How to Get Through a Book You Just Can’t Get Through

We’ve all been there, we are assigned a book in our English class that we just dread reading and just cannot get through, so we rely on Sparknotes or Shmoop for salvation of our essay. Be it because the dialect is 17^th century fashion where you cannot understand a word they’re saying or the book is just nowhere near your interests, it can be a struggle to force yourself to open up to a strange piece of text.

So how can you get through a book you just can’t get through?

Do a little background research on the author

Many times getting to know the author a little more can help you not only become more comfortable with the work you’re reading but also can help you with your essay. Take Frankenstein by Mary Shelley for instance. Knowing that she lost her mother after giving birth to her and her difficult, almost abandoned relationship with her father will show you the connections this has to Frankenstein and his feelings towards and abandonment of the monster. Finding the connections to the authors’ own experiences and their writing will aide you in your essay and spotting instances of said connections when you’re reading will also make reading more interesting.

Use Sparknotes or Shmoop as clarifications NOT as replacements for the book

Of course, sometimes we are given a book written in old English where words like ‘methinks’ or ‘mayhaps’ fill the page and our brain tries to find the slang and modern English within the book. Reading one chapter and going to a book resource such as Sparknotes on the side can help you in this process of understanding writing that you are not familiar with. Reading more of older century books can also help you in becoming familiar with the language and how they wrote back then, aiding you in future reading assignments if need be. Do not just abandon all hope and think that reading the summaries on Sparknotes will suffice for writing your essay; an authentic essay comes from authentic reading.

Use your theme that you regularly enjoy writing about to concur the book and essay

We all tend to sway towards different themes that we like to write about, whether they be sexism, racism, women empowerment, LGBTQ representation, masculinity, etc. within books. If you find it difficult to read a certain book, perhaps because the book itself has some misogynistic or racist tendencies, use that as a way to concur the book and write an essay expressing these issues. For example, one essay I had to write was based off of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I found debilitating to read as it had some very misogynistic views about women through the portrayal of Eve. I got through the book, of course with Sparknotes and Shmoop as my friends, and wrote an essay exemplifying how women are portrayed throughout it; this idea for an essay truly helped push me to find things to back up my argument when it came time to write my essay.

It’s hard to truly get into a book that you may not be interested in, but think of the feeling you get after concurring that book and write an amazing essay! Whatever strategy you use from here or from your own experience, make sure it’s one that truly helps you to read the book and not solely rely on Sparknotes.

Happy reading and essay writing!

 

Contributed by: Angela West, Writing Center intern