A Book I Thought I Wouldn't Like But Ended Up Loving // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 9

Today is the ninth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving".

When I first went to university to study English literature (and history too, but that's less relevant here), one of my biggest fears was that seriously researching and analysing texts would cause me to eventually lose my long-held enthusiasm for reading. My fear was so great that I ended up rambling about this for a solid minute to a woman I'd never met before during an activity that was part of a personal development seminar. I must have appeared very worked up about it, because said woman took me aside afterwards and sincerely asked me if I was okay, with the same look of concern as if I'd gone on about my uncontrollable urge to eat pencil lead for 60 seconds.

Thankfully, for both myself and that woman, I left university with an even greater passion for literature than the one I initially went in with. This is not to say that my concerns had been completely unfounded, however. One of my worries about studying English at university level was that I'd be forced to read books I didn't enjoy, an experience that I know has put many a blossoming book-lover off reading in school. Although it didn't destroy my love for reading, I did have to study several books at university that I wasn't overly keen on. One of those books was Image, Music, Text by Roland Barthes, and it is relevant to my choice of book for today's prompt.

Image, Music, Text is not the book I chose for the challenge; that would be A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes, the same author. However, Image, Music, Text is the reason I didn't think I'd like A Lover's Discourse - and, since this post is about a book I thought I wouldn't like but ended up loving, I feel the "thought I wouldn't like" part is worth as much attention as the "ended up loving" bit.

So, let me tell you a little bit about Image, Music, Text. It's a collection of essays by Roland Barthes, a French literary theorist. While I was not a fan of Barthes - at least not during my first year of university - myself and other students ended up reading a fair amount of his work for two reasons: because he's an incredibly influential theorist, and because one of our lecturers was borderline obsessed with him.

The first Barthes text I was exposed to was an excerpt from Image, Music, Text in which the author attempted to break down the way sentences in a language function to the point that they were basically as small and as easy to understand as atoms. At least, I think that's what it was about. To be honest with you, I found it so confusing as to be almost unintelligible. I didn't understand what Barthes was getting at and, even worse, I didn't understand why he was trying to get at it. I felt that I was being exposed to the sort of needlessly complex analysis that everyone stereotypes the literature theory world as producing. I decided then that I didn't like Image, Music, Text and I didn't like Roland Barthes, and that (I thought) was the end of it.

Then, a year or so later, I was assigned A Lover's Discourse. This reading was chosen by the same lecturer who gave us Image, Music, Text some semesters before, as he evidently had a Barthes theory for every occasion. Being the devoted student that I was, I begrudgingly got myself a copy despite my lack of enthusiasm and settled down to be bored and confused by this supposed giant of literary analysis. Then the unexpected happened: I loved it.

Let me give you a quick overview of what A Lover's Discourse is about, via Goodreads:

The language we use when we are in love is not a language we speak, for it is addressed to ourselves and to our imaginary beloved. It is a language of solitude, of mythology, of what Barthes calls an 'image repertoire'.

This book revives - beyond the psychological or clinical enterprises which have characterised such researches in our culture - the notion of the amorous subject. It will be enjoyed and understood by two groups of readers: those who have been in love (or think they have, which is the same thing), and those who have never been in love (or think they have not, which is the same thing). This book might be considered, in its restless search for authorities and examples, which range from Nietzsche to Zen, from Ruysbroek to Debussy, an encyclopaedia of that affirmative discourse which is the lover's.

At first this all sounds like philosophical jargon, but this book to me ranks among the very best works of literary theory I have read. Among its other great qualities, one of the things I love most about it is its relatability. Perhaps this is too simplistic of a compliment to give a book by such an acclaimed theorist, but I mean it entirely positively.

I disliked Image, Music, Text because I felt it covered issues I didn't care about in a way I didn't understand. A Lover's Discourse, on the other hand, addresses a topic that I care about deeply both in literature and in real life, and it does so in a way that made sense not only intellectually but also viscerally. In A Lover's Discourse, Barthes puts words to feelings that I hadn't previously known how to articulate - and if that isn't one of the purposes of writing, I don't know what is.

So perhaps the reason I much preferred A Lover's Discourse to Image, Music, Text is simply because of the subject matter. Perhaps it was the time in which I encountered it; you'd be surprised what a year of studying literary theory can do for your understanding of critical texts. It's possible that if I were to read Image, Music, Text now I would enjoy it as much as I did A Lover's Discourse - although I'm not sure that's likely. Lastly, perhaps the moral of this story is simply not to judge an author by only one of their works. If you do, you might be missing out on a book you end up loving, as I nearly did with A Lover's Discourse.