E. B. Cassidy

“I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatowpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina, and strolled down Swann’s Way.”

I would venture to say that Gilmore Girls was a cornerstone in the development of my personality. Specifically, I think I was very influenced by Rory’s literary range and Lorelai’s quick wit.

It’s one of those shows I never tire of. Similarly, there are books I never tire of. Unlike Rory, I didn’t dive headfirst into the classics, wherein you have to earn your appreciation for the writing via exceedingly difficult sentence structures and rhetoric long since fallen out of use.

(Although I did have a Shakespeare phase when I was ten. I maintain that Much Ado about Nothing is his best work)

No, I preferred the likes of Sarah Dessen, Carolyn Keene, and Harper Lee rather than Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Plath. Rory and I do agree, though, that Hemingway is incredibly overrated.

But here’s the point: reading defined my childhood. It drew me out of the world of my parents’ divorce, the bored bullies of my primary school, and the general struggle that comes with being a girl in a place made by men. Instead, I sat on a beach in Colby with girls that taught me perfection is an illusion. I sleuthed with Nancy Drew in the name of what is morally right. I watched through a young girl’s eyes as blatant injustice challenged her perceptions. And I felt myself changing.

Whatever the genre is, I think reading is such an inavaluable medium. I’m just one person trying to get her foot in the door of literary success, battling the gatekeepers that have slammed that same door in my face time ad again. But if the heroines of my books have taught me anything, it’s that I can do anything.

I’m willing to bet you can, too.

Cheers,

Emma