Back in third grade, when I hated reading, my friend came up to me and said, “I reread the whole Harry Potter series in a week!”
“Oh cool!” I said back, but what I really meant was it’s on. I may have hated reading, but I loved a friendly competition.
My mother, an avid reader, had the entire series at home. That afternoon, I opened the door, threw my backpack down, grabbed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and tore through the pages. It wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t understand the obsession. For the sake of competition, I pushed through the second and third books, which only got longer. The fourth book seemed heavier than a paperweight and that was when I had to call it quits.
Why can’t I get into this? I thought. Am I not smart enough, do I just hate reading that much? I thought the answer was yes to both when I sensed a pattern with other series such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Percy Jackson, and other books of the fantasy genre.
Then one day in fourth grade English class, we read an excerpt from Report Card by Andrew Clements. I was captivated. I loved the fact that this story could be my story, but instead, I got to learn from someone else. I loved that the visualizations were easy and plausible, and I could empathize with the characters because, at some point, I had felt what they felt in a different way. Instead of transporting me to another world, reading Report Card let me dig deeper into my own and therefore gave reading a more nuanced purpose.
It didn’t stop there. Other books that have stuck with me are The Recipe Box by Sandra Lee, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, and Skinny by Donna Cooner, to name a few. The common thread between these novels is that they are realistic, and could be the story of the noticeably quiet girl sitting next to me in my science class.
That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate elements of fantasy, though. Magical realism is a fairly new genre to me, and I find it fascinating. I love the relatability and comfort of a realistic premise fused with an extra layer of depth, transcendence, and symbolism that a magical element or two provides. When I think about magical realism, the book that immediately comes to mind is The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman. At its core, this is a book about the inevitability of true love and its overtaking of everyone, no matter who they are. The element of witchcraft is used in part to symbolize fate, bringing to life the idea of a soulmate, and their destined entry into our lives. But my appreciation from magical realism stems from the fact that the books are realistic in premise and not obnoxiously overtaken by magic. The bits of fantasy embedded in the book provide an experience of transcendence rather than escape.
There’s the standard argument that realistic fiction is boring because it’s about real life. People around me often say that there’s nothing in there that makes the stories fascinating. First of all, I think there is a fascination in the obscure situations that people somewhere have had to endure, and a calmer plot can also bring attention to other elements of what makes a book great: language, characterization, form.
But even if that were true, that realistic fiction has less of a wow factor, I think those who devalue the genre, for this reason, are missing what I think is a core purpose of reading: gaining perspective. One of the best things about reading is that it opens our eyes to humanity and teaches us about the world around us in the most artistic, gentle, emotional, creative of ways. Realistic fiction throws us into the story of someone from 100 years ago, someone oceans away, even someone down the street we never looked at twice, and it reminds us of the simple, yet empowering truth that everyone has a story and every story matters. Realistic fiction angers us, breaks our hearts, makes us slam the book shut to suppress a sudden flashback; it makes us feel things at the height of our senses because we connect to the story so easily and so quickly. It doesn’t matter if we’ve never been in that situation because the fact that they are human with normal lives just like us is enough for their problems to touch us as sensitively as they touch them.
When discussing preferences with reading, I think it’s only fair to touch on other media, such as television, since it has become a huge part of our lives. Branching off the relatability of realistic nature, my guilty pleasure also happens to be reality television. I love the “trashy” shows, the shows that are often dismissed as a waste of time, riddled with mindless fighting. The thing is, the people who say this aren’t wrong. There is a lot of fighting in reality, especially the shows I like to watch. Between Dance Moms, Little Women: LA, and the occasional episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, I watch more arguing than I participate in–and that’s saying a lot. Maybe it’s my fascination with psychology, or maybe it’s nothing profound and just a teenage love of drama, but the fighting is oddly captivating, almost humorous. I love to pick sides, insert myself into their arguments, and sometimes just throw my head back laughing at the absurdity of their arguments. I guess I get a kick out of the irony of grown women arguing like children, and despite the reputation of these shows, I find no shame in that.
My friends always say, “You’re an English major, and you’re not crazy about Harry Potter? That’s disgraceful!” Let me say this. As an English major, I understand what’s great about Harry Potter and the fantasy genre, and, with enough time and knowledge, I could probably make a case for it. But when it comes to the books that consume me, I’m going to need something more powerful than dragons and more seductive than vampires to make me come alive. I’m going to need vulnerability that stabs me in the heart, touching dialogue between a mother and her daughter that makes a real smile shine and makes real tears stream down my face. I need a hell of a lot more than magic and symbolism to read the last line of a book, and say, “Damn, that was good.”
Writings by Ria 