Required Reading

The Morgan Library & Museum is doing an exhibition called “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.” I plan on going there this Sunday and I am so excited. How wonderful it is that I get to visit when I am at the height of my Austen obsession! But one little prickly yet very exciting task: I am, in preparation for the visit, reading Pride and Prejudice this week.

How can I feel ambivalent about having to read Pride and Prejudice? While I am definitely enjoying the book, it is having a deadline that makes me a bit nervous. I do set reading goals for myself but this is different: I absolutely must read this book by Sunday as I’ve made a commitment not only to myself but to a close friend as well. I guess I can say, if I don’t in fact finish, that I’ve read the book when I was a teenager. But I don’t think it counts as I absolutely hated the book so much back then that it’s amazing I even got to the end. That is to say, I didn’t understand the book. So without a suitable excuse for not finishing, I have no choice but to read and enjoy.

But oh I am no longer used to doing a required reading. The deadline, oh the deadline, looms large! How will I concentrate and enjoy the prose when I am afraid I won’t make it? Yes, yes, I divided the number of pages by the number of days and yes yes, it is a doable number of pages per day. But still I fret.

I don’t know how I juggled all the required reading for many years as a student when the number of pages per day was not particularly doable. But then again, I did not juggle so well…