Ting is a pretentious artsy-fartsy prick

I have got to stop buying classic books at Booksale. Or this probably means that I have got to stop and think if the book I’m buying is at my current level. I just splurged on books again and among the books I’ve bought are Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I don’t think these books are of the kind meant to be read for leisure, like on a commute, or waiting in line.

I made that mistake with Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I read it once for whatever reason and I was puzzled why Jessica Zafra liked it and why it’s usually required reading in Literature courses. The answer came to me months later when I read it again, noticing the way it was written, how each sentence rolled off my mind’s tongue. I don’t really understand a lot about what constitutes good literature, but after my second run with Gatsby, I was like, whoa. The only other Fitzgerald book I’ve finished is This Side of Paradise, while I haven’t really finished my copies of The Beautiful and Damned and The Last Tycoon. I still have to struggle with Fitzgerald’s style. Reading his works somehow remind me of Tamaki Suou from Ouran High School Host Club.

Going back to my recent purchases, I tried bringing Portrait to school with me for leisure reading. I had another book on how to read auras as a back-up in case I got tired of reading Joyce. Both didn’t have the desired effect of luring me into their pages. I wasn’t really interested in what the aura book was saying, so meh. James Joyce, on the other hand, had a style that was like a chaotic jumble that sort of made sense. My brain was still too lazy to analyze whatever I was reading. Frightened with my experience with Joyce, I don’t think I want to know about Ivan Denisovich’s life just right now.

Since this isn’t the first time I’ve bought a book that I didn’t really read, it scares me to think that I’m actually some kind of literary and/or intellectual poser. I’ve bought books because I just heard about them from somewhere, not really knowing what they were. Utopia, Walden Two, the works of Thoreau, The Innocents Abroad, are just some of the books I have that I think are in my library for trophy purposes. Not that I was thinking that when I bought them.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid over something simple like me not really being mature enough to read some books. I haven’t yet found an opportunity to sit down and tackle Utopia. Walden Two interested me for a while until the waiting for the revelation of Skinner’s conditioning theories bored me. Thoreau’s nature observations don’t interest me and the language he uses in Civil Disobedience reminds me too much of readings in our Pol Sci subjects. Even though I liked Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, I still have yet to appreciate Twain’s travel books.

Letting all that out, I think that I’m just ranting because I splurged a lot of money on books. Again. Plus the fact that I’m still too dumb to read some of the books I bought. *sigh* At least I can probably rely on Robert Silverberg to keep me entertained for more or less a week while I ride jeepneys to and from school. I’m not saying Silverberg isn’t challenging, I just have more experience with sci-fi and what-if? stories.