Maybe Reading is Good For You

I received my bachelors degree in English. That is probably not news to most of you. And the rest don't care. Awkward. I chose English lit because I love to read. Really I do. I fell in-love with literature my senior year in high school. I took a voluntary advanced lit class from... what was his name? Curly hair. Bushy beard. Total hippie. His classroom was one of the portables. Why can't I remember his name? Little help siblings? I read two books in that class that changed me. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow. I was transformed. They remain two of my favorite books to this day.

Prior to that class I only read what I was required to read for school. That's not to say that I did not enjoy Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, or A Separate Peace or To Kill a Mockingbird- cause I did. But the focus of Advanced Lit was to read, REALLY read, and then we just sat and discussed the books. We weren't reading for tests or quizzes (though we did write an occasional paper). We were reading and formulating our own thoughts and opinions on the things we were reading. Imagine that! A bunch of teenagers actually thinking about things!!! It was a total 180 from where I had been before. You know... not thinking.

So once I had muscled and plowed and kicked and scratched my way through the general requirements in college- imagine my total shock and awe to find out, while talking with a school counselor, that I could just study and read literature for my major!!! Really!?? I hated, hated, hated school my whole life. I remember hating it in first grade, sitting in big 'ol Ms. Flinders class with her fiery red hair, and hating it all the way up to my second round of College Algebra after my mission. But then, I got into the English program. No more memorization. No more multiple choice exams. No more stupid effing busy work. No more BULL!!!

I got to read novels and write a paper of what I thought; or, read a play and write a paper about how it affected me; or read a poem and write about how it made me feel. Can you imagine!!?? My work was original. I was not regurgitating what they were force feeding me, like I had been for the prior fifteen years!!! It was so liberating.

Boy I got side tracked....

So, I love to read. That's the gist of that story. And I try and keep it up. I do better in the summer, usually getting in three or four novels. But I wish I could crank them out like I was in college.

Right now I am "reading" The Sound and The Fury by Faulkner. check this pimp out...


I loved As I Lay Dying and Absolom, Absolom! And I think I would enjoy Fury, but I am reading it so sporadically that I'm really not enjoying it. I need more time! More hours. I'm just not getting it done at lunch time...

Blast our limited 24-hour day ration!!!