I cannot remember a time when I did not love to read. Most people can pick out a book that changed their outlook on reading; they can say "This book made me love reading". I can't say that. I'm absolutely certain that I was born with an innate love of reading. It's part of my DNA. It's just who I am. But, there is still a series that majorly influenced the way I look at literature and reading.
I was 9 years old when The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released in theaters. I can remember going to see the movie and my mom covering my eyes when Galadriel almost takes the ring from Frodo. I'm not sure why she thought that would scare me when I had been watching Star Wars and Jurassic Park since I was 3. But I digress. Somewhere around this time is when I also began reading the books. Since I was still a little young, my parents thought I should start with The Hobbit, that it would be easier for me to read than The Lord of the Rings. It was a nice theory but it didn't work so well. I got bored about the time the dwarves started singing as they washed the dishes. So I stopped reading The Hobbit and instead spent at least the next year struggling through The Lord of the Rings. What 9 year old thinks The Hobbit is hard to read but The Lord of the Rings is easy? Clearly, I have issues.
Part of the reason I struggled with LOTR at first is because Tolkien uses a lot of detail. A lot. At the time, I had a difficult time reading just detail and only a little bit of dialogue. But I persevered and finished the series. And it became my favorite. Well, along with Harry Potter, as I devoured that series as the books came out. I probably read LOTR a couple more times between then and my senior year of high school. During high school I also read The Silmarillion and started The Unfinished Tales, which ironically enough I'm not sure I ever finished.
The big eye-opening moment came when I was a senior in high school. I was taking AP Literature and one of our projects/presentations required us to chose a book and do a report on it. Basic high school assignment. I believe we were given a list of books and told to pick one of those, or check with our teacher if we had another book in mind. When I heard about the project I immediately knew that I wanted to do it on LOTR. I approached my teacher and asked her if I could. I'll never forget her response. Basically, she said "No, because it's escapist literature". Welcome to the literary canon, where scholars you don't know decide what books are worthy of being taught. I had a whole argument planned to convince her to let me do LOTR but I was so shocked by her answer that I conceded.
"Escapist literature": basically, books that you read to escape from real life or read for fun. So anything that isn't escapist literature is boring and forced upon us? One problem: I enjoyed all except maybe 3 books that we had to read in high school. I read Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights way before anyone was ever required to read them. I read those books because I wanted to, because I enjoyed them. Does that make them escapist literature? Does that mean they shouldn't be a part of the literary canon? These are the issues I have with the literary canon. I don't agree with how it is decided that a book is worthy of joining the canon. I understand that during this time Harry Potter was huge and people still saw it mostly as young adult or children's fiction. But there is so much in those books that is more than what it seems. And LOTR is the same way, if not more so. Just because a book is popular and is made into a movie does not mean that it's unworthy of being considered canon literature.
And thus was my soapbox born. This is the issue that would bother me through my last year of high school and through my years as an English major in college. I was determined, however, to change the popular opinion somehow. And I like to think I did, at least a little.
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