The Mammoth
A few days ago, with my books piled around me, refugees from a bookshelf lacking any sense of order and organization, I took page counts. My copies of War and Peace average roughly 1300 pages. Ditto for Les Miserables. The Lord of the Rings comes in at 1200. But The Count of Monte Cristo, well that is any number of oversized metaphors aimed at capturing its sprawling 1400 girth, and once I finish it, it will be the longest book I have ever read.
March has been affectionately dubbed Mammoth March for the internet challenge to read a book over 800 pages in these early spring days. This is my first time attempting this challenge that I shamelessly culled from Booktube and will adapt here on this blog. Here is the thing: I don’t have enough common sense to be intimidated by big books. They don’t frighten me or cast a shadow of unease on my eager face. When I received The Count of Monte Cristo for Christmas, I scrambled to open it, though I will be doing the bulk of the reading this month. Truly, it is a mammoth, but I want to ascend its heights to get a glimpse of the world atop its lofty shoulders.
In my personal journal, I have been vacillating on the question of whether or not a book has to have some grand purpose to render it worthy of the time and effort of burrowing deep into its chest and gazing at its heart. I imagine The Count of Monte Cristo to be an Important Book, but not everything that I read fits that definition. I am reading what I call treadmill books, too, which are tomes that lack in some serious philosophical heft and lyrical structure but are nonetheless engaging enough to keep me hopping on my exercise equipment. What makes a book an Important Book? What makes a book a classic? I put this question to myself because I do not want to read books based solely on their culturally-handed-down prestige, nor because I have to learn something profound with every page, but because I love language and seeing what it can do. It never ceases to amaze me the webs we weave, something infinite and yet delicate. So in my journal, I keep pushing for some sort of reason to read, some new hill to climb with some set of characters. It is a meditation.
I have another reason to flipflop on what I am reading, not those deep inner thoughts about literature and worthiness, but an examination of how I spend my time. I don’t know if every writer goes through this, but I have this nagging fear that if I am not working every minute on my novel, then I am wasting time. That extends even to reading, which is nonsensical, as a writer must read. This fear persists. It persists despite the fact that reading gives me epiphanies that I can apply to my own writing, if I so choose. It persists when I worry that I don’t read enough. To be devoted with every inch of my being to a project like I am to my own writing….that is a magical thing, and no amount of logic can convince me that I must water this project with various literary canals.
And I will be annotating Alexandre Dumas’s masterpiece. I even went to the craft store to pick up pens specifically for this book (as I mentioned in my annotation entry, I match the highlighting pens to the cover of the book, not to a specific item that I want to classify with colors). The bookmark has been selected. All systems point to go. Yes, annotation slows the process of reading a book, something that might seem ridiculous while contemplating the Brobdingnagian size of The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a satisfying thing to run one’s fingers over the annotations like little flags, little outposts that communicate everything that happens like a story is a great wall.
In the end, this is a quest, and I love a good quest. The same thing that propels me to travel propels me to curl up with a book. It is the spirit of movement and life experienced in full, vivid color. I am looking forward to it.
