Disclaimer #1:Apologies in advance for this tl;dr treatise. I felt the need to unburden myself wholly in this particular confessional. I have tried to break up the text with appropriate giffitude.
Disclaimer #2: Yesterday was an important anniversary for Nikki and Bekah, and it got me thinking about why any of us are here in the first place. This is part of that story for me.
If you google “books that turned me into a reader” you’re going to find lots of interesting, erudite and laudable choices, most of which you’ve probably heard of or at least seen in your school library. Charlotte’s Web, To Kill a Mockingbird, Invisible Man. Transformative books from every reading level. I don’t have a book like that.Because I don’t remember ever NOT being a reader. Sure, there were seasons when I didn’t read much, didn’t have new books TO read or simply got obsessed with a boy or a vacation or a television show or something else that kept me from reading.
But I do have a book that I can mark with forever changing my reading habits into something new, into what they are today. And it’s not the highbrow, transcendent literary fiction I wish I could tell you it is.
It’s Twilight.
It’s da troof.
The Coming of Age of a Book Snob
As a kid I read all the usual fare: Narnia, Nancy Drew, Little Women, EB White, etc. As a teenager, my reading habits matured rather quickly. I didn’t ever go through what I would consider a “young adult” phase.
I remember my 7th grade science teacher introducing me to Mary Higgins Clark, and I devoured a ton of her murder mysteries that year. But then the next year I found Lord of the Rings (because I was stalking the very cool patches on an even cooler guy’s backpack, and I couldn’t go very long without knowing exactly what “Frodo Lives” meant to him).
High school was a blur of required reading. Lots of plays, classics and theology. Amid the regular high school diet of Hawthorne, Keats, Hemingway and Twain, I found I loved literature. I memorized more than my share of Chaucer and Shakespeare just because I found it compelling to do so. We read one book of GK Chesterton’s in AP Senior English, and I went out and bought all of his books. I liked knowing an author well. That compulsion pushed me into majoring in literature.
As a result, I spent the decade between 17 and 27 reading nothing but classics.
Oh sure, sometimes I would pick up an Oprah Book Club pick, a Nick Hornby novel (because I loved High Fidelity), and it was during this time that I read the Harry Potter series. But I was a literature major, and I lived and breathed the dictates of my syllabi.
Even after graduation, I didn’t deviate much from classic literature. I’d found an affinity in college for American and Southern Gothic. I spent six months reading Carson McCullers and another three on Wilkie Collins, even though I hated Dickens. Of course, I still found time to re-read Lord of the Rings every summer, and each Harry Potter book just before the movies came out.
At 24 I started a book club for classics only. Our first meeting we had 30 women. 16 months or so later (and 16 classics later – from Turn of the Screw to Anna Karenenina) we were 4.
This was common.
When the Twilight craze started popping up everywhere, my reader friends and I were appalled. I really knew nothing about it other than the usual sparkly vampire/campy writing stuff, but we still found time to openly disdain it. Remember Pieces of Flair on Facebook? These were ours:
These buttons: WAY more embarrassing than just reading Twilight could ever be.
I was content to sit back in my comfy armchair with my Nabakov and my Faulkner (that I could barely understand) and my David Foster Wallace (that I hated and loved in equal measure) and pass judgement on the newest craze because I’d heard that people thought Edward Cullen was better than Jim Halpert.
Not possible. James Halpert for always.
I was a book snob. And I was happy to stay that way.
A Book Snob Reformed
Then one day (sometime in March 2009) my husband came home with a movie rental. Twilight. Cue a very unhappy me. We had little ones and renting movies was far more our speed than going to see one, and I was at the mercy of whatever he brought home. I had just made fun of my best friend for watching it with her little sister the weekend before. How was I gonna save face on this one?
Especially because … I LIKED IT. Like a lot. Like enough to pack up my toddlers and head to the store the next day to get the books. And by “the store,” I do not mean the Barnes & Noble I went to regularly. I couldn’t risk my regular book sellers seeing me pick up that shiny black, white and red cover that I’d been summarily dismissing for months. I went to Wal-Mart. No self-respecting reader buys books available at Wal-Mart.
ok, still a little bit of a snob
I was so ashamed I hid the shiny copies of Twilight and New Moon under a box of Capri-Suns in case I chanced upon someone I knew in the checkout lane. At home, I hid the covers of the books under the blankets so my husband wouldn’t know what I was reading. I gave him endless crap for bringing the movie home; I couldn’t let him think he’d sparked a flame.
I devoured the series. I went online looking for forums and fanfiction and found the awesomeness that was letterstotwilight.com. It’s been almost 6 years since I marched out of lurkdom and commented on LTT/LTR. That led me to an awesome community of women that include any and all of you who regularly read That’s Normal. Twilight was truly transformative.
Gratuitous Rob in white T gif for old time’s sake
The reading experience I had with Twilight was new to me. It was the first time I was able to be completely immersed in a book without taking notes, putting it down for a breather, taking my time embracing the nuance or parsing the language. I was truly reading JUST for the pleasure of the story. And I wanted more.
I kept going back and back to the (at the time very small) Young Adult section of my bookstore, eventually overcoming my embarrassment at being seen in the section. It was there I found just a TON of amazing books by authors that weren’t found in a single Norton Anthology or on a Discount Classics shelf.
I became someone who sought out recommendations of all kinds of books. Fantasy, mythology, horror, romance, science fiction. Certainly not always young adult, but never spurning it either. I’ve read something like 300 books since I picked up Twilight (and that doesn’t account for the hours and hours of fanfiction that took up most of 2009 … and 2010 if I’m being honest). If I hadn’t read twific, I never would have found Outlander and look where that’s led us. I owe the diversity and the pleasure of those all those subsequent reads to letting Twilight change my reader point of view.
The Book Snob Strikes Back
Even though I don’t love that term, I still am a book snob. It’s just now … I know what I like and why. I’ve dipped my toe in genre after genre, places I never expected them to go. If I say I don’t like a book, an author, an adaptation it’s because I’ve read it and found it not to my taste, not because I unreasonably think my taste is above it.
Because Library Rob is on topic
And I have no patience for people who don’t own what they love. You want to gorge on high fantasy? Honey, let me introduce you to my favorites. You want to wallow in some literary fiction? I’ll meet you in the gazebo. You want to swoon over the newest paranormal young adult? Let’s compare him to Sam Roth and see who comes out on top (it’ll be Sam).
My new book snob manifesto: read what you like, when you like, because you like it.
But own it. I finally did.
What book turned you into a reader? What book changed the way you read? Twilight: love it or hate it?
