Book Shame!

For today’s guest post we asked some friends of Hunger Mountain to answer these two questions: What book are you ashamed you haven’t read and why? What book are you ashamed to love and why?

I’m ashamed I haven’t read Neuromancer by William Gibson, because it’s a modern sci-fi classic, and I fancy I know something about the genre and popular culture, but had trouble getting into it when I tried a few years back.

I’m embarrassed, if not ashamed, to love Atlas Shrugged because the characters and the politics are two-dimensional, the dialogue over-the-top, and because smart people are supposed to look down on Ayn Rand, but the novel hooked me from the beginning with its charismatic protagonists, unabashed individualism, and its vividly imagined secret alliance of the über-competent (as in “who is John Galt?”).

Thomas P. Balázs received his MFA from VCFA, teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and is the author of the short story collection, Omicron Ceti III, forthcoming from Aqueous Books.

War and Peace by Tolstoy. Although considered one of the great literary classics, I simply can’t get past the antiquated language. If I tweeted this comment, its hash-tag would be #lostintranslation.

I’m not ashamed of any book I love. If a book tells the truth, and speaks to “the human heart in conflict with itself,” then that’s a book I’ll cherish, be it The Scarlet Letter or Harry Potter.

Shane Berryhill is the author of The Adventures of Chance Fortune series. He is one of Mashable.com’s 100+ Best Authors on Twitter.

I’ve never read James Joyce’s Ulysses, although I’m aware it’s been hugely influential. I know OF the characters: Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, and Stephen Daedalus and I know it is based in some ways on the classic Iliad, and that it takes place in Dublin all in a single day… but I’ve never actually READ it. I should read it, but I fear the difficulty of it. The stream of consciousness thing, while an interesting technique, must be somewhat onerous for the reader. It’s one of those books I plan to read… SOME DAY.

As a kid I had a copy of a small picture book called Little Black Sambo, the story of a child, a boy from India, I think, who encounters some tigers. They want to eat him, but he gives them his new umbrella and then some of his new clothes in order to distract them. Eventually the tigers chase each other around a tree faster and faster until they melt into a pool of butter, which Sambo collects and brings home. His mother makes pancakes and everyone in family eats a lot of them. I loved the story line and the pictures, the cleverness of Sambo, and the happy feeling of the family eating pancakes at the end. If I remember correctly, the little boy ate more than even his mother and father. I can see some of the illustrations in my mind even now, decades later. As an adult I was shocked to find out the book was considered to be terribly racist. After giving it some thought, I could understand that viewpoint. A book would not be likely to be called Little White Sammy, for instance. And I think the parents’ names were Mumbo and Jumbo, names that suggest ignorance and superstition. Actually, the sounds of the names contributed to my enjoyment of the book, as a child ignorant of the concept of political correctness. I guess it was written by a white person in a very condescending fashion. Now I feel that I should dislike the book, but I can’t quite bring myself to do so because I have such fond memories of it.

Ginny Lowe Connors runs the small press Grayson Books, wrote the poetry collection Barbarians in the Kitchen (Antrim House Books 2005) and the chapbook Under the Porch (Hill-Stead Museum 2010), and has edited several poetry anthologies.

There’s a whole lot of Shakespeare I haven’t read. In fact, I used to work with a woman who used to ridicule me because I hadn’t read Hamlet.  I had seen it performed, but that didn’t count with her. I’m ashamed because even though Shakespeare is the pinnacle of English lit, there’s a whole lot of stuff I’d rather read.

I am ashamed at how much I love The Time-Travelers Wife, because it’s a pretty sick love story. The man begins grooming a very young girl to love him and always gets his way because he’s been to the future and knows what should happen. But the man is likeable and the woman seems fulfilled so I loved the book. Even after he dies the man is still popping up in the woman’s life! That’s pretty bad.

Karla Evans is a student and writer living in Chattanooga, TN.

Funny this question should come up, since I just finished Infinite Jest, and therefore feeling quite sassy about myself as a reader of should-read books. Even so, two books stare at me with censure from my bookshelf: Airships by Barry Hannah and Pale Fire by Nabokov. That I am not well-versed in Shakespeare can result in shoe-gazing at literary functions. I have a book coming out on a small press, so I need to read (and buy) more small press books, to support my peeps. Right now I’m reading A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan, which is smart and a ton of fun.

