Reading, Reviews

Books You Don’t Proudly Display

Recently, I wrote about my struggle to get rid of some books I’d been holding onto for a long time. I had been keeping a lot of them, not because I liked them, but because they were the kind of books I could proudly display on my living room bookshelves. You know, stuff like “Selected Writings by 20th Century Masters.” They were books that declared “I was an English Literature major and I retained all of that stuff and liked it.” Dear old Edgar Allen Poe. Oh wait. I can’t handle Edgar Allan Poe.

I successfully broke through that barrier in my thinking and got rid of the books I actually didn’t ever want to read again. I made way on my shelves for books that I really do like. But then I started thinking…”Would I actually display that book on my shelf?” Well, no, because I probably don’t own it. And I’m not talking smutty books, I truly don’t like those books. I’m talking about books that aren’t considered very intellectual. Books like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

There, I admitted it.

You guys. I really do like those books. And I can’t even blame “reading them in high school” as the reason because I read them after graduating from college, as a full-fledged English major. Maybe my brain needed a break? (actually, I was working a desk job and went to the library on my lunch break in search of anything to listen to to keep my mind from slushing into nothingness, but the selection was limited. “Maybe not that limited!” you say. But I’m not listening to you.).