the insights nor the pleasure were enough. I also wanted the book. I had no intention of rereading it, or even of referring to it again. But I wanted to own it, to look at it, to feel it, and to mount it on my shelf as I would the head of a large and dangerous animal that I had stalked and killed. Dangerous and difficult tasks should result in substantial and impressive trophies. As much as I have tried, intellectually, to embrace the digital-age idea that a book is its content and not its physical form, I know, viscerally, that this is nonsense. Books have both an ideal and a material existence, and trying to consume the former without the latter just won’t work—at least not for me. I couldn’t stand the thought that I had invested so much of my life in, and derived such substantial benefit, from a book that I did not own. Somehow, everything that I took from the book seemed like stolen property. Even though I had paid almost as much to download the book as I would have to pay to purchase it, I still felt like a cheater. So, knowing that I would never open it again, but unable to imagine my shelf without a trophy, I bought the book.

I like what he's saying here--and not just because I'm a bibliophile who longs for a grand library with a sliding ladder to scoot along the shelves as well. No, what I like is his view of reading a long, serious, impressive book as an accomplishment worthy of a trophy. And it made me think about my own reading resolutions for the year, and I realized something: none of those books I committed myself to read and discuss--and I know this, because I've already read most or all of about half of them--were difficult in any profound sense. Some of them are better written than others, some of them I disagree with mostly and some I agree with mostly...but that's all a question of their arguments. Which is reasonable: they're all non-fiction; in fact, with one exception (PrairyErth), they're all works of scholarship. Shouldn't I try something which gives my imagination a work-out? Shouldn't I try, in other words, a novel?

I've never been a huge fiction reader, though I've gone through phases for a particular author (John Irving, John Steinbeck) or a particular genre (horror, fantasy) here and there over the years, and I've never abandoned fiction entirely. But I've never made it a priority. And, to be fair, I'm not going to make it one this year either. But it's been a very long time since I set for myself a serious novel or two to read, and if this is a year in which I continue to turn myself back into the serious reader which I long aspired to be, then I ought to do that again. So I will. But...what novel?

This is where I turn to you, friendly masses of the internet. Give me your recommendations. Old favorites, intimidating classics, both, neither: just give me something to work with. I put the question to Melissa, and she came up with Bram Stoker's Dracula. (She loved the book when she read it; Frankenstein, by contrast, she wasn't impressed by.) Cool idea! I'm going to ask Mike for his suggestions when I see him later today. (Maybe War and Peace? He has a copy, anyway...) But I want to throw this completely open. The fact is, I haven't done enough fiction reading in years to really know what I like, so I'm going to have to do some searching. Surely the internet doesn't lack opinionated people willing to suggest where I should start looking? I didn't think so.