How many books have I read in my life? I don't know. I can guess. 400? Probably. 1,000? Maybe. All my life I've loved reading. Disney's Cinderella, whose step-sisters' names were so hard to pronounce. Sweet Pickles books hid under my pillow for my mother to read again and again as she tucked me in. Receiving new boxes of Dr. Suess books in the mail. Reading my first big book, Double Dilemma: A Nancy Drew Adventure when I was 8. I got that book at the food store. I remember how grown-up I felt. Nancy was an adult, and I didn't even know what the title meant. I remember reading Little Women when I was 9, and being so distraught over Beth's death that I didn't read Part II for another year. Flying through Nancy Drew, the Babysitters' Club, Sweet Valley High. Struggling through The Scarlet Letter, dictionary in hand at all times. Rereading Pride and Prejudice so many times. Sneaking Gone with the Wind under my desk in high school biology class. Reading The Firm on my lunch break while working at McDonalds. Becoming a know-it-all deep thinker after reading The Awakening and Demian as a senior. Discovering The Giver as an adult. Being floored by The Golden Compass and The Book Thief. Even discovering that I may possibly like graphic novels. I don't know how to define my life not including the identity of reader.
Sometimes I thinks it's extremely detrimental to my own life. Being able to lose myself so readily in another person's life. Is this preventing me from going out and living my own? I think it probably does. And has. However, I can justify it now more easily. I am an English teacher. This is what I do. I read so I can share. I read so I can observe technique. I read to become a better writer, so I can become more comfortable explaining writing to children.
Sometimes I don't want to read. Lately, that's been the case. I just haven't wanted much to do with it. Have I read? Certainly. Magazines. A few pages with my morning breakfast. I can't put reading entirely out of my life. But lately, I just haven't felt the desire. Perhaps it's because I read so much last year. Pushed myself. It became a chore, actually. But with this lull, I stopped blogging, which has deepened the chasm between me and my own writing. I havent' fulfilled any of the commitments that I gave myself in the early summer: more reflection in my teaching, keeping up with the latest in YA fiction. Haven't kept up at all.
But I think I'm back. Or at least I'm going to push myself to be back - back to reading and back to blogging.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
2009 to Present
A log of books from the end of June 2009 to the end of June 2010.
- A Day of Tears
- The Misfits
- Girls, Drums, and Dangerous Pie
- Skullduggery Pleasant
- Lost World
- Marked (C+)
- Betrayed (B-)
- The Lost Symbol (B)
- The Hunger Games (A+)
- Amulet 2: The Stone Keeper's Curse (A)
- Next (A+)
- Double Identity (B+)
- Catching Fire (A+)
- The Lovely Bones (A)
- Oh. My. Gods. (A-)
- Tales From the Odyssey: Part One, Adapted by Mary Pope Osborne (B+)
- Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (B+)
- Elsewhere (A+)
- The Tomorrow Code (B-)
- Eva (A-)
- First Light (A-)
- Waiting for Normal (A)
- The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau
- Let the Right One In
- Bitter is the New Black
- Pitch Black: A Graphic Memoir
- The World We Live In
- Lady Macbeth's Daughter (B-)
- The Help (B+)
- Three Cups of Tea
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