I have friends that exclusively read Sarah J. Mass and her Court of Thorn and Roses series, never prying their eyes away long enough to consider picking up anything less of faeries and mythical lords. There are friends whose last read was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and now believe that they will never be able to find a more fascinating read. And with these friends, I constantly try to tell them to not be genre-specific readers.

I believe with the exclusivity that we give our book preferences such as how we describe our music taste, “I love everything except country!” “I love Beyonce but hate Destiny’s Child,” is the reason for our already constantly shrinking English vocabulary. 

Reading a Virginia Woolf novel now is like jumping through literary hoops that only get smaller the more time passes. Long Victorian words such as anomalous or aigrette may as well be something mentioned in my Spanish class, and I would believe it. My Spanish teacher could say, “mi perro come mi avarice” and I would fail to spot an irregularity.

While the argument could be made on how words just come and go and things like this just happen, I find a darker, more sinister underlying tone behind our shortening acronyms and emojis. 

Just last week, my English lit. teacher mentioned a museum that was relinquishing its roman numerals in the exhibits because the tourists found it “too difficult to read.” The lack of rigor in our books that line our shelves is not due to the shrinking selection of literary authors, but what we prioritize as best sellers rather than classics. We have chosen comfort over challenge. When did our literary tongue get so lazy with a generation that emphasizes hustle culture? 

However, some may bring up the question of why do we need a challenge? What is wrong with letting go of Shakesphere and the old Victorian dialect?

My answer is it’s with this unnecessary vocabulary and complex diction that creates more innovative, more sophisticated thoughts. Language determinism is the concept that language determines human knowledge and thought. With a Victorian-thesaurus vocabulary is when we hold ourselves and others around us to a higher standard— of original thought and intellect. No longer are we in grade school where we express our opinions as “I like” and “I really like” but with language such as “I am transfixed” or “Amour!” 

It seems that we as a conglomerate have gotten too comfortable with our preferences; this could be attributed to the modern age conveniences of having whatever reading material you want: access to fanfiction, Tumblr short stories, creepypasta. If I had the option to read a Reddit advice thread filled with real people, what would anything that Virginia Woolf wrote entice me to read it? 

The internet doesn’t signal the end of all literature, plenty of books that I enjoy have been self-published (The Martian by Andy Weir and Eragon by Christoper Paolini). But it’s with this vast selection that one doesn’t have to wonder why the English language has digressed and why your English class is probably easier than what your parents’ English classes were.

So, what? Do I read everything and have no prejudices against any genre? Of course not, writing this article is more of me realizing that I too fit in some of these boxes. I don’t want to get on my soapbox and call Rupi Kaur a bad poet because the last poem I’ve read was Shel Silverstein. And I wouldn’t even be able to name the last non-fiction book I read.

But I don’t think my opinion is completely invalid either. With me accepting that I’m not a perfect genre-inclusive reader, this allows me to understand how the language I choose to read is powerful to my reality lens. With updating my bookshelves with different stories, my intellectual capacity for nuanced spheres of history has expanded. The names Homer and Hercules and Patroclus and Achilles now mean more to me than some silly characters I was forced to learn in European History class, they’ve become people that I can relate to and see how others can relate to them. Sure, some may consider knowing the Greek gods to be fruitless knowledge, but isn’t almost anything fictional you read going to be useless knowledge to someone out there? Understanding the messages behind the heroic stories of Achilles and Hercules gives me a scope into the mind of the Greeks more than textbooks do. What the Greeks valued back then can be read between the lines of their epics and their stories. Entire kingdoms and family bloodlines were established at the same time the Odyssey and Iliad were written, and if written closely, you can almost imagine yourself in the world where these Greek poets once lived.

Speaking of gods, why don’t more people read the bible? With the bible being the most read scripture in the world, you would think that it could be both a religious text and a staple to the English curriculum (I know there’s that small technicality of separation between church and state, but c’mon, what other book is as widely recognized as the bible?). Even if one doesn’t appreciate the contents inside the bible, the impact that it can have, whether it’s inside a local church or the whole country, on others’ outlook on life is one that needs to be more recognized. The bible has inspired great revolutionaries such as Shakesphere, Stephen King, C.S. Lewis. And that’s my take on the bible and why it doesn’t have to be read by just Christians/Catholics.

To live a self-transcendent life is to read about others; this isn’t a direct metaphor to read more biographies but to read different authors, different characters, different settings and to make your experience within this life one that well encompasses other narratives. Let your first black excellence novel be the impetus to decolonizing your mind, realizing your prejudices and how they have dismissed the voices of others less lucky than yours. Let your first read of a sci-fi novel be the start to your curiosity towards the future of AI. Let your first read of a romance novel be a reminder to appreciate the little things in life and to make more time for friends and family like your favorite YA character did.