A Good Book

I just got finished reading a book that I literally could not put down. It was not a brilliantly written book by any means. If anything, it was written in a way that made me think, "Hey, maybe I should try writing a book. I could do better than this!" But in spite of its glaringly obvious foreshadowing, I couldn't help but get caught up with the characters. I suppose my inability to separate myself from the story indicates that perhaps it takes a genius to weave together a story with unoriginal metaphors and unmistakable hints that still snares the reader into its web. I was so caught up, in fact, that I was embarrassingly sad when the story ended. I remember reading books like that when I was a child (yes, before I got to college and had to read them en masse, I actually enjoyed reading books)--the kind of stories that I would continue in my head for days after closing the cover on the book simply because I could not let the characters go. Books like that were the reason that I became an English major in college. Of course, my college professors would surely scoff at how moving I found the book I just read. Their influence on me is still strong enough that I'm embarrassed to even name the book here. No matter how blandly written, sometimes there is beauty in a simple story. I remember a discussion in Shakespeare class I took in college when we talked about story lines. Part of why Shakespeare is still read today is because the stories he wrote transcend time, even if the language that he wrote the stories in does not. Love, passion, jealousy, sin, death, new beginnings, betrayal, redemption. These themes cut across cultural barriers and cut to the core of the human experience. That's what makes Shakespeare live on. My latest read was no Shakespearean sonnet, and I am sure it went straight to paperback, but I found myself caught up in the book nevertheless because of those human themes which the author wove into the story in shades of gray. I am a firm believer that life is more interesting when its in the gray and not in the black and white. And, while I'm sure there are plenty who would contradict me, I think that Chrisitianity is about shades of gray, too. The Pharisees saw things in black and white; Jesus looked beyond that. Yes, there is a clear delineation between right and wrong in the Bible, but there is not always a clear delineation between people. Love the sinner, hate the sin, or whatever. Even if characters in this book may have made choices that some would consider morally questionable, I couldn't help but rooting for them anyway. And in the end of the story, the heroine returned to the truth of her God with a deeper understanding of what that truth is and what faith means in her life. I left the story with two things: first, a warm fuzzy feeling that the predicable ending came to fruition even if it was "wrong," and second, that maybe I should, like the heroine, rise above my fears and run my race with more gusto and less anxiety. All that inspiration from a poorly written novel! Perhaps inflated language is nothing more than simply inflated after all. And perhaps, even a untalented writer like myself could address human themes in an unoriginal way and still move and inspire. Or perhaps not. But I find a smug satisifaction in imagining academia proven wrong.