An Old Young Book and a Young Old Book

I thought about that title for a long time, and it still doesn't really make sense. In any case, this week I (wonder of wonders) had time to read two whole books, even if one of them was technically for school. The first of these books was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a children's book I loved when I was younger. I found that I'd forgotten all of its details, so I checked it out from the library and read it in an hour or so.

Honestly, it was kind of just okay. It was a fun story about two children who run away to live in a museum, with themes of familial love and dissatisfaction with mediocrity at its core. The main character, Claudia, desperately wants to be unique or special, a feeling that resonated with me deeply as a child, but it's not expressed as strongly as I really remember. I've always thought of reading books like eating (yeah, I know, it's weird, I don't understand why, either). This was sort of a Happy Meal of literature--nostalgic, fun while it lasts, and not particularly memorable.

The second book I read was The Haunting of Hill House. (That would be the young old book, since it's technically a classic, but a newer one...listen, this title isn't one of my strongest.) I read this for my Horror Fiction class, and I wasn't super excited about it. We'd mostly been reading Edgar Allan Poe in the class, which to be perfectly honest, gets old. The only other work of Shirley Jackson's I had read was "The Lottery," which was enjoyable enough, but sort of lost its impact after the first time I read it.

But then. You guys. This book swallowed me, much like the house swallowed Eleanor Vance and her compatriots. All I had to read was "Hill House, not sane," and I was in love. This book made me feel things. Reading your regular old, five-dollar paperback horror stories is like having a quick bag of chips at three in the afternoon--it holds you over until dinner, but it doesn't have much nutritional value.

But Hill House nourished me. It's the hearty, homecooked meal of horror novels. Shirley Jackson cooked it up with love. It's full of protein-packed prose, dense enough to keep you satisfied, yet fast-paced enough that you enjoy every bite. I felt myself living the life of Eleanor, the story's troubled main character (but really, what horror protagonist isn't troubled?) effortlessly, a testament to Jackson's phenomenal character design.

Classic literature is always very hit or miss for me. Half of the time, my thought process is just...it's not that great. Like, I get it, but it's not that great. The other half of the time, my thought process is oh my goodness, I totally get it, this is amazing and everyone ever should read it. Yeah. I totally get Hill House, it's amazing and everyone ever should read it.