I absolutely love this, and not just because I leapt on a completely accidental trend train by selecting George Eliot's Middlemarch as one of our read-a-longs this year.
You have reminded me of one of my favorite passages on this topic, from the anthology, Best American Poetry 2020. In the introduction to that edition, the poet Paisley Rekdal writes:
"It is true that the enjoyment of any art is finally a subjective pleasure, and it is also true that 'enjoyment' is not a uniform experience. I once wept myself to hiccups while watching *Hachi: A Dog's Tale* on the Hallmark Channel at 3AM in a hotel, an experience that drained me so thoroughly I then spent $200 on Cindy Crawford eye creams hawked on the post-film informercial while recovering. I can watch *Moonlight* or *Taxi Driver* then turn around and binge *The Real Housewives of New York*; I've felt deep joy among the poems of Emily Dickinson and Terrance Hayes, but also childishly thrilled to the limericks of Swinburne and the doggerel of Ogden Nash. My point is that my enjoyment of one type of writing does not limit my more profound appreciation for another, and that "good" and certainly "best" is often determined by moment-to-moment needs. In fact, it is my very appreciation for what some might consider 'low' entertainment that makes my passion for George Eliot and Charlie Parker and Samuel Taylor Coleridge all the more poignant to me."
SCREAMING at "spent $200 on Cindy Crawford eye creams hawked on the post-film informercial while recovering." 😭 I could not agree more with that quote. Give me Fernando Pessoa AND everything on Bravo!!!
you guys are too cute - I personally die for Selling Sunset and Selling OC while under my severely overpriced weighted blanket pretending to read Dostoevsky
oh my god I was just talking to a friend today about how much I LOVE Selling Sunset. I live for that OG cast. I also like Selling OC, but nothing will ever compare to the dynamic of Mary, Chrishelle, and Christine in those early seasons. I am still mourning us not getting more Christine.
Enjoyed this—couldn’t agree more. High brow, low brow and everything in between—it’s all good. I am finding much happiness and healthy diversion in substack book-lovers such as yourself. Re: footnote four—can report the opposite: Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test helped convince me to use LSD. However, like EJ Johnson,I have used books much, much longer.
In college I took a class on “middlebrow” literature, focusing mainly on books written in the early 1900s that were considered less than/too feminine to be taken seriously… it was really eye-opening to the mostly arbitrary divisions we make as a culture between what is “worth” reading or not. I think it’s really interesting that so many of these comments confess that their personal tastes influence their estimation of literary value. While Fourth Wing wasn’t for me, I have enjoyed other romantasy books a lot. Throne of Glass became a favorite comfort read that has fostered a community in my life that I love! I also think that the popularity of the genre makes sense right now… of course women (predominantly) are flocking to books that draw them away from their phones, have love interests that are perfect and completely unrealistic, and plots where a woman has the power to change her society for the better. We’re in a time where reading is feminized, reproductive rights are declining, and misogyny is commonplace. To have an escapist world where the men are attractive, strong, and love women offers a reprieve from the current social-political situation. I find the “intellectually superior” crowd a little tiresome. As someone with a degree in literature, I’m just glad that people are reading again. There has always been smutty, female-centered books. And there has always been a sect that finds those books a “threat” to intellectualism. I read 18th century english porn mags that would make the anti-romance people blush!
YES TO ALL OF THIS. I didn't even dig into that part about women needing some moral support in the face of declining civil rights.
And since I wrote this, I have encountered a few women out in the real world who wanted to talk books and they both were sort of embarrassed they were reading "spicy" stuff and I could not imagine being snotty to them - I was genuinely excited to talk about any book they brought up - so why would I do it on the internet.
