TGIF: Unexpected (Literary) Pleasures

My sister comes to visit me today!!!

*cue extra-awesome sister/Friday dance*

Unexpected Books: Which books did you have reservations about reading, but ended up loving once you did?

Saving June by Hannah Harrington

This is pretty much my go-to book about, like, anything. I effing love it. But! It’s about a teenager reeling from her sister’s out-of-nowhere suicide. I do *not* deal well with death. I don’t read death books. Nuh-uh. I just…can’t. But everyone I follow on Twitter was all like OMG THIS BOOK YOU GUYS OMG OMG OMG, and so I naturally had to know what they were talking about so I could butt in and feel like a cool Twitter kid even though it was a dreaded Death Book. But my drive to be a Cool Twitter Kid outweighed by dread for this book, so I read it. And it was good.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I pretty much lump War Books in the same category as Death Books, for reasons that I’m pretty sure are clear. And one summer I was on this kick to read Modern Classics. And there was this list of them, and as you can probably guess, many of them were War Books, which I trudged through and ended up having really graphic nightmares because of. And then I got to Catch-22 and I was like  I CANNOT. So I didn’t for a long time. And then the goal-setting side of my brain started guilting the overly-sensitive side of my brain and somehow I bullied myself into reading it. And it was good. (Shockingly funny!)

Maus by Art Spiegelman

At think point you’re thinking, STOP IT. WE GET YOU NOW. TOTALLY UNDERSTAND YOU DON’T LIKE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION. Which isn’t totally true, because I really weirdly love Shiva the Destroyer and the Knossos Snake Goddess, which no one really understands exactly but she can’t be good if she’s a snake goddess. ANYWAY. I did not want to read Maus because not only is it about war and death, it is about THE HOLOCAUST, which I *really* don’t deal with well. And also, it’s a graphic novel.

At the time, I was required to read this for a college class and I thought the professor was nuts. We were in COLLEGE. Why were we reading a CARTOON BOOK? About the HOLOCAUST? Didn’t she UNDERSTAND just how SERIOUS the subject was?! GOD.

But I was too chicken to tell her I refused to read it on moral and ethical grounds because she was very revered in our department and I really wanted her to like me. (And she did. We bonded over Russian despots and Monty Python. It’s cool.) So I grudingly read Maus. And it was good.

And now I will stop taking up your Friday. I wish you blessings and sunshine and lots of time in pajamas and air conditioning this weekend. (I will be at Six Flags. In NEW JERSEY. So enjoy the pajamas and a/c for me, k?)

TGIF is a weekly meme hosted by Ginger at GReads!