Reading Responsibly =P

I'm an English Major. When did I decide to become one? Like, the summer before I started college. I'd never really thought about what I would major in in college. One day I just busted out a catalog and read up on all of the major options at my university. The only thing that made my eyes sparkle was reading about all of the Literature courses. So, I just went with it. I took AP classes in high school. I did not take AP English classes. I did well in English, but I did well in everything. I'm just a good note-taker and critical thinker. I'm also marvelously well-organized. Eventually, (it took awhile) I came to the realization that I was not even a little well-read. I read a lot as a teen-child-person, but just YA stuff. I definitely hadn't read all that much in the previous year. In my senior English class we watched The Holiday(twice), Paranormal Activity(also twice), The Patriot, Braveheart, and a few more movies that I don't remember. It was a joke.
So, I decided to work on exposing myself to new Literature and catching up. I.... don't know how that went. I forced myself to read a lot of classic books. I didn't enjoy them, but I saw the value in them. That's not entirely true. I enjoyed parts of them. But, it wasn't fun. I really had to force myself to read them. That's not how I'm used to reading. The ideas they present are interesting to think about, but the plot and the characters are respectively slow and shallow compared to the YA books I devoured.
[Tangent: I just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray. How long is the line I need to be in to rip off Lord Henry's balls? I'm willing to wait. It was fine. It was dark and dramatic, but mostly it was a hundred some odd pages of Wilde's beliefs on life, and art, and beauty. I'm an uber fan of the underdog, the outcasts, and the poor, so this book got under my skin with its elitism. I don't enjoy rich people who don't want to get their hands dirty with like...reality. These men were all too sensitive to acknowledge that the poor existed. It offended their delicate sensibilities. I would take a book about an ugly person who lived in a dirt hut over this any day.]
Anyway, recently I've been reading a shit-ton of books that I don't like. (Recently being the past 2 years.) It gets mothereffing old. Sometimes books are just slow to really get going, so I always finish the books I read. You never know. I trudged uphill through Jane Eyre, but it became one of my favorite books. But, I've had about enough. I've been thrifting so many books recently, and I have a pile to read that I'm just not that excited about. I won a goodreads book called Tiger Lily, and that comes with the responsibility of reading it quickly and reviewing it (still haven't read the last one I won). I'm trying and it's fine, but I just don't care about it. It's whatever. It's inconsequential. So, I went to the library (the SUCKASS library that we have in this town) and grabbed a whole new stack to try to find something that I don't hate. I kind of failed, in that I grabbed a bunch of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read The Great Gatsby, but I didn't like it. (Nick was extremely dull, and I hated Daisy. I have rich people issues. I need to get over it.) But, I did grab a book that I FINALLY LOVE. I haven't loved a book in years. It's Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. I love it so much. It's all women, and they're stranded on a desert island (fuck yes huts!), and there is motherfucking plot and character development. GREAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, even though there are like 25 main characters and other subplot characters. I am all up in these people's business, and they're doing things, and saying things, and I am finally happy.
There wasn't a point to this. I'm just trying to hone my skills and figure out what I like. I want to publish books, and I need to find my niche and focus on it. I know that I'm passionate about Literature, I just need to figure out the specifics.