I missed this on its first go but was so happy to rediscover it. I'm dead at the side-by-side quotes hahahah. You accidentally captured my February reads, which was trudging through Crime & Punishment, using Onyx Storm as a recovery read, then going into Middlemarch at an unhealthy (quick) pace. There is a literary, old-classics BookTok influence for the people in this Substack sphere, but it's harder to navigate or direct a full convo with something like Middlemarch when it could be its own seminar. So many characters! So many plot turns! So many pithy narrator interventions! But with Onyx Storm, you can hop on board and be like "Violet & Xaden!" and join the convo in one reaction. But either way, to your point, there's at least some virtual book club of ppl who are actually reading the book, however you like to digest that criticism
that is a great point - its very difficult to maintain criticism in a bite-sized sphere. that is the main reason i even started a Substack, I needed more room than an Instagram caption!
This title has me reeling! I’ve been reading Middlemarch since January and missed out on reading onyx storm with my book club for our February meeting (due to more than just Middlemarch as a factor but w/e) but omg if this title isn’t me
I looooove this perspective. Reading is reading! And more importantly, anything that engages readers to the point where they’d prefer to have their nose in a book than their phones is a win, especially the younger generations who grew up immersed in technology.
I am late to the party but here I am!! I loved this Natalie - who would have thought that there really are so many politics to reading. I do have personal hangups that romantasy is not great literature but thats bc it just really isn't what I am interested in. However, it all makes so much sense. It is a branch from fantasy which, we KNOW, people love! Harry Potter, Star Wars like not to conflate the two but fantasy, particularly one that starts with books, is an escapism many people crave and naturally get very very into it. I love that for them. It is like you say - its community! and also tapping into that inner child that just wants to be enveloped into an imaginary world! The Middlemarch craze on substack is hilarious bc I just think it is our version of this craving for community and identity I have mentioned, but with a sprinkle of book snobbery! Like no hate, I love everyone here, we are all great and I will be reading Middlemarch w Haley in May, but I also think it is fair to say a lot of book people on here consider themselves a cut above the rest, myself included - and I mean that as a compliment to all <3 Human beings are so funny.
I can't wait for stone yard devotional thoughts and I love to hear you loved The Morning Star so much!! I have learnt it is set in August so I think I will be saving it to read then, but I will have all your thoughts in my mind when the time comes!
you nailed it - I love the snobbery that unites us the same way the fantasy world unites those who read whatever is popular! I am an elder millennial with Gen X sensibilities, and part of that lingering ideology is to be against whatever is color popular, but I no longer have to hide my metaphorical Spice Girls CD!! 😂
I tried to start Stone Yard while my husband had the TV on and had to stop, it deserves contemplative silence. Will be finishing this weekend hopefully!
And if I had been as hot and sweaty as those in The Morning Star I may have enjoyed more, so enjoy in August!!
I don’t enjoy romantasy (however, as a former teacher librarian, I think people should read whatever they like), but I did enjoy Middlemarch. Long ago, I went from California to Cambridge, England to take some summer classes at Cambridge University. Middlemarch was on the syllabus of the ‘English novel’ class. It was a great place to be introduced to the novel.
I adore Donnie Darko. I don't know how many times "I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion" gets in my head and somehow makes sense to my life, like, all the time
I love this! I read Fourth Wing back when it first hit the book community. It wasn't for me and that's ok. I still enjoy seeing the hype about the series, it's such a fun, throwback vibe. I read Middlemarch many years ago. I quite enjoyed it and I'm sort of feeling left out of the excitement of the current moment, but not enough for a reread, I guess!
it wasnt for me either but hey at least i get the inside jokes lol
and that's how I feel about Anna Karenina, i read it so long ago I don't have anything to add when people read it but i cant imagine trying to reread that behemoth right now
I quick read all the other comments first to make sure I wasn’t echoing someone already! I think not? Anyway, on one of my gazillion podcasts recently there was a discussion about Onyx Storm and the phenomenon of readers now buying multiple copies of the same book because of special editions from different retailers, and how that may have had an effect on the massive numbers. No shade at all, because a book sold is a book sold, but it’s such an interesting phase of the book industry! Sales numbers have never reflected the actual number of people reading a book, given our unread shelves, but it’s fascinating to me to think of the “book as object” phenomenon.
ah thats a very good point! I heard of multiple people pre-ordering and then just going to Target to buy a copy when the pre-order didn't show. book as object basically = bookstagram at this point, but I guess I'd rather look at a book collection than a stanley collection...?
