I thought that your story about your love for books and reading them was fascinating, blue. It seems like you have a wide array of knowledge in a lot of various styles. In other words, you are one impeccably balanced reader. We share a few favorite authors and yet, there is still a lot on your gamut that I need to read.

My story of book reading is a pretty dull and unoriginal one. Like everyone in my age group, there was the Goosebumps craze as expected. Though it is boring, I will post about it some other day if anyone is interested.

Post away, FKA...hey, that rhymes.....

I’ve got some time to kill before I head home so this is what I got.

I have never truly been “into” books and I guess that means that I never really had the desire to even pick one up. I didn’t read a lot when I was young but when I would read something, I would fall in love with it.

I remember liking children’s books like The Berenstain Bears and similar books, though the bear books were definitely my favorites. Sometime around my middle elementary school years I found gems like Shiloh, The Giver, Old Yeller—you know, the standards I suppose. I am also a pretty big fan of a few of Roald Dahl books, my favorite and one of my favorite books of all time is Fantastic Mr. Fox, I also really love Danny, the Champion of the World.

From there I hit the Goosebumps phase. My mom was proud that I had an interest in books because naturally, she wanted me to read, so she bought me the entire collection. I have no idea where that collection is now—probably sold it at a garage sale—but I did like R.L. Stine’s scary stories. I read a lot of his books, including the ones that were aimed for teenagers.

In my middle school year, I kind of took a dip. I didn’t really read much and nothing really interested me. I think I remember reading The Hobbit in a class—which I really liked—but other than that, it’s all a big blur. My freshman English teacher was a very hard teacher and he was notorious for his arduous schoolwork. Immediately from the outset we took reading tests to see what would challenge us the most. If you scored high, you started on Dickens’ Great Expectations, Hamilton’s Mythology and Shakespeare’s sonnets. This was pretty tough, I had gone from reading nothing to reading a ton of stuff, all at the same time. I grew to dislike Dickens and Shakespeare but this was due mostly to the fact that I read them at a rushed pace. In that same year, I read three Dickens novels, Romeo and Juliet, Homer’s The Iliad and selected books from The Bible (New King James Version.)

I didn’t have a good sophomore teacher, we only read three books which were again, standard high school fodder: To Kill a Mocking Bird, Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies. These were interesting books but I didn’t really like them, save for the Steinbeck one. This is where I read a lot of his books and I also read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest during this time.

My junior year was where I truly peaked. I was selected in some gifted and talented thing for writing so that same freshman English teacher had me reading tons and tons of books at a time (he was now the head of the department.) He would actually just give me the books, which were mine to keep, to read and he expected me to read them at a high speed. The first book he gave me was Camus’ The Stranger which had a lasting impact on me. I read a ton of books during this time: five Shakespeare plays, Moby Dick, multiple novels by Vonnegut, Faulkner, Hardy, Bronte, Dickens, Orwell and a bunch of philosophy books. In between these books I would write essays for him and I guess the point was to make me a well-read, balanced student. It paid off I guess but this turned me off to reading a lot. I guess the books I was reading were of high quality but I couldn’t really enjoy them. I still have all of them but I seldom reach for any of them. The English class I took that year was also pretty hard because we read nine novels in the span of three months. That’s where I began my hate for Hawthorne and also read the infamous Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Crucible—to name a few.

My senior year was a waster in that we only read experts of novels, the only full works we read were Inferno and Othello.

In college, you don’t really read much for classes. They teach you how to write research papers and such but they never incorporate reading into this. That’s something I really don’t understand, don’t you need to read a lot in order to write well? I have read some books during these times that I really like, like Things Fall Apart and Lolita, but I haven’t found too much new material. The thing is, I feel like I have read a lot in my life—which I probably haven’t—but I don’t think it has paid off, I don’t write well and its not like I have this vast intelligence at all.

I guess, I just haven’t found a lot in reading that I like, though I keep taking stabs at it. I did like the Potter books though, those are quite good.

Yours is an interesting post FKA. It brings up so many points, and so many of my chronic complaints about how reading is "taught" in this country.

There is a universal belief that reading is "good for you," for both sexes, in early childhood. As such, it can almost smack of medicine. Something you do because you have to, not because you enjoy it. It's analogous to the idea that you have to "practice" your musical instrument. You can't just "play." The words capture the attitude. (For the record, my children have never been told to practice their chosen instruments, they are always encouraged to play!)

Some time in early adolescence, however, boys are given the message that reading is effete and feminine. There is a whole industry of girl oriented "young adult" and adolescent literature, but little to nothing directed at older boys. Which means that after you graduate from R L Stine, you've got nothing but Dickens, Vonnegut, Orwell, etc. And those books are wonderful, but, they may not be age appropriate, depending on your maturity and reading skill. So, you turn half of the population off to fiction, before they've had an opportunity to grow into the stuff that could very well speak to them.

You are obviously an intelligent person who was ill served by your educational system, if you didn't read much for classes in college. It's not too late! Screw the bastards! Read for fun! That'll teach 'em.

In my capacity as a high school English teacher, I am constantly struggling to find ways to encourage reading.

Standing over a student with a semi-automatic got me fired last time I tried it, so your post has given me food for thought about the workings of a reluctant reader, which I will now absorb and regurgitate in some educational new wave theory.

In all seriousness though, I find your story has me quite flustered and emotional. It breaks my heart to see kids turned off reading, but it is so hard to make it exciting or apparently relevant anymore.

If I believe in anything, it is the universal story-telling nature of humanity , and years will pass and you will still find me holding out battered and stained paperbacks to quizzical faces.

Perhaps I can reach the next FKA, and light the fire.
Hmm..

quote:

Originally posted by Ishmaels Coffin:
If I believe in anything, it is the universal story-telling nature of humanity , and years will pass and you will still find me holding out battered and stained paperbacks to quizzical faces.

Well said. Humans like stories (maybe that is why we enjoy gossip) and a good story will always captivate and hopefully impact and make one the wiser. Perhaps paperbacks will cease to be the medium for storytelling and that will be a very sad day but humans will always like a good ole story to listen to.

Or maybe Ish you should just try this method.

With my class currently reading a novel, and in the throes of learning swear words in English, I reckon I'll play this to my grumpy boys up the back of the room ha ha...

You ARE a holy man!!

My favortie authors are Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly and Stephen J. Cannell. Here is Stephen J. Cannell talking about his latest book Three Shirt Deal