Pleasure versus duty

At bottom, of course, the issue in choosing what to read (and what to do and how to live) is the old conflict, dating from the Garden, of pleasure versus duty: what we want to read versus what we think we ought to read, or think we ought to want to read.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Ruined by Reading

As a student in high school and in college, there were always books that were required reading. The assigned reading for my college literature classes (all eight semesters) was especially oppressive. Yet somehow I always managed to sneak in pleasure reading (although many books in the latter category (such as The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and The Grapes of Wrath) might well have been assigned reading in other literature classes.

Then during my career I wrote a weekly book column for nearly 40 years, and so review books mostly dictated what I read. Non-required reading, as when I was in school, had a bit of that forbidden fruit quality about them.

Now I'm retired and can read whatever I choose, yet still the above the line from Ruined by Reading by Lynne Sharon Schwartz rings true for me. Now the reading requirements are set by time, not professors or newspaper deadlines. How many years do I have left to read books, many of them classics, that have been sitting on my shelves for decades waiting for the right time, the right inspiration? How much time do I have to reread treasured books from years past?

Some books just seem more important that others, yet just as a plate of burger and fries draws us when we know we should order a salad, so a thriller or murder mystery or romance is what we are tempted to pick up to read, leaving the George Eliot novel, the Shakespeare play or the collection of modern poetry for another day.

One way I attempt to discipline myself is to keep four books on my reading table, beside which I spend most afternoons. These books usually include one light novel, one serious novel, one work of relatively light nonfiction and one more challenging work of nonfiction. Then I read one chapter of one book, put it at the bottom of the stack and read a chapter of the next. This way I can usually read a little of each every day.

It is not a perfect system, but it allows me to get my burgers and fries, and my salads, too.