I’m back from the horrific depths of grad school! One of the most exciting things about finally being done with school is that I can now read for fun again. What makes this frustrating is that I work in a library and am overwhelmed by the fact that I can take home as many books as I want. I cannot read 28 books at the same time, and yet I have 28 books checked out right now. I’m glad to be back working on the Shameful Book Club because it gives me some focus and drive.
Just as a reminder (it’s been so long), the Shameful Book Club is an attempt by me to come clean about many books I have lied about reading. I’ve assigned a genre for each month of the year and when that month arrives I pick a book that I have lied about reading in my past, read it, and then write about it. September’s genre is “classics”, whatever that means.
I first became enthusiastic about I Capture the Castle after watching the wonderful film adaptation as a young teen. My mom did what any good librarian would do and gifted me a copy of the classic novel by Dodie Smith, who also wrote The One Hundred and One Dalmatians. I got very excited and started to read it, only to abandon it for some ungodly reason. I’m sure the demands of being a super rad high schooler got in the way of reading legit literature and bettering my soul. One this is for damn sure, I would have been a lot better off as a youth if I had only read I Capture the Castle at 15 rather than worrying about “coolness” and “college” and “boys” and “black eye makeup”. This book is a damn education. Every time I picked it up I felt like my soul was getting a hug. The writing is so effortless and yet incredibly impactful. You don’t need to strain or push yourself to read it, you’re actually excited to carve out time for it.
