Have you considered...reading a big old book?

Plus our next readalong: it's John Irving January!

I spent a lot of my childhood and young adulthood reading the classics, whether it was by choice or because they were assigned to me. I read Little Women in third grade (which kicked off a lifelong obsession), read and didn’t entirely understand A Farewell to Arms in high school, worked my way through the list of works that might be on the AP test in senior year because I was an overachiever with a lot of free time, and majored in Creative Writing in college, where I took classes on Victorian Lit and African-American Lit and Postcolonial Lit. Throughout those years, I read Heart of Darkness at least three times (I don’t even hold a grudge against it…I’m just tired of it). After college, when I was unhappily underemployed and spiraling about the state of my future, I read through a bunch of the classics I missed in school, like The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises and Ethan Frome. I took it for granted that that’s just what reading was—old books. The classics.

But after that brief post-college foray into the world of classic literature, I kind of stopped reading the old stuff. There are just so many new books, and so much of my life revolves around reading those new books—as a reviewer, as an author who blurbs books, and as someone who enjoys seeing some buzzy book on Instagram or the New York Times and then picking it up at the bookstore. A large part of being a working writer is actually knowing what books are currently being published, and so most of my focus over the last many years has been on new books. I buy classics sometimes (remember that “buying books and reading books are two different hobbies” meme?), but I mostly don’t read them.

But am I tired, a little bit, of the ceaseless internet discourse around what’s new and popular? Do I long to escape to a world with no social media, no Donald Trump, no one using the term bed rot? Yes and yes.

Any time that I’ve picked up an older book these past few years, I’ve felt an almost instant sense of relief. There are many factors behind this, I think. One is that old books don’t mention social media trends, because Charles Dickens didn’t even know about TikTok dances. But the bigger, more important thing about old books is that they remind me of something very important, something that calms my racing mind when I’m convinced that the world is ending and that things have never been this bad—it’s that things have always been bad.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be comforting, but it is. During the early pandemic days, I found a lot of relief in reading about people going through horrible, challenging times. And it helped me to know that these things were all written down long ago, sometimes hundreds of years ago, and the world kept on spinning!

This year, I followed along with From the Front Porch’s Conquer a Classic project on their Patreon, where Annie and Hunter choose a long classic and read it slowly through the year, posting a conversational podcast episode about it once a month. Conquer a Classic isn’t new—they’ve been doing it for years—but last year was the first year I attempted it. The book was Bleak House and I, uh, did not finish it (but listen, I could finish it at any time! Hope springs eternal!). But this year—this year was Lonesome Dove. What a book! What a time! I more or less read it throughout the year, although not exactly on the same schedule as The Bookshelf. I stayed on track for the beginning of the year, basically took the summer off, then caught up in late fall. Reading this book was one of the biggest sources of comfort and joy to me this year. So much happened. The American West sounded terrible. Everyone was always dying in the most horrific ways. And this, somehow, made me feel better about our cultural and political shit show (I try to keep profanity to a minimum here on No One Asked for guilt-based reasons, but there’s really no other way to put it, sorry). After the election, I was like, “please let me escape to the brutal world of the West.” And then I got to hear Annie and Hunter talk about the action-packed chapters of the month and it was just such a delight. Every time Hunter was like, “Gagged!” I was like, “Yeah, actually, that’s the only way to describe how I feel about this latest unexpected and violent development!”

It was a great experience, is what I’m saying, and one that I’d love to have more of this year. Because here’s the thing: I want to be smarter. I do. I want to challenge my brain and improve my own writing. But once you’re an adult…it’s kind of on you. I no longer have the structure of school or the motivation of an under-challenged and nerdy high-schooler. I’m very much an adult now, and no one’s going to assign me these books. And there’s no telling what this year will bring—all of us could use the strength of old books to lean on.

So that’s my biggest, or maybe only, reading resolution for 2025: read the classics. I own many of the books I want to read already, so it’s not like I have to obtain a copy of, say, Middlemarch or The Custom of the Country. They’re in my possession! I’m looking at them right now!

