Four months ago, as blog readers will recall, I turned to the internet for reading suggestions and discovered that my Zodiac sign functions as a cosmic library card, steering me toward the books I’m fated to love.
According to the story I consulted back then, people born under the competitive and adventurous fire signs, like my own Sagittarius, are supposed to stick with travel memoirs and Taylor Jenkins Reid novels. Jane Austen, by contrast, is reserved for those loyal, sensitive water-sign people. Disturbing news for a Sagittarius who’s spent the past decade blogging about Austen, but I tried to take the news in stride. I even watched a Taylor Jenkins Reid movie.
So as you can imagine, it rocked my world to run across this story, which offers rather different astrologically based reading suggestions. This time, it’s people born under pragmatic Taurus—an earth sign!—who are bound to love Emma, while I’m supposed to stick with Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis.
I admit that one or two teensy red flags suggest that this article may not be completely reliable--for instance, its characterization of Emma, published in 1815, as a “modern classic,” or the fact that its list of twelve “exemplary fiction reads” includes no fewer than five non-fiction memoirs.
But still: I’m so confused! What am I allowed to read? If you can’t rely on the internet to steer your life choices, what can you rely on?