Joe Queenan on how a harmless juvenile pastime turned into a lifelong personality disorder for the
Wall Street Journal.
My reading habits sometimes get a bit loopy. I often read dozens of
books simultaneously. I start a book in 1978 and finish it 34 years
later, without enjoying a single minute of the enterprise. I absolutely
refuse to read books that critics describe as "luminous" or
"incandescent." I never read books in which the hero went to private
school or roots for the New York Yankees. I once spent a year reading
nothing but short books. I spent another year vowing to read nothing but
books I picked off the library shelves with my eyes closed. The results
were not pretty.
I even tried to spend an entire year
reading books I had always suspected I would hate: "Middlemarch," "Look
Homeward, Angel," "Babbitt." Luckily, that project ran out of gas
quickly, if only because I already had a 14-year-old daughter when I
took a crack at "Lolita."
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