Books don't have to be everything

This is awesome but not THAT awesome.

A while back, as part of my graduate studies, I took a class on the publishing industry and its rather uncertain future. We spent one evening talking about the different ways that writing is getting published these days--e-publishing, blogging, fan fiction--and inevitably, talk turned to the 50 Shades of Grey series.

Someone mentioned a book club in her hometown where little old ladies and housewives would get together and read (you guessed it) 50 Shades of Grey. We all tittered at her description. Not only is the series pretty heavily S&M-based erotica, but the writing is poor quality. (Disclaimer: I have nothing particularly against erotica, but the otherwise conservative people I know who kept posting on Facebook about how much they loved 50 Shades always amused me.) And even if you've read the books and enjoyed them--and I don't care if you did--you can probably concede that, well, they aren't exactly great writing.

But one of my classmates drew us back as we laughed. "At least they're reading," she said. "We talk all the time about how people don't read anymore, and then we make fun of them for reading 50 Shades of Grey? It's still a book and we don't need to make fun of it."

At the time, I thought she was right. We were silent after that, put in our place as graduate students in writing who ought to be happy that, for any of its flaws or ironies, a book was bringing people together.

But I'm not sure I agree anymore. Now, here's the obvious part of the post. I love books. I love reading. I have a handful of degrees focused on the creation, digestion, and analysis of the written word (that's a fancy way of saying I was an English major). Books are amazing and literacy allows for creativity and mind adventures and reading rainbows etc. to infinity. When I meet someone who says they don't read, I'm disappointed; anyone with a full bookcase is extremely sexy in my eyes.

But not ALL books are equal. Some are just plain bad. The existence of words on a page does not automatically make a certain story superior to one told in, say, a TV show. For example: for Christmas this year, my mother bought my fiance and me a book called 1001 Questions to Ask Before Getting Married. When we started reading it, we quickly realized that the book was a joke. And not even an intentional joke, just a poorly thought-out bunch of words on paper. There were questions in this book so basic that any reasonable couple would have talked about these things well before any idea of marriage--like what kind of career you want, or if you want children. There was an entire section devoted to making sure you weren't secretly gay--obviously the whole book catered to straight/heteronormative couples. A section on pets had a question about what you'd do with your partner's pet if you hated it: try and get it to run away and lie about it later, maybe? Hmm? Would you do that? Better find out if your partner is a psychopathic kitten-killer before it's too late!

We were in hysterics, reading this horrible book. (In my poor mom's defense, she thought she'd bought us something else--some other, way more legit couples book--and agreed with us that this book was totally ridiculous. We all had a good laugh.)

For what it's worth, I don't really care for used bookstores. At least not the ones where the books are piled high and you can barely move and everything is $2 and mildew hangs in the air. These places are the holy grail for some bibliophiles, I know, but they're plain gross to me.

Now, I don't care what you read--if you read Twilight for fun, that's all good by me, though we ought to be able to at least agree that there are some rather problematic themes in that series and that maybe the writing quality isn't the best. Harlequin romance novels? Why not? Again, they can be formulaic and silly and often rather sexist--but also fun and frothy and totally fine. Graphic novels? Actually, a lot of these are better than you might be aware and I really want everyone to read Persepolis.

I also don't read as much as I think I should. A so-called writer like me ought to be tearing through a novel a week at least, right? Yeah, that doesn't happen. I do read, and I'm slowly getting back into the luxury of diving into something really wonderful and not coming up for air until much later, blinking slowly as I remember my own reality. It just doesn't happen every week, or even every month. Because a lot of the time, reading feels like a lot of work, and I'd rather turn on Netflix and scroll through Twitter.

I've decided that I should work on my reading habits, but I should also work on my unnecessary guilt about how much reading I'm doing. Reading a so-so book isn't necessarily praiseworthy, and it certainly isn't better than watching your favorite movie or listening to a podcast. Books are not the holiest of media.

And reading should not ever ever be something you do because you don't want to feel like you haven't done it enough. Read whatever you want, but read it because you want to. (Or because you're paid to be a lawyer and read legal briefs or because you're paid to read someone's biography and review it.)

And those women in their 50 Shades book club? I mean, I'll never fully get it, but I'm fine with it. You do you.