"How is this book?" my mom asked, inspecting a blue paperback I had left on the dresser.
"It was garbage," I replied after struggling with how to answer. "But it was necessary."
Recommended for you
After the second semester of my junior year, I was left exhausted and perhaps slightly mad after a tidal wave of reading that started during Christmas break. By some miracle, my eyesight retained its previous level of poverty, unlike the former year when it decided to change after six years of stability following a semester of heavy reading—the joys of being an English major.
Have Your Voice Heard: Become an Odyssey Creator
In spite of having just read thousands of pages of classic literature, I was eager to have the summer off and read as I wished. I was given a host of works by Dostoevsky that Christmas and was looking forward to digging into them. I started with The Brothers Karamazov, a book that had been recommended to me my freshmen year and I looked forward to devouring ever since. Oddly enough, when it finally came time, I couldn't.
The story wasn't bad. It was quite good. I had some difficulty remembering names, as there were quite a few and they were very Russian and very unfamiliar. Otherwise, I enjoyed the story and where it was going—but I didn't get very far.
I found myself faced with a mental block, unable to spend a significant amount of time reading. The end of the summer came, and I barely read a fraction of the book.
Then, one day, I went to a shop with my friend. I saw a book with a blue cover and a picture of a white-haired girl. It was six dollars.
It was garbage. I knew it was garbage. I figured it likely was, being an obviously young-adult novel and from its description on the back. But it was six dollars, and I needed a fantasy book. I hadn't read one in ages.
As I suspected, the book was trash. It was the typical young-adult novel featuring a co-dependent relationship disguised as romance. The girl had a spunky personality, trauma-filled past, and uncontrollable powers. The boy was an emotionally-distant warrior with a dark background. This combined with the fantasy element made for a main character that primarily served as a damsel in distress, but somehow had immense power. Typical bad writing and amateur mistakes.
That being said, I downed the whole story in a few days.
I finally understood why one of my high school English teachers liked the Twilight series. The books were utter trash, much like the one I had read. But she didn't have to analyze them. She didn't have to dissect them. There was nothing more to them than a poorly-written collection of plot-lines and personalities designed to appeal to guilty pleasures.
They lacked quality and complexity.
And that's why they were perfect.
Reading literature filled with complex themes and tightly interwoven literary techniques, though intriguing and enjoyable, is tiring. It is even more so when a person has to do it constantly, as is the case for English teachers and English majors.
For that reason, I entirely support English majors—and others engaged in reading complex literature—periodically and intentionally reading simple and even poor-quality works.
Everyone's mind needs a break at some point, and bad books can be just that relief. This doesn't mean filling one's mind with negative influences, but it can mean lowering one's critical standards to create a much-needed diversion. Of course, if you can find good books that give your mind a break, go for those. That is obvious. But if you find a poorly written one, it's okay. It can be just as relieving to read.
Perhaps it is that garbage literature is more useful than we might have thought—more like recycling. So go, recycle. When you're up to it, trade the terrible novel for a classic. You will appreciate it more and have a much better time reading.