It took me a week to get through Onyx Storm because I was screaming so much because the worldbuilding made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE but yes I'm going to read the last two books because I'm a masochist apparently. And also because I have EDS and hey it's nice to see yourself represented sometimes out in the wild with wibbly wobbly joints.
Also that Muppets song is always on repeat in one of the 72 tabs open in my brain.
Totally get that - I often want to be *aware* of the zeitgeist without having to actively *participate* in it. For the Twilight books, Wikipedia was my friend there 🤣
Natalie! Thank you for including me in your reads 🥹 I loved this piece. I used to be snobbish in my teenage years/20s about literature but I thankfully grew out of it. As long as people are reading, I don't care what it is. Yarros' books are not for me and I'm happy that they have a ravenous audience.
That cuddle puddle looks divine. I need some of that kitty heaven in my life. I love how much they love you.
I absolutely love this, and not just because I leapt on a completely accidental trend train by selecting George Eliot's Middlemarch as one of our read-a-longs this year.
You have reminded me of one of my favorite passages on this topic, from the anthology, Best American Poetry 2020. In the introduction to that edition, the poet Paisley Rekdal writes:
"It is true that the enjoyment of any art is finally a subjective pleasure, and it is also true that 'enjoyment' is not a uniform experience. I once wept myself to hiccups while watching *Hachi: A Dog's Tale* on the Hallmark Channel at 3AM in a hotel, an experience that drained me so thoroughly I then spent $200 on Cindy Crawford eye creams hawked on the post-film informercial while recovering. I can watch *Moonlight* or *Taxi Driver* then turn around and binge *The Real Housewives of New York*; I've felt deep joy among the poems of Emily Dickinson and Terrance Hayes, but also childishly thrilled to the limericks of Swinburne and the doggerel of Ogden Nash. My point is that my enjoyment of one type of writing does not limit my more profound appreciation for another, and that "good" and certainly "best" is often determined by moment-to-moment needs. In fact, it is my very appreciation for what some might consider 'low' entertainment that makes my passion for George Eliot and Charlie Parker and Samuel Taylor Coleridge all the more poignant to me."
I love that last sentiment, that what is low makes us appreciate the high - very very astute!
SCREAMING at "spent $200 on Cindy Crawford eye creams hawked on the post-film informercial while recovering." 😭 I could not agree more with that quote. Give me Fernando Pessoa AND everything on Bravo!!!
lol exactly!!!! like, I am reading Edith Wharton while using my overpriced face mask and waiting for the next episode of Traitors to drop lol
Girl, you are speaking my language!! 💥 Omg can we talk about how adorable Lala is on Traitors? Star of the show! I love her.
you guys are too cute - I personally die for Selling Sunset and Selling OC while under my severely overpriced weighted blanket pretending to read Dostoevsky
I love learning everyone’s fluffy shows 😍 fluff is getting me through life right meow
oh my god I was just talking to a friend today about how much I LOVE Selling Sunset. I live for that OG cast. I also like Selling OC, but nothing will ever compare to the dynamic of Mary, Chrishelle, and Christine in those early seasons. I am still mourning us not getting more Christine.
Second the magic of the OG Selling Sunset Trinity 💥
I am so behind on season 3, like haven't even started the second ep yet. I gotta catch uppppp! Season 1 was SO GOOD. I just finished it last week lol
Enjoyed this—couldn’t agree more. High brow, low brow and everything in between—it’s all good. I am finding much happiness and healthy diversion in substack book-lovers such as yourself. Re: footnote four—can report the opposite: Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test helped convince me to use LSD. However, like EJ Johnson,I have used books much, much longer.
Thank you Brian -all the brows are welcome here!!
