Finding a movie or television show to watch is simple. In fact, it’s as easy as opening your HBO, Netflix, or Hulu app. Each of these platforms curates a list of shows or movies tailored to suit your taste based on previous viewing habits.
But finding a new novel is not that simple. Sure, there are tons of websites and apps claiming to help you find the perfect literary fit (i.e. Goodreads, Whichbook, and even Amazon), but I’m always disappointed by the titles those websites spit out. I’m completely content wasting a half hour just to find out that a new television series isn’t worth my time. But with books, you have to invest a couple of days to find out whether or not the novel is decent. And I don’t know about you, but my reading time is limited, ergo, sacred. I can’t waste time with mediocre titles [*scoff*]!
I needed to create my own system for finding books that suit my taste. For a good, long while there my guilty pleasure was teen science-fiction books. That might still be my guilty pleasure, but that’s not the point of this prompt 😏. But in today’s bookstores, the teen sci-fi is just so bad. I could certainly use other adverbs and adjectives to describe them, but so bad seems to cover it. So, I couldn’t just read an assortment of teen science-fiction books, which is probably better for my brain anyway.
What else? I could New York Times bestsellers. But as we all know, many of the books on that list don’t deserve to be there. So, I decided to read books based on a theme. Not just a genre, or books that have won awards, but a custom set of books covering a topic which I find particularly interesting. In thinking about different themes, I thought, “Maybe I should read the classics?” But I didn’t really want to spend an hour reading to only make it through four pages. Well then, “Maybe I should read only books written by women?” But my feminist insight teaches me that women can be terrible authors, too.
Last year I read Neil Gaiman’s latest book Norse Mythology. Gaiman is, hands-down, my favorite author. And if you’ve ever read any of his work, it’s obvious that much of his inspiration is drawn from old religions and myths. If Gaiman gets excited about ancient mythology, maybe that’s why I am so intrigued by his books. So there. I decided that my theme will be ancient traditions, symbols, and stories of religions past.
I started with an easy one: Christianity. I chose this one first because I am a Christian, but I feel like there was, and still is, a lot that I didn’t know about this all-encompassing religion. This also seemed like an obvious choice because it’s super simple to find books about Christianity. I took an old, dusty book from my parents’ bookshelf, and it was a gem! Don’t Know Much About the Bible: Everything You Need to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned by Kenneth C. Davis was written in 1998. But that’s the awesome part about sticking to books within this historical theme: they age very well!
Excited that this first book was so engrossing, I couldn’t wait to move on and learn about more ancient religions and mythologies. I read about Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, Hinduism, and Jamaican and Haitian Voodoo.
But be warned, this theme also has it’s pitfalls. There are some incredibly mundane, dry books out there that read more like textbooks. In fact, some that I’ve read have probably been used as textbooks. The subject of Taoism could be quite fascinating—they are some of the first practitioners of magic and divination. But it’s critical that you find the right book. Otherwise, you’ll spend much of your time trying desperately to keep track of hundreds of obscure Chinese names. And Paganism, which I was absolutely most excited about, could also be a magnificent subject to study. But be sure to read reviews of these books before settling on one. It will give you a taste for whether or not it reads more like a scholarly journal, or a mythological storybook. (Hint: if you’re reading for leisure, you want to find the storybook types.)
Right now I’m getting into Celtic, Scandinavian, and Germanic mythologies. Knowing I had already read a book about the Norse gods, I was hesitant to read another on the same subject. But because these mythologies are so vast in their histories and because there are so many different directions in which your studies could go, I figured I’d delve into another. Plus, this book also covers Celts and Germans, so I can always just gloss over the Scandinavian entires if it’s knowledge I already have.
Although the point of sticking to a theme was to ensure that I don’t run out of reading materials, I’m entirely open to suggestions about which mythological or religious title to pick up next [comment below, if you wish]! My mother mentioned something about Native American traditions, culture, and religion, and I think that that subject would provide some awesome reads. I do worry about the number of different tribes, and how each tribe has it’s own set of customs and gods. But to stick to this theme means that I must be zealous, and I must stay curious.
Jill Roesler 