Have you ever received a book recommendation from an adult of a classic that you were told you needed to read, but when you picked it up you were disappointed to find you struggled?
Then you get a recommendation from a friend for a YA or new adult book and you flew through it?
Why is that? Why can you more easily read one than the other?
When I was in High School, I had to read a lot of classic works as my English teacher really loved old novels. For the entire class, we generally loved the story, but just struggled with the reading. Class discussions helped us fall in love with the story but homework sucked.
If you ever take time to look at how books are written now versus how they used to be written, you’ll see the difference.
When you look at classic novels, like Anne of Green Gables,for example, you’ll see that the first page is all one sentence, just with lots of punctuation.
You look at the first page of most YA and adult books, you’ll see maybe 8 short sentences in the first paragraph alone. And that doesn’t even take up the full page.
Short, bite sized sentences.
Most books now is just like that. It has short sentences, short chapters and lots of action. There’s always something going on – there’s no quiet time to just reflect on the book and writing itself.
The Essex Serpent is a fantastic example of a new book that’s written in an old style.
- The book moves much slower.
- They will spend pages just describing a town
- You really just experience the atmosphere as it’s built slowly and carefully – there isn’t lots of action going on.
You don’t need someone to die or for there to be sex scenes on every page for it to be good writing.
Just because a book doesn’t have you racing to the end of a chapter to find out what happens next doesn’t mean it’s a bad book!
It’s a writing style, that’s all.
People now are always so busy, running around, used to short info (ex: tweets) that they need short sentences. Sitting down and reading complex sentences, big words and ideas takes too much effort. It’s a mental discipline that many now are lacking. I’m guilty of it too, but the challenge of classic novels is good. It helps you to write better and just become more rounded as an individual.
Is it difficult? Of course!
Is it worth the challenge? Definitely!
Overall, my advice to you would be to not to be discouraged.
Pick up a classic book and struggle through it. Take 15 minutes to read one page. Not all reading should be relaxing.
Sometimes you have to put in a little effort to take something away.
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