9:55
How did I leave this out of my previous post? I was, as I said, a voracious and undiscriminating reader. Instead of classics, as I child I read whatever looked most interesting from first the Arrow and then the Scholastic book club fliers. I remember the thrill of the pile of books that arrived for me, and the occasional copy of Dynamite Magazine, and once a poster composed entirely of stickers, which I hung as a poster, feeling even then that it was kind of an arty thing to do. No one guided my reading. I met Charles Dickens as a high school freshman when A Tale of Two Cities was assigned. (My brother inherited my marked up copy, with, “Christ Figure” repeated in the margins. I bet he did really well on his paper.)
I remember in fifth grade, maybe, checking out Charles Lamb’s Shakespeare from the school library because I felt Shakespeare was something I should know about. I remember trying to read Richard Hofstadter during a summer swim meet in early high school, but the only other thing I remember about that afternoon was that a younger teammate pointed out that I had armpit hair, and I was deeply embarrassed. I bought that Hofstadter (I had to Google the correct spelling, and I got it wrong the first two times, and it turns out WordPress recognizes the correct spelling, which is awesome) in a used bookstore. I also bought the Brothers Karamazov from that store, only because there was a poignant, tortured note on the fly leaf. The woman who let the book go wasn’t as moved as I was. And I don’t know where that volume is. I kept it because I wanted to write a book about the man who wrote the inscription. Perhaps someone else will.
All this is to say, there was no program other than what I could get my hands on. So, when in our junior year (maybe) of college, my beloved friend and I (who comments here as Sister) sat in the office of our Latin American literature professor just to chat, he and she danced through the canon and beyond. She is now a literature professor herself, by the way. I kept up a steady chorus of, “I haven’t read that.” “I haven’t read that.” “I haven’t read that.” (He didn’t ask about Hofstadter, or Trixie Belden, or the Tombs of Atuan or Camber of Culdi and its sequels.) Eventually he paused and said to me, “You’re not very literary, are you?” I still joke about it with my friend.
And for so long, I tried to be literary. After I read A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse, I pledged to read only great literature. Daniel, who is VERY literary, was delighted. He’d been pushing French translations on me for years. (Andre Gide. Meh. See, not literary. Also, when I read Madame Bovary, I just wanted to give her a good shake. But I was in my 20s then, and hadn’t had that moment when I thought, “Oh. I am at the end.” then. I might like her better now.) I gamely jumped into The Red and The Black, which Daniel adores. I staggered out after about 100 pages. Sweet Daniel loves tales of the sexual and intellectual awakening of young men, and their first experience of forbidden urbanity. Good on ya, Daniel.
I had a good run with current Israeli fiction in translation, although I’m too scared to read David Grossman’s masterpiece about a woman’s reaction to the death of her son (and she even had extra sons). But after a while the magical reality ceased to interest me.
Now, it’s all mysteries all the time. I get twitchy if I can’t put my hands on the next Louise Penny. I broke my own rule about not ordering books from Amazon because I really, really, really need to see what happens in Three Pines after A Brutal Telling. My local used bookstore didn’t have the next novels, and the regular bookstore usually has only the most recent ones, and I can’t quite escape the feeling that these novels, despite the extraordinary pleasure I get from them, don’t merit full price. But I bought them from a used dealer on Amazon, so I’m only half bad.
10:16
p.s. I was at a fancy event tonight. An original cast member from Hamilton was there to perform. He eyed my outfit and declared it elegant. That might be better than literary.
Another Door 
uh-oh, you might be stuck with me commenting, now I’ve broken my lurking barrier. . . that Cosse novel was one of the books I read in French this year, and I loved much of it, but I can only imagine the guilt that would ensue from all the books I would buy at such a bookstore, books that would sit in my TBR pile as I pulled yet another mystery novel onto my lap. . . Have you read Fred Vargas’ mysteries? They’re literary enough and you can read them in translation, SO: Literary works, translated from the French, but genre fiction — have your gateau and eat it too!