Sara Warner's Blog - Posts Tagged "challenging-books"

Sometimes when I'm tired I just want to read something familiar. Not actually something I've read before (although I sometimes do that), but something in a simple formula and form, like a Dorothy Sayers mystery. I've found over time, though, that this kind of comfort reading doesn't satisfy a certain restlessness in me. When I'm feeling adventurous, I don't want to burrow into my armchair, I want to get out into the vast and wondrous unknown and unfamiliar books. When I was teaching literature, I used to tell my students that there are books in which the author takes you by the hand and walks with you through every page to the end, guiding your experience and keeping you safe. Then there are books that send you off into the wilderness with a compass and a can of Sterno and say, see you back at the highway in a couple of days! There is no feeling of safety, and in fact you are wondering if you can even understand what's going on, because its complicated or very unfamiliar, and you feel your smallness in the vast terrain. It's hard to know what to trust, whether you can trust the author or even yourself. And when, after a couple of days, you make it out, back to the highway, back to the hotel and a hot shower and a drink at the bar, you realize you've found out. And that it's something very worth knowing.