It Really Is a Question of How

How to distill two amazing months of reading into one brief post? How to express how full my life feels right now and how replete my reading world has been? How to convey the urgency with which you should (or perhaps should not) find your way to the nearest bookseller or library and begin to fill yourself in similar ways?

Here's the full list for May and June. Try not to be alarmed.

The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film	Michael Ondaatje
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich*	Alexander Solzhenitzyn
Because of Mr. Terupt	Rob Buyea
Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence	Nick Bantock
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold*	Daniel James Brown
Paper Towns*	John Green
Texts from Jane Eyre and Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters	Mallory Ortberg
A Walk Across America*	Peter Jenkins
Geronimo Stilton and Search for Sunken Treasure and Mummy with No Name (audio)	G. Stilton
Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (audio)	Judy Blume
The Charlatan's Boy*	Jonathan Rogers
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories	HitRecord - JGL
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood*	Marjane Satrapi
The Dangerous Duty of Delight*	John Piper
Friend or Fiend with the Pain and the Great One (audio)	Judy Blume
The Sign of the Carved Cross	Lisa Hendey
Burning Bright*	Ron Rash
A Tangle of Knots	Lisa Graff
A Slight Trick of the Mind*	Mitch Cullin
Rhinoceros and Other Plays	Eugene Ionesco
Same Kind of Different As Me*	Ron Hall and Denver Moore
Peace Like a River*	Leif Enger
Watchmen (skimmed after first half)	Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons
The Importance of Being Earnest	Oscar Wilde

The titles marked with an asterisk are from our school's Summer Reading list. We use a book group model where teachers select a book and students sign up for the group of their choice and read that book over the summer. In the fall, we meet and discuss what we read. I'm making it my goal to read all the Summer Reading selections for our Upper School. Impossible, I know. But a fun challenge. I'll readily admit that some of the selections have been raging disappointments. Others have been merely fine. But a few have stood up and demanded my attention in ways that are not entirely unlike falling in love or having an intense crush. And that's really what life is, right? A series of days and hours that can't not disappoint, but when it surprises us with joy and insight and - yes - love, we feel our breath in every muscle and fiber and know what it is to be alive. So, let's talk about what has recently made my reading heart beat faster.

Like your annoying friend talking incessantly about some guy she just met, I wanted to write and talk and tweet so much about The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film as I was reading it. I couldn't stop with the silly grin as I encountered overlap after overlap between what Murch was saying about film editing (a subject I normally don't think anything at all about) and writing or the creative life in general. Now, too much time has passed, and I can't write intelligently about the book, and it's making me question this whole plan to write once a month. But I can't doubt the resonance of that book in my life at the time, and therefore, I will continue to trust in all things Nick Hornby. For now.

Of the Summer Reading titles, three have stood out so far as remarkable, each in their own way. First, is John Green's Paper Towns. I've been a John Green fan for years, but lately, he's fallen out of my favor, mostly because of things-he-probably-can't-help-related-to-movies. I still haven't seen A Fault in our Stars, and though I loved, loved, loved the book when I read it, I now have that sour taste in my mouth about it. But Paper Towns obliterated that flavor and replaced it with a new one. In fact, I think I would go so far as to say Paper Towns is the best John Green book I've read. I read it in a day, but even with that rush of energy, I paused long enough to mark passages that resonated with me. Like this one:

You can't divorce Margo the person from Margo the body. You can't see one without seeing the other. You looked at Margo's eyes and you saw both their blueness and their Margo-ness. In the end, you could not say that Margo Roth Spiegelman was fat, or that she was skinny, any more than you can say that the Eiffel Tower is or is not lonely. (50)

Once I started flipping through to find quotes, it made me want to read it again all over, and I can't resist sharing one more passage with you:

That was perfect, I thought: you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to. (216) 

I will admit to suffering from a bit of an identity crisis of late, so perhaps that's all it is, but the story of Margo Roth Spiegelman's one great night of revenge and her subsequent disappearance lit me up inside. It - along with so many other things these days - has me wanting to access again a part of myself that I fear had nearly been smothered by the reality of growing up, a thing I thought I'd never do. And I loved the character of Q, his earnest desire to get things right, his willingness to go, but only so far. He seems true and real and right to me.