I don’t know about ashamed, but a book I would not flaunt in a writers’ conference hotel lounge would be Your Personality Tree by Florence Littauer. It’s self-help, and therefore ipso facto embarrassing, although I read that David Foster Wallace kept an extensive self-help library (with many underlinings and notes, naturally) so perhaps self-help will become hipster. The book (in short) explains how there are different personality types. Nothing new, exactly. There are many in-roads to this concept (Meyers-Briggs, Astrology, Enneagram, DSM-IV) but my mother gave this book to me, and it was the first time we were able to have a conversation about how we see the world in different ways. And I’m a sucker for charts and quizzes.

Kelly Kathleen Ferguson’s narrative nonfiction book, My Life as Laura: Or How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself will be released by Press 53 this September.

I have never read a single one of Faulkner’s novels in its entirety. I read some of his short stories and an excerpt of two of his novels during a long-ago lit class, but I haven’t read As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August … well, any of them. Embarrassing and shameful, especially for a southern writer.

I love reading Mafia books by Mario Puzo. I read The Godfather  during a gym class in high school and was immediately delighted and scandalized so I gobbled up Puzo’s subsequent novels (while neglecting his earlier and possibly more “literary” work like The Fortunate Pilgrim). I still love them.

Gwen Mullins is a short story writer and a regular contributor to Another Loose Sally. See her most recent posts here, here, and here.

I deal more in guilt than shame. I’m guilty of not having read any of the Russians except for The Death of Ivan Ilyich (because it’s short) and a few Chekhov stories. I’m guilty of major Shakespeare lapses. Also I’ve read almost no Joyce, stopped reading Catch-22 after about thirty pages, and can never remember what happens in The Great Gatsby. I always read with polite interest to see how it’s going to end, then put the book down and instantly forget.

I have lots of guilty pleasure reads, and I was going to say there’s really nothing I’m ashamed of having loved, because I have strong feelings about literary snobbery, The Canon, people running down genre writing, etc. etc. I can really get going on that stuff–I’m super boring! Basically I feel like, if I devoured The Hunger Games trilogy (I did) then there must be something compelling there. Maybe not style, or character development, or plot. But something. I’m not sure what.

Anyway, I was going to say there’s nothing I’m really ashamed of having loved… but then I remembered that I’ve read (is that the word?) at least two Matthew Reilly books. Also… some Laurell K. Hamilton. So. I guess there’s some shame in my game after all.

Karen Munro lives and writes in Portland, OR. See her story “Nocturne” published on our site.

Heart of Darkness. It is always referred to; it comes up in conversation often; most of my students have read it; and I’ve meant to read it for years! (Really, this summer I will.)

I love a long and somewhat trashy fantasy series called The Magic of Recluse. I started reading them in high school. They have very little literary merit and (even I have to admit) the quality of the content/writing has gone downhill. But I love them.

Alex Myers lives and teaches in Rhode Island. He is a proud MFA graduate of VCFA who has published a number of short stories and has a book forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. See his recent Sally post here.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York has been sitting on my shelves for about fives years now, and every time someone notices it I act like I’ve read it. As a writer living in New York City, I have a multitude of reasons to have read the book by now. For one, Moses is New York City’s Lucifer, a city planner who, given virtually limitless power from the 1930’s through the 1960’s, overhauled the landscape of the city, most say for the worse. I actually complain about him all the time. For another, the book won the Pulitzer Prize and is notable as one of the finest examples of literary investigative journalism. Some of my friends who know my deep, dark secret have actually threatened to revoke my status as Knowledgeable New Yorker until I’ve read it.

All of these are fiercely compelling reasons why I should have read the book by now. But they’re all outweighed by one very good reason I haven’t read it—it’s so. Freaking. Long.

The book itself weighs 3 pounds, 9 ounces—for a frame of reference, my copy of War and Peace weighs1 pound,4 ounces. I just did twenty single-arm curls with it, and I’m tired. I can’t imagine carrying it around in a backpack for the months it would take to read it. It has 1,280 pages, 114 of footnotes alone, and I’m talking trade paperback pages—9”x6” with 1/2-inch margins—and precious little white space to give the reader a breather.

I’ve even mapped out the reading into estimated hours, taking into consideration the physical dimensions of the book and the knowledge of my own reading speed, and I estimate that it would take me, on average, an hour to read 15 pages. Doing the math, this means that it would take me approximately 77.5 total reading hours to finish the book, with an additional 7.5 hours if I read the footnotes, which I would inevitably feel compelled to do since it’s such an important book. The numbers are daunting.

Funny, though, I’ve just convinced myself to read the book. I mean, I’ve already spent so much time planning to read it and making excuses for not reading it, I could be on page 30 by now, only 1,250 to go plus footnotes. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll wait until next month.