Ok but how was it??? I am terrified of psychedelics but give me all the pharmaceuticals lol
Standing ovation to this piece! Well said! - And I'm also so happy to see Donnie Darko referenced- I might even do a rewatch tonight.
::bows bows::
I forgot how amazing the soundtrack was, I highly recommend a rewatch!!
Yessss to all of this! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
cheers to reading whatever we want!!
Yessss this is exactly how I feel! Finding community & reading are SO important and whatever is getting you there is GOOD!!!!
In college I took a class on “middlebrow” literature, focusing mainly on books written in the early 1900s that were considered less than/too feminine to be taken seriously… it was really eye-opening to the mostly arbitrary divisions we make as a culture between what is “worth” reading or not. I think it’s really interesting that so many of these comments confess that their personal tastes influence their estimation of literary value. While Fourth Wing wasn’t for me, I have enjoyed other romantasy books a lot. Throne of Glass became a favorite comfort read that has fostered a community in my life that I love! I also think that the popularity of the genre makes sense right now… of course women (predominantly) are flocking to books that draw them away from their phones, have love interests that are perfect and completely unrealistic, and plots where a woman has the power to change her society for the better. We’re in a time where reading is feminized, reproductive rights are declining, and misogyny is commonplace. To have an escapist world where the men are attractive, strong, and love women offers a reprieve from the current social-political situation. I find the “intellectually superior” crowd a little tiresome. As someone with a degree in literature, I’m just glad that people are reading again. There has always been smutty, female-centered books. And there has always been a sect that finds those books a “threat” to intellectualism. I read 18th century english porn mags that would make the anti-romance people blush!
YES TO ALL OF THIS. I didn't even dig into that part about women needing some moral support in the face of declining civil rights.
And since I wrote this, I have encountered a few women out in the real world who wanted to talk books and they both were sort of embarrassed they were reading "spicy" stuff and I could not imagine being snotty to them - I was genuinely excited to talk about any book they brought up - so why would I do it on the internet.
I missed this on its first go but was so happy to rediscover it. I'm dead at the side-by-side quotes hahahah. You accidentally captured my February reads, which was trudging through Crime & Punishment, using Onyx Storm as a recovery read, then going into Middlemarch at an unhealthy (quick) pace. There is a literary, old-classics BookTok influence for the people in this Substack sphere, but it's harder to navigate or direct a full convo with something like Middlemarch when it could be its own seminar. So many characters! So many plot turns! So many pithy narrator interventions! But with Onyx Storm, you can hop on board and be like "Violet & Xaden!" and join the convo in one reaction. But either way, to your point, there's at least some virtual book club of ppl who are actually reading the book, however you like to digest that criticism
that is a great point - its very difficult to maintain criticism in a bite-sized sphere. that is the main reason i even started a Substack, I needed more room than an Instagram caption!
This title has me reeling! I’ve been reading Middlemarch since January and missed out on reading onyx storm with my book club for our February meeting (due to more than just Middlemarch as a factor but w/e) but omg if this title isn’t me
we contain multitudes!! 🤓
I looooove this perspective. Reading is reading! And more importantly, anything that engages readers to the point where they’d prefer to have their nose in a book than their phones is a win, especially the younger generations who grew up immersed in technology.
I am late to the party but here I am!! I loved this Natalie - who would have thought that there really are so many politics to reading. I do have personal hangups that romantasy is not great literature but thats bc it just really isn't what I am interested in. However, it all makes so much sense. It is a branch from fantasy which, we KNOW, people love! Harry Potter, Star Wars like not to conflate the two but fantasy, particularly one that starts with books, is an escapism many people crave and naturally get very very into it. I love that for them. It is like you say - its community! and also tapping into that inner child that just wants to be enveloped into an imaginary world! The Middlemarch craze on substack is hilarious bc I just think it is our version of this craving for community and identity I have mentioned, but with a sprinkle of book snobbery! Like no hate, I love everyone here, we are all great and I will be reading Middlemarch w Haley in May, but I also think it is fair to say a lot of book people on here consider themselves a cut above the rest, myself included - and I mean that as a compliment to all <3 Human beings are so funny.