One last thing: I don't care what the haters might say - Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" is perfect, even in all its immutable imperfection. 

The next great title from that list is A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin. As a devoted fan of the BBC series Sherlock, when I read the blurb on this one, I knew it would be a favorite. And it was. It tells the story of Holmes as an elderly man, aging with considerable interest in the decline of his own greatest asset - his mind. It's a quiet novel, not at all like Paper Towns, but it too had something to say to me about self and becoming and growing into the parts of our life that surprise and somehow don't surprise at all.

Finally, Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. This one was the sleeper hit of the summer so far. I did not expect to appreciate this book as much as I did. And when I tell you it is the story of a boy and his family, with particular focus on his father who - yes, I'm really going to say this - can perform miracles, you will want to disregard everything that follows. That would be a mistake. This book is beautifully written. Not pretentious, but still demonstrating great care with language. It works on so many levels, and I promise, the part of the book that makes you want to dismiss it (the father's direct line to God), is its greatest strength. The way Enger writes the narrator's voice and the way the young man describes his father and the things he sees him do is so skillful, so without any need to convince you, that you are convinced in spite of yourself. It is not a religious text, not a book for Christian readers alone. It is a great novel, telling a great story. What more do we want from a book?

It occurs to me that fiction dwells most completely within impossible situations. All of these books deal with making the impossible possible, and perhaps that is the simultaneous comfort and challenge of the reading life. Perhaps it is the one great fantasy I can't quite let go of, even as I keep being reminded of this soul-crushing fact: in life, that life that dulls our senses and so often disappoints, impossible situations usually stay that way.

This post has already gotten beyond any concept of brief; however, I would be remiss if I didn't point out one more title on that stupidly long list above: Texts from Jane Eyre and Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters by Mallory Ortberg. I don't know how much I've shared here about the importance of making me laugh, but suffice it to say it is everything, and Mallory Ortberg gets the everything prize this month. I remember laughing - a lot - at Rachel's post on this book, and that was forevah ago, and somehow I had kind of forgotten it existed because when I found it in the bookstore and begin dying right there on the floor of the store, I wondered how this book had not come into my life before now. Just go look at this right now, and you'll see what I mean.

An Open Letter to the Authors of Teen Fiction by Henri Lowe

The letter below was crafted by an amazing student. Her name is Henri Lowe, and I suspect you will hear big things from her in the future. And by future, I mean the immediate future because this letter is about to blow your mind.

To the Authors of Teen Fiction,

I am sixteen years old: a teenager by all accounts. Yet I cannot walk into the Young Adult aisle in a bookstore, full of your latest books, without sighing and walking out again in favor of the middle school fiction section. I am not opposed to all teen fiction, not in the slightest. I have been exposed to much of it. I have read the most popular books of your genre: Divergent, The Hunger Games, and The Fault in Our Stars are all on my bookshelf.

Yet I still have issues with the genre of teenage fiction. Why must you assume that my tastes change so dramatically upon becoming a “young adult”? I have matured quite a bit since my elementary and middle school years, but I still appreciate a well-written book. The books that you put on the shelves vary, but many of them are not worth any reader’s time. The change in my age means that I have entered a section of the bookstore where unoriginality reigns: all of the latest books are modeled after the last teen bestsellers. There are worlds upon worlds of vampires and werewolves, thanks to Twilight; dystopian futures after The Hunger Games, and, later, Divergent; teenage lovers battling disease and heartbreak, in the style of John Green. I don’t argue that these are all pointless and poorly written, but how I wish there was more creativity. The typical models are growing bland. Young adult books belong to a rotating wheel of ideas, which spawn hundreds of imitations, often worse than the first.

