Growing pains, or why I will in fact be reading Jane Eyre

So there was this time in my life when I didn't like books. Or rather, anything other than a specific genre of books. If the cover didn't have two people making lovestruck eyes at each other and the plot summary was anything other than a "girl and her life," I simply wasn't interested. I must've read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants five times just to keep my parents off my back about my reading habits.

"Hold up right there," you say, "an English major who didn't like to read?? Why, that's preposterous!"

Yes, dear reader, preposterous indeed. I missed out on many references; I was blissfully unaware that almost half of what adults said at any given time was an allusion to Shakespeare, Dickens, or the Bronte sisters. My love of English came from my desire to write, rather than read.

Yeah, I know, reading makes you a better writer, trust me, I got that lecture twenty times before. But only now am I conceding that my parents didn't use that lecture just to talk at me. Branching out of your comfort zone through reading makes you more able to branch out and take risks as a writer. Even just playing around with other authors' voices has made me more comfortable in my own voice. I've found that Lemony Snicket's voice is freaking difficult to re-create, but that I'm naturally a Jodi Picoult-esque writer. It's comforting to put a label on something so vast as writing voice.

So. A challenge for myself: To read classic literature and not feel the need to writhe in pain as I do so. I remember having this challenge for myself earlier in high school, but I didn't get much out of my first pick, Jane Eyre, because I failed to understand both the language and the feminist connotations Charlotte Bronte was trying to get across. But then, miracle of miracles, we were assigned the same book for my English class, and I got something from it. I was turning the pages going, "yeah, Charlotte, I'm with ya'. Children should be heard. Getting locked up in red rooms kinda sucks. I understand." So even though that assigned book got taken off the syllabus, I shall continue to read Jane Eyre for the sake of my growth as a writer, and, more importantly, my growth as a person.

A good beach book, perhaps

But not worth undermining the classics for

Namaste.