Remembering How to Read for Pleasure

I’ve decided that 2019 is my year of William Goldman.

I read this New Yorker article today about William Goldman and the strange children’s book he wrote, called Wigger.

Goldman died in November 2018. As I read that article, I was reminded of how much I love his work. I haven’t read Wigger (although now I really want to), but The Princess Bride is special to me. I read it when I was in my very early 20s — newly married and still in the bright little place where I was deeply in love and the whole world seemed like it was on my doorstep.

I’ve written before about how when I was a teenager, sometimes I’d read a book and it would just be mine. That little collection of books were so important to me. They were foundational. And in many ways, they saved me.

The Princess Bride was one of the last of them.

So as I was really surprised as I was reading that article to realize that Goldman didn’t only write The Princess Bride. I shouldn’t have been. It’s embarrassing to admit that I was. But there you go.

I’ve seen several of his movies, although I didn’t know they were his. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. All The President’s Men. Stepford Wives. Marathon Man. Several movies based on Stephen King books, including Misery and Dolores Claiborne.

Lately, it’s like I’ve forgotten how to read for pleasure.

I’ve been struggling with that since finishing my MFA last summer. I’ve become so used to having assigned reading and having to annotate and read for academics. For two years I was required to read 100 books a year and it was just . . . a lot.

But I miss reading just for fun. Just to get lost in a story.

I had the idea that giving myself an assignment might be an interesting way to get back to pleasure reading. What if I pick a writer for 2019 and just do a deeper dive into their work?

Nothing super formal. I don’t necessarily want to read everything William Goldman wrote in order or force myself to read something I don’t want to read. And for god’s sake no annotations. At least not in MLA style.

But a few books and some of his movies. That could be neat.

I was super tempted to start with The Princess Bride. But I’ve read it several times already and I want to read something new. So I just ordered a copy of Marathon Man. And his craft book, Adventures in the Screen Trade.

I’ll start there. And I think I will watch The Princess Bride tonight. It’s pretty much never a bad time for that.

Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.