I can't wait for stone yard devotional thoughts and I love to hear you loved The Morning Star so much!! I have learnt it is set in August so I think I will be saving it to read then, but I will have all your thoughts in my mind when the time comes!
you nailed it - I love the snobbery that unites us the same way the fantasy world unites those who read whatever is popular! I am an elder millennial with Gen X sensibilities, and part of that lingering ideology is to be against whatever is color popular, but I no longer have to hide my metaphorical Spice Girls CD!! 😂
I tried to start Stone Yard while my husband had the TV on and had to stop, it deserves contemplative silence. Will be finishing this weekend hopefully!
And if I had been as hot and sweaty as those in The Morning Star I may have enjoyed more, so enjoy in August!!
I don’t enjoy romantasy (however, as a former teacher librarian, I think people should read whatever they like), but I did enjoy Middlemarch. Long ago, I went from California to Cambridge, England to take some summer classes at Cambridge University. Middlemarch was on the syllabus of the ‘English novel’ class. It was a great place to be introduced to the novel.
well that sounds like a fantastic time! I cant wait to read it this spring - perhaps I will play the Beatles and imagine I am in England
I'm not reading either book.
I adore Donnie Darko. I don't know how many times "I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion" gets in my head and somehow makes sense to my life, like, all the time
Fair, but it was more like a metaphor not literal
I have notorious playing and the ponytails whipping stuck in my head all the time!
I love this! I read Fourth Wing back when it first hit the book community. It wasn't for me and that's ok. I still enjoy seeing the hype about the series, it's such a fun, throwback vibe. I read Middlemarch many years ago. I quite enjoyed it and I'm sort of feeling left out of the excitement of the current moment, but not enough for a reread, I guess!
it wasnt for me either but hey at least i get the inside jokes lol
and that's how I feel about Anna Karenina, i read it so long ago I don't have anything to add when people read it but i cant imagine trying to reread that behemoth right now
I quick read all the other comments first to make sure I wasn’t echoing someone already! I think not? Anyway, on one of my gazillion podcasts recently there was a discussion about Onyx Storm and the phenomenon of readers now buying multiple copies of the same book because of special editions from different retailers, and how that may have had an effect on the massive numbers. No shade at all, because a book sold is a book sold, but it’s such an interesting phase of the book industry! Sales numbers have never reflected the actual number of people reading a book, given our unread shelves, but it’s fascinating to me to think of the “book as object” phenomenon.
ah thats a very good point! I heard of multiple people pre-ordering and then just going to Target to buy a copy when the pre-order didn't show. book as object basically = bookstagram at this point, but I guess I'd rather look at a book collection than a stanley collection...?
It took me a week to get through Onyx Storm because I was screaming so much because the worldbuilding made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE but yes I'm going to read the last two books because I'm a masochist apparently. And also because I have EDS and hey it's nice to see yourself represented sometimes out in the wild with wibbly wobbly joints.
Also that Muppets song is always on repeat in one of the 72 tabs open in my brain.
Love to see that representation!! and i totally get it, i hate read all the Twilights because I just HAD to know what was going to happen
Totally get that - I often want to be *aware* of the zeitgeist without having to actively *participate* in it. For the Twilight books, Wikipedia was my friend there 🤣
Natalie! Thank you for including me in your reads 🥹 I loved this piece. I used to be snobbish in my teenage years/20s about literature but I thankfully grew out of it. As long as people are reading, I don't care what it is. Yarros' books are not for me and I'm happy that they have a ravenous audience.
That cuddle puddle looks divine. I need some of that kitty heaven in my life. I love how much they love you.
I have my snobbish moments, but then I remember life is supposed to be fun and if anyone tried to come for me for reading King I would smack a B.
🎯 KING IS HOLY IN THIS HOUSE.