I need to vent. Recently I read a blogger's diabtribe about best sellers and it reminded me of how frustrated I get when people act all high and mighty about what they read, or (more often) about what others read. Some people actually make apologetic excuses if you ask them what they're reading and it turns out to be a best seller. My father wouldn't let me read what he called "trash" (i.e., Nancy Drew and other popular novels) so I grabbed a flashlight and became a secret Nancy Drew reader. When he found me out, he took all the novels out of my room and made a deal with me that I could read one of my choices every time I finished two of his. The result of which was that I stopped reading for pleasure. My mother had me read aloud to her to surmount the onus of the requirement. Thus I read Ivanhoe, The Black Arrow, Christians Courageous, and Master Skylark and came to adore all of them.

My father was a noted professor and an avid reader. He read so quickly that he could polish off a small novel in a couple of hours without any trouble. So he read mysteries and spy stories the way some of us watch Shark or CSI. And yet, despite his passion for, and ability to wax thoroughly rhapsodic on the wonders of good mysteries and spy stores, he was an inveterate snob about best sellers, like the blogger I encountered the other day.

I fail to understand a snotty attitude toward best sellers. Despite that dreadful patch with my father which led to a period where I didn't read anything for pleasure, I now read voraciously and anything that strikes my fancy, both "good" and popular. I asked people why being popular *must* equate to being lesser but never get a satisfactory answer. Popular really isn't necessarily bad. In fact something being popular may mean it has some merit. Pasta is popular. Apples are well-liked. Blue jeans are hugely popular. Are any of these bad for people? Of course not. And as far as reading goes, not everyone can work up interest in the smells of a small pastry or a mother's shawl. Proust's prose is certainly graceful and stirs more qualitative and evocative images, more so than Danielle Steele. And Sartre demands responses from a reader, whether in agreement or not. And Shakespeare requires engagement. And Jane Austen wraps you in her arms. All of which is wonderful and unquestionably more refined and smart, more likely to enhance the reader's cleverness and perceptions of life and people than, say, Jackie Collins or John Grisham.

But any reading stimulates the imagination. Babies read Pat the Bunny - a humungous best seller, by the way - and move on to Eric Carle and 1001 Tales and Madeleine and libraries-ful of wonderful fantastic books. If they're lucky, they proceed to Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames and Judy Blume and eventually Norton Juster and Tolstoi. What matters is that their imaginations are stirred. If one adult likes so-called trashy romances and another prefers history and biography, is either a better person? Possibly more aware of facts and events, which is useful and good to know, but beyond that?

I'd love to know what any rare readers of this page read and what they think about best sellers.

Labels: books, history, reading, reflections