The publishers of The In-Fisherman magazine, which I read obsessively as a child and teenager, also put together a series of instructional guides that have to rank as the most poorly designed and poorly written books I’ve ever read. Or at least that I’ve read dozens of times cover-to-cover. My two favorite volumes cover, predictably, my two favorite freshwater fish. Crappie Wisdom, not to be mistaken for Crappy Wisdom, covers the finer points of catching the small but frisky panfish known as the crappie.

But my favorite volume, Channel Catfish Fever, is dedicated to perhaps the ugliest fish of all, the catfish. Not only are they ugly, but their feeding habits are perhaps the most disgusting of any freshwater fish. They don’t just eat dead matter, they prefer it. The most popular baits for this fish are dead fish that’s been allowed to rot at least two weeks (the book includes the procedure for properly “ripening” this bait), worms, dough bait (don’t ask what’s in it, just wash your hands twelve times after using it), chicken livers, and coagulated blood. 

The book itself is a rambling mess, but the combination of sloppy editing and formatting (this particular edition has two blank pages for every two with print over the course of the first 50 or so pages), profoundly unfunny cartoons, cool pictures of ugly fish and men, solid if 20-years-outdated fishing advice, and blatant nostalgia have me hooked! (So to speak.)

But just as compelling a reason for my reading it is the presence of two of my childhood heroes, Toad Smith and Old Zacker. Obviously brought in for “color commentary” around the drier and more scientific writing of Doug Stange, Steve Quinn, and the other In-Fisherman editors without cool nicknames, these two old codgers were the kind of men I wanted to become when I was a kid—some real characters. Toad Smith was catfishing’s resident yeti, and Old Zacker was the requisite Grumpy Old Man. In his photos in the book Toad looks like he could be less than three generations removed from the first catfish to walk on dry land, and Old Zacker spends more time in the text complaining about river damming and the pansy-ass state regulations on trotlining and snagging than giving actual fishing advice. And they are what keeps me reading the book.

John Proctor, who can also be found at Numéro Cinq, lives in Brooklyn with his wife, daughter, and Chihuahua. His work has appeared most recently in McSweeney’s, Trouser Press, and the Gotham Gazette. See his sideways review on our site here.

The book I am ashamed I haven’t read is Moby Dick. I know I should have read it, I don’t know how I made it through undergrad as an English major without reading it, but I did. Moby Dick is such a part of our cultural lexicon; somehow I feel as if I am cheating in thinking of myself as well read since I’ve managed to avoid it. And, even though I love Gregory Peck, I haven’t seen the film, either. Writing this now, I somehow know that were I to put Moby Dick on my nightstand, it would remain unread.

A book I am ashamed to love… that is a much harder question. In keeping with the sea animal theme, I will say that I loved Jonathon Livingston Seagull. I fell prey to the platitudes spouted in the novella in the same way that I loved Pollyanna and her Glad Game. When she figured out a way to be happy with the crutches from the missionary barrel, because “we don’t need ‘em” I felt shame at my own seven-year-old response to disappointments (like no Frosted Lucky Charms) in my life and the thrill of potential for self-improvement (I could learn to love Wheat Chex). I could be like Pollyanna. I read Jonathon Livingston Seagull in my early teens and the notion of beginning ‘by knowing you’ve already arrived’ was so mysterious and amazing to me, and like the Glad Game, it originated in one’s attitude and inspired one to be better. I begged my mother to buy me the Richard Harris audio version for our hi fi system and when she didn’t, I fear I failed to find any glad in it. To add to my shame, I just read that Justin Bieber has a tattoo of the bird image from the cover of book.

Natalie Serber’s work has appeared in The Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, Hunger Mountain and Gulf Coast. Her story collection, Shout Her Lovely Name, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Natalie is working on a novel. See the title story to her collection on our site here.

I’ll just answer the first one because I have a lot to say about the book I’m ashamed I haven’t read.

My first job as a young teen was at my uncle’s retail store, Moby Dick Marine Specialties, on the cobblestone streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Dubbed “The Whaling City,” New Bedford is a complicated mix of a place next door to my hometown of Dartmouth.

Today its downtown is a national historical park, but when I was a kid it was where I went to work, catering to tourists who wanted to buy shark’s teeth, trinkets, and woven Nantucket baskets. A block away is The Whaling Museum, where my friends and I were disruptive during class trips. Down the street is the Seamen’s Bethel, where at least one of my cousins got married—an early 19th century building with a name that makes any middle schooler giggle.

