Confessions of a Bad Reader

My husband tried to command me to blog about Rachel Held Evans saying something or other. But observe how his Evil Patriarchal Grip has broken apart as I blog about Something Completely Different. I know, it’s so shocking. Here I am a submissive, obedient wife just flinging aside the clear direction of my husband and doing My Own Thing. How will complementarianism ever survive.

I guess that the story of the day, all of us having got over the Gorilla and some other matters, is all about rape. I confess, I haven’t been reading the news. I will enumerate the reasons for my failure on that score.
1. I am on holiday.
2. I am on holiday.
3. I am on holiday and yesterday I finally got to quietly suck down one of those enormous margaritas in the big round glass available to anybody with some cash happening to loiter up and down the River Walk in the heat of the day.
4. I am on holiday.

In other words, being on holiday, I could not bring myself to click on anything unpleasant. Even if it means saying something about RHE, who, I gather, believes that some young man taking advantage of a young woman is Proof of everybody’s bad theology.

I know I should be flapping and having some very important opinions, but, being a bad person, there is something more pressing that is clouding and irritating my golden, sunny horizon. Want to know what it is? Or should I wait and let you guess? Oh never mind, I’ll just tell you.

Bad Writing.

I don’t, as I’ve said more times than you cared to hear, have much time to read. Of course, as I wrote that out, I saw the flaw. If I Really wanted to read, I could skip over These Precious Moments of self indulgent writing that are so crucial to my daily happiness. If I were a Good Person and not a Bad Person I would enjoy reading more than writing and would therefore make lots of room to do it.

I do like to read. I mean, of course I do. But I only like to read really beautiful writing. In fact, I would be willing to say, that I don’t really care what it is that I’m reading, if the writing is completely gorgeous. Tragically, that narrows the field considerably.

Some while ago a lovely young lady was imploring me to read Harry Potter, because, she said, It’s So Good. “What’s good about it?” I asked, preparing myself to rush out and buy a copy.
“It’s exciting,” she said, “and the story is wonderful.”
“Is it beautifully written?” I asked, “like, hmmm, Green Dolphin Street? Or The Fountain Overflows?” (Actually, I can’t remember what books I mentioned.) Her face fell, as they say in the bible, and she shook her head and took her own counsel about my bad personality.

So, I have never read Harry Potter nor the Poisonwood Bible. And, although I have tried to read some useful books of information, and The Help, and so on and so forth, I have never gotten beyond the second or third chapter of any of them, preferring, rather, to fling each book across the room because of its bad writing*, good story, or needful information.

I’m not trying to defend this about myself. I understand that I am not getting to learn about a lot of stuff by not being able to endure the writing. And I understand that good writing married to bad ideas is not going to make me into a virtuous person. But it does provide me with foolproof means of deciding What to read in the few moments that I gather to myself. And it even let’s me justify reading the same thing over and over and over again.

And, now, because I’m on holiday, I will put this down and read something fluffy on the Internet. Because there is some really good writing out there, but not very much of it is about those poor young people who are sinning and being sinned against. Have a lovely day if you like that sort of thing.

*Don’t write me nasty comments. See, what I’m saying is Subjective, with a Big Fat S. I know that lots of people love The Help and that I’ve just said something terribly racist. If you loved the writing in The Help then you should go out and read it again. And then you can bash the Quality of Writing on this blog to all your friends and relations. Just make sure to link me…cough.