There Are No "Right" Books

[image description: a wooden bookshelf full of black leatherbound books that all appear to be volumes in the same series.]

When I was younger I used to get anxious trying to figure out what to read next. I’d see all these lists like “101 Books to Read Before You Die” and “The 500 Best Books of American Literature” and assume if I couldn’t intelligently discuss all of them, then people would think I wasn’t smart or a “real” bibliophile.

At the time I thought that what I read was a reflection of who I am as a person, my intelligence, and other factors. I was obsessed with finding out what the “right” books were, even as the lists all varied.

But what are the “right” books? And according to whom are they “right”?

At first, trying to read the “right” books led me toward classics, even when I didn’t especially enjoy them. The classics were taught in school and college professors had their own set of classics. But where did that leave recently published books? How was I to know what books would eventually become a classic?

I thought I might be able to predict eventual classics based on the author’s past track record. For example, Margaret Atwood wrote the classic The Handmaid’s Tale, so surely I could assume that her books being published in the present-day would all become classics.

Later I learned that the majority of the books that are considered classics are heavily written by white men, which leaves out a huge chunk of the population. Where are the classics for them? I wondered.

And nearly every culture and country has its own list of books they consider classics. Should I somehow gather lists from other countries and read those too? It seemed shortsighted to only focus on American classics.

On top of that, when I did read one of the “right” books and I didn’t enjoy it, I wondered, Is something wrong with me? Why didn’t I like this book that other people seem to regard so highly? Am I just not smart enough to get it?

There’s also the implication that if some books are right, others must be wrong. And even if I like some genres and authors better than others, there are few books I’d say are wrong in the ethical sense.

Eventually, it hit me. What if there are no right books?

Ding ding ding! We have a winner.

Since then I’ve been reading whatever strikes my fancy. No checking books off someone else’s list. No reading books because someone tells me I “should.” No reading a book just because someone, somewhere, probably in an arbitrary fashion, decided it was a classic. I don’t care about what books are right and instead trust that whatever I gravitate toward is right for me. It’s freeing not being beholden to someone else’s agenda and constantly second-guessing my intelligence.

I assume I’m not the only one who’s ever felt this way, so if you’re looking for permission to read whatever you want without judgment, here it is. Take it.