My Not-So-Secret Inner Reading Life

So, I've this secret, right?

I've been reading since I was a young kid (don't worry, this is not the secret) and, over the years, I've always been naturally drawn toward literary fiction.  I mean, I've dabbled here and there.   Like most kids, I had flings with the animal adventure stories of Jack London, and the philosophical/moral implications of Madeleine L'engle's Time Quintet probably held as much influence over my childhood conception of religion as the Bible.  Once I reached high school, however, my reading aspirations were largely fixated upon the likes of such lit fiction staples as Salinger, Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald--a field populated vastly by authors that, in hindsight, share two primary characteristics: being both white and male.

I would like to say that once I matriculated to university that my reading preference diversified, but as a young English student at a small liberal arts college in the North Carolina mountains, I discovered a slew of new (for me) white, male writers with which to skew my perception of the American literary canon: the sexual farce of John Irving, the visceral suburban turmoil of Richard Yates, the postmodern ambition of David Foster Wallace, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Russo (yet another literary Richard), Jonathan Lethem, Cormac McCarthy, Phillip Roth...The problem now was that, not only was my literary snobbishness white and male, it now held a literature degree and puffed  on clove cigarettes while holding forth on the virtuoso narrative performance of Roberto Bolaño (a Chilean author, but still very decidedly male, nonetheless).

The great thing about the indoctrination of this sort of reading list is that it allows you to feel very smart.  The bad thing is that it means that your knowledge of the possible scope and range of what the reading world offers is highly limited.  And, for a librarian, this is bad for business.

No Librarian Ever: I recommend that you read only works by white, cisgendered, straight, male writers.
Patron: ...so, Dick Lit?

People don't read just to feel intellectually superior.  They read to escape, to feel themselves swept away by language and by the peculiar alchemy of a well-crafted story.  They read to marvel at the wonders of Earth in the 25th Century, the moons of Arianna Prime, and the elven forest-realm of Lothlórien.  People read to laugh, to be inspired, to find themselves breathless or heartbroken or bleary-eyed and awake, well past midnight with the last page long-turned.

In order to to connect more with other lovers of the written word (and prepare to be a better librarian), I have decided that the best approach is to stop filling a water glass at the faucet and starting plunging a bucket into the well.  My goal for 2020 is to read far and wide, to experience the range of pleasures open to a reader who embraces a diverse reading list.  This means getting past the ridiculous and condescending notion of fiction as a linear spectrum with high-brow literary fiction at one end and *shudder* genre fiction at the other.  I hope to tackle mysteries, romance, thrillers, historical fiction, graphic novels, and young adult.  I want to take on a reading list that is complex and comprehensive and doesn't come with a complementary penis.  Particularly, I'd like 2020 to be the year that I stepped out of my comfort zone, threw caution to the wind, and read dangerously.

Top Five Books I've Read in 2020 (so far and in no particular order)

1. Chances are... by Richard Russo (fiction)
2. The Institute by Stephen King (fiction)
3. American Prisons by Shane Bauer (non-fiction)
4. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (fiction)
5. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris (fiction)

As you can see, my list for the year is still sadly dominated by white, male authors.  If anyone has any recommendations to get me out of this slump (and I know you do), please feel free to share them.