This also means I’m not setting a very high reading goal for myself this year. The only reason I really set a numerical goal in the first place is to give myself the reminder of what I’d rather be doing when I’m tempted to scroll through, like, Threads (another resolution: delete Threads because it’s like being stuck talking to the absolute most boring person you’ve ever spoken to). I like having a goal because I’m obsessive and neurotic, but I know that focusing on longer books will naturally mean smaller numbers. So what, who cares—Fred Armisen as Joy Behar voice.

This year, the Conquer a Classic book is Don Quixote, which I’ve certainly never read. You can join the From the Front Porch Patreon here—I notoriously love paying for a subscription, but also I do think this one is very much worth it. Reading a book all on your own can be so special, but there’s also something nice about reading along with a podcast and/or a community. I know there are several other podcasts out there that do deep dives into classics (I’m thinking of Novel Pairings and Hot and Bothered, which has a season all about Pride and Prejudice). If there are any podcasts (or Substacks, ahem) that you follow along with that cover the classics, please let me know!

Also, I just looked at Instagram and saw that one of our lovely local bookstores, Storyline, is considering adding a classics book club. I am on the record (with them, because I DM-ed them) as being a supporter of this idea, but maybe you’re in Columbus and you’d be into it, too.

Some of the books I’m considering reading this year because I already own them:

-Pride and Prejudice (a reread)

-Emma

-The Custom of the Country

-Middlemarch

-Wuthering Heights

-Dracula (reread)

-If Beale Street Could Talk

-Mrs. Dalloway

-Winesburg, Ohio

And…drumroll…I decided to write about another big old book here on No One Asked. I had so much fun thinking so intensely about Crossroads (perhaps not old enough to be a classic, and yet it exists in its own space so I feel like it counts?) that I decided to do another deep dive into a book. Instead of Franzen Fall, it’s…John Irving January! I loved John Irving in high school and had some pretty formative experiences reading The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany, but I decided to go for a new one: The Cider House Rules. Unfortunately, it’s also timely because it’s about abortion access. The times don’t really change that much.

The copy I’m reading…I had a vintage mass market copy but the print was too small for my far sighted eyes.

Even though it’s John Irving January, we’re starting in late January and going into February to give us (me) time to read. Here’s the schedule, based on the page numbers in my edition, but I’m including chapters in case you’re reading a different one:

January 22nd: 1-223 (Chapters 1-5)

January 29th: 224-395 (Chapters 6-8)

Feburary 5th: 396-602 (Chapter 9 to the end…my copy also includes author’s notes and an afterword)

John Irving feels like a perfect follow up to Franzen. They may be different generations (J. Franz is 65 while John Irving is 82…does that count as different generations?), but they share one important writing quality: extremely weird and vivid sex scenes. In fact, I’ve been unable to get two separate sex scenes from The World According to Garp out of my head since high school. I’m excited to tuck into a big, sprawling, weird book and see what it has to offer.

Also, every single time I read or say the words “Cider House Rules” I think about the Tobey Maguire SNL monologue where the guy yells, “Cider House RULES!”

@thealmanac77SNL Host Tobey Maguire (2000) #snl #snlmusicalguest #universalplus #universalplusafrica #universalpluslatinoamerica #90s #90skids #90smusic #malaysiatiktok #philippinestiktok #tiktokindia #tiktkokphilippines #tiktokaustralia #fyp #tiktokbrasil #thealmanac77 #saturdaynightlive #fypviral #snlseason25 #snlhost #snlsketch #tobeymaguire

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I’ll still be reading plenty of new books next year, but I’m really looking forward to, well, looking backward. Do you have any reading goals for next year? Are there any classics you want to read (or reread)? Are there any classics you’ve read and loved as an adult? And most importantly…will you be reading along for John Irving January? The Cider House RULES.

This is my last post for this year, but I’ll be back in early January (once my son is back in school!) with the paid monthly roundup and a list of my favorite reading and watching experiences of 2024. See you next year. xo