For a few months now, I've felt that I need to be more careful when choosing reading material. I am very much saddened by the amount of profanity, casual sex, violence and overall moral decay in most of today's literature. Recently, I was reading In the Woods by Tana French. By most standards it is a pretty tame murder mystery, but every time I picked it up I felt sick to my stomach and just KNEW I shouldn't be reading it. I finally decided to stop after I was about half-way through. The level of profanity in the novel was unacceptable and unnecessary.
A few days ago I watched a talk on the BYU channel given by the Young Women General Presidency at this year's Women's Conference. Titled "A Return to Virtue", Sister Dalton, Sister Dibb and Sister Cook presented a powerful case for LDS women to be examples of virtue to the world. Sister Dalton's talk, especially, really made me think about the movies, tv shows, music and books that I ingest. For the most part, I avoid movies and tv shows that are not virtuous, but since I live for books, I do end up reading far too many novels that don't meet my standards. I usually justify this as necessary for my job, but I don't really need to read all of the most popular novels. Just to know what they're about is enough, I believe.
This is all a round about way of saying that I am going to raise my standards for reading material from now on. I know I will miss out on a lot of "trendy" novels and, to be honest, it will be a sacrifice for me. Most of my life, I've read whatever I wanted. Now, I feel I must read books that will help me, or at least won't damage, my goal of being a virtuous woman. Will you join me in this endeavor?
