escapism or desperate move from reality...

I have fallen down into the addictive world of light romantic fiction (or chick lit)… again. This happens to me every now and then. Since I have disconnected my cable and sick of watching same stuff over and over in my dvd player… I’d picked up my old habit of reading at home. However, no matter how many wonderful other books I have in my book shelves, no matter how many months/years I have waited to read them, all I want to do is curl up with my chick lit featuring a twenty-something heroine, a well-matched hero and a happy ending. I’m not sure if this counts as simple escapism anymore or whether it has spilled over into desperate-move-from-reality territory.

What really surprising is just few years back I was big ridiculous book snob. If it had a pink cover, I would not go near it. If it was on a bestseller list, I would not touch it. If it had the Oprah mark of approval, all it earned from me was a sneer. Oh yes, I was delightful and not at all annoying as an adolescent.

It is strange that these are the books I get the most comfort from these days, be they by Sophie Kinsella, Cecelia Ahern, Melissa Hill or any other light romance writer, are books that I turned my nose up at so violently nowadays. In early days my prejudice against these genre lasted far longer than any of my other snobbish inclinations, right up until the last few years. I had this mental image of the kind of women who read these books as either mindless housewives or desperate old maids, locked up with their books and their cats. And there is nothing I am more afraid of in life than becoming one of those old maids – and not just because I’m not a big fan of cats, which seem to be a required accessory. I read these books because they entertain me and make me happy and because, logically, I know that there is no single ‘type’ of reader for these books, not given their massive popularity. But then my mother spots me with one of these books, reminds me that I am thirty something and alone, and that the only one of those things that is going to change if I keep reading those books is my age, and the image of the old maid and her cats surges back into my mind. But it is a vicious circle: the more my mother chides me for reading, the more I want the comfort and escapism books provide.

I don’t really know how to conclude this. As yet, there clearly is no conclusion for me. I just (just! Ha!) want my life to be a little more novel-esque – any meaningful plot development, any new characters, any romance would be an improvement over its current trajectory – but freeze when it comes to making any changes that would lead to such progress. So, sometimes, I read instead, as a substitute for having new experiences of my own. And I kind of hate that about myself.