This has been a pretty unsuccessful reading year, in spite of my best intentions and being out of school. But it has had some wonderful moments, too.
I think I mentioned my scheduling mistake in taking my research class during my last semester instead of first--though, really, it would have been more helpful to take a literature research class as an undergrad sophomore than ever as a writing and editing grad student in any case. Anyway, it is no doubt due to my own mistake that there were a lot of tedious moments in that class last fall. And then there was one class that was quite interesting and thought provoking and, well, what I expected grad school to be all the way through.
The topic: How do we read? At some point the professor threw out this out-of-character personal application question, and people perked up--this is what they came here for anyway, to this English graduation program, because they love to read. And I ventured to say that I often need to read books a second time, or even a third time, because when I get really into a book I start reading it so fast--in both anticipation and dread of the end--that I basically skim the last half of the book.
My professor was baffled and, let's be honest, slightly appalled. I had already admitted in the previous class to having never read the Russians, so I'm pretty sure he had a low opinion of me as a person anyway. He countered that he reads slower and slower as he gets closer to the end of a book, drinking it in, taking copious notes, stretching it out as long as possible. And then he never reads the book again.
And then, of course, he pointed out that his junior high daughter can read the Harry Potter books so many times that he is pretty sure there is something wrong with her.
I did NOT confirm that I am more like his junior high daughter than my grad school literature professor. But since then I have thought a lot about my rereading habits (which really do make me a pretty poorly-read, multi-English-degreed person). I really do read a new book so quickly that I can turn around and read it again and discover all sorts of new delights (Harry Potter being a case in point, since I did just that with the last book). It's hard for me to start new books, just like it is hard for me to start new friendships. I know there are worlds of lovely unread books out there, but there are crap books, too (I was really disappointed in "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand," for example), and why would I want to venture into crap when I have such delightful, tried-and-true friends on my ample shelves at home?
So this reading year has been unsuccessful in many ways--I struggle to answer the question, "Have you read any good books lately?" for example. Because you know what good books I've read lately? Harry Potter. And, oh, Anne of Green Gables. I spent a lot of my Idaho-time in August curled up in my parents' living room, reading Anne on my iPad...and then rereading it by random chapters, and reading that last chapter where she and Gilbert finally make amends one last more time. The medium may have been all new and modern, but I ran smack into my sixth grade self while I was there, the one who read Anne of Green Gables so many times that the binding broke in half and I had to buy a new one. I still have the "diamond sunburst and marble halls" speech etched into my brain. I honestly think that my August recovery was as much due to rereading Anne as it was to the great Idaho air.
Now, of course, I'm trying to make up for the fact that I did NOT read Anna Karenina as planned by reading three books at once--all for the first time. It is not really going well--I'm not a multi-tasking reader (also, I believe, a result of the obsessive nature of how I read), but I like the books, at least. Quite a lot, actually. If I give them time, I may even discover some new friends. I finally picked up The Help again after failing to read it for book club last year, and I read 150 pages in a sitting. And The Paris Wife is particularly interesting after reading A Moveable Feast a couple of years ago. And The White Tiger really is good, in spite of the fact that I got totally distracted from it by Anne and have not come back yet.
But, honestly, once I have read these books (and Lacuna, the next daunting task), mostly I will feel like I have earned the right to do a late-year Harry Potter rereading, and maybe even read Possession (Most Fantastic Book, 2002) again, since it's been practically jumping off the book shelf lately.
This summer Andrea sent me this fabulous quote, which I think sums this up quite well:
From The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs, where he quotes poet L.E. Sissman:
"A list of books that you reread is like a clearing in
the forest: a level, clean, well-lighted place where you set down your
burdens and set up your home, your identity, your concerns, your
continuity in a world that is at best indifferent, at worst malign.
Since you, the reader, are that hero of modern literature, the
existential loner, the smallest denominator of moral force, it behooves
you to take counsel, sustenance, and solace from the writers who have
been writing about you these hundred or five hundred years, to sequester
yourself with their books and read and reread them to get a fix on
yourself and a purchase on the world that will, with luck, like the
house in the clearing, last you for life."
From a well-educated, poorly-read rereader...who still has Anne of Avonlea sitting on her nightstand and kind of wants to pick it up before she goes to bed.
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