You can’t step far in New Bedford without the past smacking you in the face—whaling captains’ grand homes topped with widows’ walks, historical markers noting this important date or another. I’ve eaten at the now-defunct Call Me Ishmael’s. I’ve ridden on boats through New Bedford harbor, past the breakwater, through Buzzard’s Bay to Cuttyhunk and the other Elizabeth Islands. The sea is an old friend. New Bedford itself is ingrained in me in a way I cannot explain. My childhood home had scrimshawed whale’s teeth and a harpoon as decoration. Yet never have I read beyond the first sentence of Herman Melville’s tome that gave my uncle’s shop its name.

First blame can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the Dartmouth Public Schools. The AP English students had to read Moby Dick, but the rest of us slugs only had to watch the movie. (And even that I don’t remember—maybe I skipped school or stayed home sick that day.) Part of me thinks it’s shameful that the powers that be didn’t even try to get us to read it. A larger part of me thanks them. Let’s face it: Moby Dick is a long book. Rumor has it, there are footnotes. I’m a lazy reader, and long passages of description bore me. Grapes of Wrath nearly killed the fifteen-year-old me. I cursed and moaned and foot-stomped my way through the Joads’ cross-country trek, and to this day no one can convince me that book isn’t as dry as the Dust Bowl. Imagine if I’d tried to make it through Melville’s ocean, hundreds of pages longer. I’d have drowned for sure. Or, more likely, turned to the teacher-forbidden, black-and-yellow savior, that, if discovered, would have earned me an “F.”

It’s strange that I grew up around so much history yet remain so ignorant of my town’s past. For instance, I traveled Slocum Road—a main Dartmouth thoroughfare—nearly every day of my life without knowing (or wondering) a thing about its namesake, Joshua Slocum. Not until two years ago did my curiosity pique, when I stumbled upon a Smithsonian exhibit that featured Dartmouth and New Bedford and displayed Slocum’s manuscript for Sailing Alone Around the World.

Now that book sits alongside a used paperback version of Moby Dick, awaiting my attention. I’m weighing whether or not to pack the two into the subset of belongings coming with me on a year’s adventure to the Pacific Northwest. It seems fitting to bring them, don’t you think?

As much as I love books, reading poses difficulties for me, in part because I am easily bored and distracted. But once I begin a book, I hate to stop, even if it’s awful, even if I struggle with the language, subject matter, or storyline. I like to see a narrative through to the end. If I don’t, or can’t, it feels like a failing on my part, not the author’s. So should I tackle Moby Dick? Can I make it through? I’ve gone this long without reading it; will my life change appreciably if I check it off of my list?

Amy Souza is the founder of SPARK, a quarterly creativity project in which artists, writers, and musicians use each other’s work as inspiration. Learn more at getsparked.org.

The list of books I’m ashamed I haven’t read runs longer than my grocery list––this, coming from someone who doesn’t even have a backup supply of instant Ramen, which falls into an entirely different category of shame. But for the purposes of this post, I’m going to cast my vote for Ulysses. Now if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you’re likely speculating that only 70% of people who claim they’ve read Ulysses actually have, and it’s just as likely that 25% of that 70% have only read bits of it, or maybe the CliffsNotes. But mostly I’m ashamed for the reason I wish I have read Ulysses: essentially, I want to be among the elite few. I want to say that I’ve read Ulysses and didn’t care for it.

Virginia Woolf totally dissed Ulysses. Flavorwire’s “The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History” quoted Woolf as having said, “[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.” I wish I could say something like that with even a shred of credibility. So I suppose my shame of not having read Ulysses is deeply rooted in my desire to be more like Virginia Woolf.

I’m ashamed that I’m ashamed. I feel it would have been more apt to choose The Waves by Woolf or Inferno by Eileen Myles.

I consider myself fairly promiscuous when it comes to my taste in different literary traditions and genres, so it’s a rare occasion I feel even remotely ashamed for loving a book. In fact, I was going to try and find a way to deflect this question. I was going to choose The Hunger Games because I read the series while I was supposed to be chiseling away at my critical thesis. But that response is disingenuous—I feel absolutely no shame for loving The Hunger Games.

But then it hit me like a bad epiphany: Sweet Valley High.

I gorged on this series for a short time during elementary school, and I’m ashamed I loved—emphasis on the past tense of love—these books. While I sacrificed hours and hours to the dark void of the Sweet Valley High time-suck, my more articulate friends were reading books I’d bypassed (including Anne of Green Gables, and Little House on the Prairie, among the many). How am I supposed to relate to these friends now? How is my present self supposed to relate to my former, Sweet Valley High-loving self? But more important, if I read Ulysses, will I redeem myself?

Mary Stein mostly obsesses over writing fiction. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and their black lab. She received her MFA from VCFA and is a contributor to Numéro Cinq. See her craft short on our site here.