Perhaps you do write a decent book, or at least an original, thoughtful one. Chances are, the main elements will include those which you think are the prominent issues in my life: romance, death, uncertainty, betrayal, passion. The elements of the book will almost certainly include sex, likely include cursing, potentially include drugs, and possibly include current issues such as homosexuality. Do I exaggerate when I say “almost certainly”? No, I do not, because that is the current model. You assume that because I am a teenager living in a world of tumultuous emotions, I feel acutely these things of which you write, and act in the way that you assume teenagers act.

But I do not. You see, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that you write about these issues. I am aware that some teenagers do face these circumstances--but perhaps not as many as you think. You write of things that are culturally accepted, and socially accepted, or things that you assume to be so, but are actually not necessarily accepted among teenagers. The angst that you suppose among teenagers, with our cursing and relationships, is not quite as realistic as you assume. I become uncomfortable when every highschool relationship becomes overly graphic or physical, and saddened because that is not always true--but you make it seem as if it is. You often push your own agendas into books, in a way which diminishes or even eliminates your artistic integrity. Even if I find your plotlines monotonous, even if I don’t fancy your choices regarding characters and their actions, I will accept your decisions if they are necessary to the plot, or if they are true to the character. But too often I find these elements in your books unnecessary, simply thrown in to fit the model of the standard young adult book. You seem to jump on the bandwagon to sell copies—or you truly mistake the world of the teenager.

When I am in the Young Adult books section, I miss the inventive and well-written Harry Potter; the brilliant Artemis Fowl; the action-packed original Percy Jackson series; the witty djinn Bartimaeus; the intelligent young children who composed The Mysterious Benedict Society; the hilarious skeleton detective Skulduggery Pleasant. I find myself pushed more and more into the classics, or back into the middle school section. I find little for teenagers that interests me: the same poorly-written stories, over and over again, with melodramatic one-word titles and covers depicting passionate teenage lovers, or edgy girls thwarting a cruel fate. I want something clever, with good characters and an inventive plotline. Yes, you can add elements of a harder, more confusing teenage world, a transitioning to adulthood. You can even add elements of romance, or death, or sex, or cursing. But please make it relevant to the plotline. Make it relevant to teenagers’ lives as they are, not as you presume them to be—or simply write a book of fantastical fantasy, of magic and ideas and worlds. But whatever you write, please make it creative. Please make it thoughtful.

Please write me a good book.

Sincerely,
Your Teenage Reader

Say What You Want About April...

Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living	Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
In the Cold Light	Richard Sonnenmoser
Great House	Nicole Krauss
The Crossover	Kwame Alexander
Chaser	John Collier
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky	Heidi Durrow

Showers and flowers and the cruellest month and come she will and clocks striking thirteen. . . .What is it about April that makes us want to write about it? Is any other month name-dropped as often? 

This practice of writing only once a month has shifted my thinking about what I read and how it falls into these chunks of time. I've been keeping this reading log all year where I'm trying to capture my reading experience more fully, so the list can include single short stories or articles as well as the longer complete works I finish. Because I'm also recording the author's country of origin and ethnicity, I am more aware when my writing starts to trend western white male, and I can make adjustments. Seeing the list broken down by month makes some of those shifts more evident. In April, you can see me adjusting course after several titles in a row from WASPy authors of US origin. Kwame Alexander, Heidi Durrow, and Nicole Krauss are all from the US, but they do bring some ethnic and gender and cultural diversity to my reading life. 

The first title I finished in April was for work: Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living was a professional development requirement, and though I wasn't rocked by it, there was some good material with solid points for discussion. I started teaching at a Christian high school last year, but I had never experienced Christian education up to that point. Public elementary, middle, and high schools served me very well, and though my college has church-based connections, it is not ostensibly about Christian education. So this book provides a bit of an overview of what it means to learn through and with and by the Christian worldview. It wouldn't have been my choice to read it, but as I tell my students all the time, sometimes we just have to do things we don't want to do. And sometimes those things turn out to be alright despite our reluctance.

