Literature

What makes for good literature? I always find that if I can't bring myself to remove my eyes from a written work - it must be good... Or if I feel so much it brings me to tears, something of worth is happening. Right? I mean, I read the Twilight series - the first three books in three days, took me a while (the rest of the week) to finish the last one - and I don't think they were spectacularly written... but my world became one where vampires and warewolves existed. So did Stephanie Meyer create something beautiful? Excepting, of course, that last book...

I just read a piece by a fellow BSC student and I cried. I had to stop reading because my vision was so clouded I could no longer see the words written down in front of me. Has this person created something that needs to be shared with the world? I believe so. I think, if I were to read that piece again (which I will) I will cry again. Maybe that's where the beauty lies... in it's ability to make it's reader feel the same emotion as if it were happening for the first time? I watch movies over and over again, each time I feel what I felt the first time. I laugh, and sigh at the same points. I can't claim that most of this is worth anyone's true devotion - but undeniably someone has created something worth sharing. What is a movie but written word acted out for an audience?

The world presented to me within a book quickly engulfs me - if it doesn't, I put the book down and forget about it. This, of course, is excepting the times when I am forced to put down a good book to be force-fed another book by a professor. In my defiance against authority I am then forced to deny any trace of enjoyment from that book. Mostly because I say to myself that when I actually have time I'll read the book in its entirety and for now I will only read enough to get enough quotes to write an A-worthy paper... Remarkably for me, that usually doesn't entail much.

I find my happiest of days are the ones I spend reading. It's something I have lost touch with. Good literature excites me. I bought a book today and I can't wait to bury myself in it - of course, I have to wait 'til I have the appropriate time to do so.

So, good literature? Who knows. We all enjoy different things. In school we are told what's good... but I think the trick is to spend too long in a bookstore reading back covers and first chapters, working to find something new.