I am never one to make my reading ambitions public, largely because I am a slow reader. I love language itself far too much to blast through paper wedges in an otherwise joyless effort to uncover plot details.
Case in point: In April, I decided I would read "The Great Gatsby" again in preparation for seeing the film. Thanks to Baz Luhrmann, my dirty little secret was out - the fact that I've been an English teacher for 13 years but had not read this staple of English curriculum since I myself was a junior in high school. That's right kids...never taught it, never touched it since a year that started with a 19. So I snatched my pristine and unannotated paperback from its spot on my office shelves prior to a flight to San Francisco in late April. "This thing isn't even 200 pages! Surely I will read it this weekend!" I told myself. To ensure that this would happen, I brought only one other book along with me.
The other book was the latest by comic essayist David Sedaris, called "Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls." And certain that it would contain copious amounts of wit and humor, the new hardcover all but vibrated in the bag between my feet as I sat wedged in my seat reading "Gatsby." Not 40 pages in, I turned to my traveling companion, a fellow English teacher in my department and one who does teach the novel on a regular basis, and remarked how I was shocked to discover that not much happened in the novel in the first three chapters. "Chapter four," she assured me. "That's when it all takes off." Distracted now by puffy clouds, snoring co-passengers in our airborne tube, and a nagging fear that I might not find "Gatsby" to be as charmed and wonderful as everyone else whose opinion I treasure, I stuffed the book in my bag and removed the Sedaris. I then proceeded to scarf it down in one sitting, laughing so hard out loud at times that I woke up sleeping passengers and drew attention to myself.
I returned home and shared my "Gatsby" failure with co-workers. The two teachers I work with whom I consider to be the biggest "Gatsby" experts told me to just start over. "It's well-written," I said, "but I don't feel like anything is happening!" Literary mojo, zapped. Web address to Spark Notes, typed in the browser and ready to hit enter.
Cut to the first day of my summer vacation. I get up to an empty house, brew some coffee, and sit down with "Gatsby" once more, removing the bookmark and slapping it on the coffee table. The film has been out for over a month now, and reviews have varied wildly. I'm sure to hate it now, I tell myself, but I'm still not going to see it until I've reread the book. And so it begins that the task of reading has become just that, a task. A job. A requirement. And summer reading should not feel like "a requirement." (If I haven't bored you yet and you keep reading, you'll see that, unfortunately, much of this summer's reading will be the result of "requirements.")
But this time, something magical happened. I took the first chapter as slowly as I've read anything, this time becoming deeply absorbed in the language, stopping only to slap myself for thinking that there was nothing happening in the early pages the last time I tried reading. Of course there was something happening! I just wasn't in the right space to receive it! To make a long story short, I finished "Gatsby" this morning, after taking the book in morning-reading chunks for four days. And best of all, I found it to be quite wonderful. I wanted to rush straight into a summer school classroom to discuss it, regardless of the fact that I would likely be the only one there who would have read it. I feel like a true English teacher again.
And not a moment too soon, because a challenge from my bestie over at Uncomfortably Numb to start hitting the keys for the summer began with her post about summer reading, a topic I met with dread because for the most part, this summer's reading for me will be mostly born of necessity, rather than the traditional summer raison d'etre, pleasure. This is because our school district has decided to wipe out its existing curriculum and start over, leaving me in the stressful-yet-oddly-exciting position of having a stack of books to read or reread in preparation for teaching them in the coming year. To further entice us, our district was nice enough to allow us to choose any ten books from our approved grade band list and provide us with new copies of them. Running into the department breakroom to pick up the books when they came felt like a robbery at Barnes and Nobel. It was a glorious moment, followed by the oh-shit truth of the matter - I have to read all of this!
So I'm providing two lists here, but I'm putting them in separate posts because I write too much! The first is a list of everything I have to read for my job in preparation for the coming year. They are not all books that I will have to teach, but they are all books approved for the new curriculum for sophomore English, and so I will either be teaching them or choosing from among them.
The second list is my "true" summer reading list...the one I have for myself. In between moments of required reading and catching up on movies I've missed, I hope to chip away at this list. Whatever I can't get to is going to stay there into the fall, I can assure you.
My journey as a reader can be summed up nicely by what I've written here. I have to be in a mood. I have to have multiple books going at once. I have to choose the flavor I want that day, or choose not to partake when something else holds more interest for me. I have to start pages over, chapters over, entire books over. All of my literary friends read circles around me. It's frustrating, but I have to accept it. If I didn't, I'd probably have given up on "The Great Gatsby" as a boring book in which nothing happens. And I would have lived secretly with great shame, not to mention some incorrect memories of how the book ends.
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