The Selfish Reader

I'm a selfish reader. When I read, I immediately must decide if I like the protagonist as an individual or not, and judge the crap out of them. Books like Hardy's 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' and Chopin's 'The Awakening' gave me headaches, since the personalities of the protagonists and my own way of doing things differed so drastically; in my humble opinion, Tess should've grown a pair and Edna needed a Prozac prescription, but I digress.

I'm a selfish reader because of how I engross myself into the texts, allowing my own opinions on how the plot plays out to poison my opinion of the book, even the writer him/herself, which is why it actually takes a lot to impress me when reading a novel. A book like 'Tess' makes me marvel at how poorly women were viewed in the English Victorian era, whereas Hawthorne's 'Scarlet Letter' made me laugh out loud with how pathetic it made the opinions of society seem. And of course, the ironic and almost humorous way the men were portrayed pleasantly suprised me. (Dimmesdale. What a weenie.)

And the biggie:

While reading Nabokov's 'Lolita', I constantly had to remind myself that Humbert was a pedophilic psychopath, not the kind of person the reader should be rooting for. He disgusted me and intrigued me, and when I finally finished the book I took a shower and forgave myself for empathizing with Humbert and succumbing to Nabokov's literary genius.

And if you've read this far, I'm actually impressed. The way I go on and on, it's selfish. My opinions actually don't matter that much, but here they are. And the next time I read a book that impresses or disgusts me, you're gonna know about it.