Your Horse was so High, it was up in the Sky

Dear Maria,
good evening, it's Wednesday, and I must admit, I'm slacking on the reading front. I open up Atonement with this grand intention to indulge myself in intellectual thought, when one of two things happens:
1) I realize my stomach is growling very loudly at me, and I must go and hunt for pudding. Except, wait, there is not pudding left at the convenience store. So then I have to drag my feet ALL the way downtown to buy an insatiable amount of dessert at Mclanahan's and everyone just looks at me like they know I'm wasting my life away in calories and sugar. Or...
2) How I met your Mother looks ever so tempting on Netflix, and my evening turns into a black hole of television.

Perhaps this is why I didn't accomplish as much as I'd have liked in high school. And while I agree that you were on your high horse whils't reading Shakespeare and Dickens while the rest of us subjected our friends to long and painful rants about boys (my humblest apologies), I realize it's not an entirely bad thing to be on your high horse. It just means you were past all the petty arguments and obsessions that most immature teenagers are in the midst of, and put your time to better use. And for that, I admire you.

However, as any good revelation tends to be complex, there are two parts to my epiphany: There is absolutely a necessity to catch up on the classics (in which I am sorely lacking knowledge of). So that is the answer to why I'm putting so many classics on my reading list. I mean, I'm fairly certain I'll enjoy them (thus far, Jane Eyre has been a quality read), but it also serves the purpose of being educated and thinking about the world. But I also know my taste in reading: I enjoy modern literature about people and their lives far more than older literature, and because of that, I am not totally depriving myself from John Green and Jodi Picoult. There is a time and place for modern literature, but it can't always be waved off as unimportant or "easy reading." There are many complex themes in John Green's books, and my understanding of humankind has been immensely wider after reading The Fault in Our Stars. So after much thought, I've created this lovely little reading list that may or may not be fully checked off after many nights playing Angry Birds:

1) Jane Eyre
2) Pride and Prejudice
3) Sense and Sensibility
4) Looking for Alaska
5) An Abundance of Catherines
6) The Vampire Lestat
7) Oliver Twist
8) Great Expectations
9) Slaughterhouse Five
10) Candide
11) Wuthering Heights
12) Midsummer Night’s Dream
13) The Sun Also Rises
14) The Member of the Wedding
15) The Scarlet Letter
16) Uncle Tom’s Cabin
17) Emma
18) Anna Karenina
19) Les Misérables
20) Tuck Everlasting
21) The Casual Vacancy
22) Persuasion 

 Wow. Not gonna lie, that looks slightly intimidating. My attention span better start kicking itself into high gear. 

Speaking of avoiding work, I took a lovely yoga class yesterday in attempts to ignore my finals, and I stumbled upon this lovely little poster:

At first, I was all, "why would they spend all that time creating a poster with a made up chart?" After sharing this picture on facebook, I got my answer. A lot of people think to share more humorous things, stuff that will make people giggle--maybe because it's easy to comprehend, maybe because people need in their lives, but whatever the case, it's more smart advertising. So that got me thinking. What is it about humor that is so striking? Obviously tragedy evokes plenty of emotion too, but in the busy-ness of our day to day lives, something funny seems to stop us in our tracks more than something sad. Does the kind of effect this poster has on us work in writing as well? When I'm browsing through books, trying to decide what to read next, I'm more likely to pick up a book that begins with something amusing, or witty. This could just be due to personal taste, but it seems that humor brings a strong resonance in our lives.

But then again, laugh-out-loud books are regarded less as fine literature and more as casual, easy reads. A lot of the memoirs I've been reading, such as David Sedaris' Naked and Tina Fey's Bossypants are enjoyable, but they aren't serious literature.

So would it be smart to sacrifice one's reputation in order to catch the common reader's eye? Or is serious literature just as catchy?

Peace and Ponies,
Kira