middlemarch.

There are so many great books waiting to be read. There are also so many terrible books waiting to waste your time. This is a blog about books. Because books, even the bad ones, are worthy of much and a blog is the least I can do. And anyway, I like writing about the books I'm reading. Other people's fiction is generally always more interesting than my own non-fiction.

The blog is called 'february' partly because it is an abandoned attempt at blogging which I began last year in February sometime... and partly because the word 'february' is a fantastic word to look at. Not that great to say, but a very good-looking word nonetheless. (Hm, 'nonetheless' not a bad-looking word either). The title of this blog has mostly nothing to do with the month.

The title of this post on the other hand, has almost everything to do with - this post. 'Middlemarch', by George Eliot. This is a book that has been tormenting me for about 6 months. Last semester, our somewhat dashing English Lecturer embarked on a fifteen-minute tangent about the beauty that is 'Middlemarch'. "800 pages of pure poetry" I think he called it. One of the most beautific things to come out of the English language. I'm not sure why he was rambling about 'Middlemarch' as the Lecture was on 'Jane Eyre'. But he was very persuasive. It's easy to get excited about something when someone else is excited about something (and happens to have an astounding vocabulary).

So I started reading it. Which I think was a mistake. It's long. And daunting. And difficult. Most of the beauty and poetry, I'm pretty certain, is going way over my head. Books that are smarter than me naturally make me feel uncomfortable. I thought I had the whole female-author-English-countryside-19th-century-novel thing down. But Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters clearly have nothing on Miss Evans. When does a timeless English classic stop making you feel educated and intelligent and start making you feel an idiot and resentful towards any work of literature written before the 20th century?

Most of my good friends scoff and sigh when they see me trudging through 'Middlemarch'. Tessa, my digsmate, is mildly outraged stating that there are so many books to read, and one can only read so many, why waste precious reading-time on something so laborious? And more importantly, something I am clearly not enjoying? (This coming from the girl reading Frank Herbert's 'Dune' for the third, possibly fourth, time). And she does have a point. Is it worth it?

Maybe I should simply wait until I'm smarter and can pick up on the subtle qualities only a learned person notices. 'Wait until I'm smarter'? As if intelligence is achieved by waiting... Surely reading difficult books makes difficult books easier to read? Or is my 'Middlemarch' quest a intellectual snobbery thing? Probably. Do I push through just so I can say I've read it and smugly agree with the lecturer? Or is it really that good? Curse those academics! They lure you in with beautifully crafted sentences and classy, clever thoughts and then turn around with the very same lingo to strip you of any sense of dignity. Sigh.

So I've put 'Middlemarch' on pause. Again. And am struggling to return to it, as I've stumbled upon Don Delilo's 'White Noise'. Which is pretty much always within reach and very rarely closed. But more of that later...