Everyday Canvas

On Reading Certain Books

2 Prompts for 3/7/15

Prompt 1 by Lyn's a Witchy Woman : About E.L James and 50 Shades of Grey. Do you think it is erotic romance or pornography? Do you think this will encourage more openness about sex? I wasn't surprised to see the influx of copycat books. What about you?

I haven’t read this book, and neither do I plan to. Whether it is erotic romance or soft porn, it doesn’t matter. Plus, I hesitate to even think about reading it, as its demeaning-women factor has been mentioned. I have a long list of novels to read and I just don’t have time for this one, especially after all the hoopla it has caused.

I believe sex could be written in detail if it has a serious effect on the plot or the characters, like any other aspect in a novel. On the other hand, I don’t like unnecessary elaboration of sex written for titillation even inside the kinds of novels I like, let alone in genres like adult romance or erotica.

As to this book’s copycats, those in e-books that mention the “billionaire” and "loves" together annoy me. As soon as I see the word billionaire in the title or the description, I skip that book. At least, 50 Shades of Grey is the original one.


Prompt 2 by Joy : Reading old texts like the Greek and Roman literature and works up to a century ago versus the present-day works: Which one do you think is better for the improvement of a writer's craft?


There are differences between the classic texts and even those books written in the early twentieth century and the books published in our time. Over the decades, issues like understanding of the use of language, punctuation, and the author’s personal involvement in the story have changed.

The basic good story construction has stayed about the same, however, and the way the earlier writers viewed the human experience can be refreshing for the writers of today. So there is a good reason to read those books, at least once in a while, to get the feel of the earlier times and thinking. A writer never knows by whom he or she can be influenced. Most award-winners of today have probably read James Joyce, Faulkner, Bronte sisters, or Jane Austen, whose works are closer to our understanding, but with the passage of time, are considered to be among the oldies.

Yet, for the novice writer, I think it is best to stay with the examples of contemporary writing, and there are a flood of good examples in the published books of today. If a new writer reads a classic writer like Dickens or the writers of Dickens’s time, there is no harm in that, as long as he or she doesn’t imitate their ways of telling a story like that of addressing the reader as, “Dear Reader.” If, as a writer, you butt into the story like that, you can kiss a decent publication of your book good-bye, but then you can always self-publish, even if you get rotten reviews.

As for me, although I mostly stick with the contemporary writing, I still enjoy the oldest classics like Sophocles, Homer, Shakespeare, etc., and the newer classics like the Brontes. Talking about the Brontes, I recently read for the first time The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by the third Bronte sister Anne Bronte whose work wasn’t as widely publicized when I was studying in school. Her book, I thought, was just as good as or even better than the famous novels of her sisters: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

After all, one never knows what one can discover through reading.