My love affair with books began in early childhood, which is unsurprising as my father is an incredible reader and my mother read to me all the time. What is surprising is how long it has lasted. I've had times in my life where my difficulties made the desire to read obsolete (or so it seemed), but there have been other times when I haven't been able to put a book down. I have a nightstand filled with books; I have an entire room in my house devoted to my books. Moreover, our house is filled with print--a variety of magazines and a subscription to the newspaper. Reading is a passion for me.
My current passion is "works of literary merit" that I can use in my Advanced Placement Literature class, but I will read most anything. Currently, I'm reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, which is enjoyable. It has two first person narrators, telling their own stories that are set in the same location. I'm at the point where they have met and are beginning a friendship. I've also begun an Edith Wharton novel called The House of Mirth, a story of a 29 year old woman looking for marriage while using her beauty to land a man. I'm trying to muster sympathy for Lily Bart, but I'm comparing her to Madame Bovary and Edna Pontellier and finding her relatively shallow. However, if society impresses shallowness on its women, for example, how can I fault these characters for their own shallowness?
There are many genres I feel as though I've hardly explored. To look into my library is to see the varied interests I have, from historical works to pulp fiction. And yet, I routinely haunt used bookstores, trying to find the perfect book, the book that will allow me some escape from my world and some pleasure in another world. I particularly like mysteries because there is almost always a satisfactory ending, a solution to the problem. Life is filled with mysteries, often unsolvable or with no satisfactory ending, and it's nice to have something resolved in a mystery.
There's also something about choosing the book...the way it feels or smells. The cover. The size of the print or if there are pictures in it. Until I taught AP Literature, I thought I was the only person who surreptitiously smelled books. In class one day, I passed out brand-new novels to my students. To my amazement, they opened the novels and began smelling them. It was then that I realized book lovers like myself often smell the interior of a novel, reveling in the 'new book' smell. I now encourage all my students to smell the interior of their books when I give them their books in class. It's fun to see the look of shock when the students realize others enjoy the new book smell. The beauty of a literature class is the comfort in knowing others love books too.
This summer, my goal is to read about 25 books. Since I have only eight weeks of vacation, that's about three books a week. Some are long; some are much shorter. Some will be hard to put down; others will be hard to pick up. Ultimately, regardless of how many I read this summer, I will be much richer for having read. I will still haunt used bookstores this summer, attempting to find the perfect, good smelling book, which will assume its place on my nightstand, awaiting me.