I read the Sonnenmoser short story in an old Crab Orchard Review that I've been chipping away at lately. When I cleaned out my old office last summer, I found a stack of journals I had never read, and I brought them home and put them by the toilet. Please tell me other people do this. It's the perfect way to read a lit journal because only maniacs sit down and read those things cover to cover. But a short story or poem at a time is a lovely way to break them down and really appreciate the good stuff. Sonnenmoser's story was some of the good stuff as was a poem by Marty McConnell that I read again this morning. It's called "the fidelity of disagreement," and you can read it here. Something about the quiet counting she uses and the "bird behind each knee" and the unique way she builds the momentum, a circling of sorts, and those last two lines? It's so good to stumble upon something so good. 

The Collier story ("The Chaser") is one a colleague uses with our seniors, and I was talking through it with a student - neither of us thought it was very good. He called it pointless; I called it bad writing. But then I looked it up and found that Collier is a relatively well-known writer with many respectable opinions of his work, and it got me thinking about how we are influenced by what people tell us we're supposed to think about a thing. I still uphold it's not good writing, and if a student turned in a story with that same first sentence, I would tell him/her to start again and avoid the overwriting and unnecessary adjectives. But, someone somewhere decided this story did it for them, and it got made into an episode of The Twilight Zone, and people seem to really appreciate it. Because I didn't know I was supposed to like it, I was free to dismiss it or appreciate it without expectations or obligations. This experience confirms my preference to enter into a work with as little knowledge of it as possible. I want my opinions to be informed by the work more than by outside expectations.

Admittedly, that's not exactly what happened with Nicole Krauss' Great House. Because I so enjoyed her The History of Love (I didn't tell you about this one, but trust me when I say it is delicious), I did start Great House with a few Great Expectations, and Krauss did not disappoint. Great House tells - it seems - the story of a desk. A most remarkable desk that has been a part of so many lives and spaces, and as most of the owners of the desk are writers, this book might speak especially to those who deal in words. Often I resist books that pander to the reading audience overmuch, but this one does not pander. It is a natural telling of an almost supernatural object, and Krauss is able to use the multi-vocal technique so skillfully and intelligently that it almost feels like an intellectual exercise to read her work. It's not a mystery, and you're not really trying to put the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together, and there is no epiphany where you suddenly understand how it ALL. JUST. FITS. But it does all fit, and beautifully so. And that knife's edge of uncertainty (have I used this phrase before?) is what makes her work so compelling and so engrossing. 

Kwame Alexander's The Crossover won the Newbery Medal this year, and though I love the basketball and the novel in poem format - especially for branching out certain young readers - I am not convinced it would have been my choice for the top book of the year. Good, but maybe not great. Heidi Durrow's The Girl Who Fell From the Sky has been on my list and in my kindle for much too long, so I'm glad to have finally read it. I follow Durrow on twitter, and she is doing good work to increase the visibility and vocality of the mixed race experience. Her book does a great job of capturing that dual citizenship feeling, especially in the crucial identity formation stages of early adolescence. It is difficult, and it does not flinch at the difficulty, and I think it is a worthy read for anyone interested in thinking more about the racial divide in the United States and how common it is for some folks to find themselves straddling that line, one foot on either side.

I closed the month by starting Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, and if you follow me on twitter, you already know how amazing I found this book. It was the first of the Nick Hornby Told Me To Read It titles, and it set the bar pretty high. I'll tell you more about it (and my ill-advised decision to try to read all our school's summer reading titles) next month. 

The (not-so)Mildness of March

Mosquitoland by David Arnold

Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans

Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

There are people out there for whom going to the beach on Spring Break would be a normal, even expected, occurrence. I am not those people. Funny to note, then, that March has been bookended (see what I did there) with trips to the beach. The first was with a school trip, and we went to Florida to learn to surf. We had a great time, and when I came home raving about it, the family suggested we go back during our Spring Break. So we did. We camped, saw ‘gators, went to Legoland, and the kids learned to surf a bit. We also listened to several audiobooks about rats (more on that later), and I managed to finish the book (Skippy Dies) I had started on the first installment of this trip.

On its face, March looks like a mild reading month. Only one real example of adult fiction, and four of the titles are for young readers? Many would consider that a failed outing. Those many would be wrong.

I started Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies at the very end of February, and I read it all month, and like the best long books, it never felt long. It is brilliant. May I say that and be taken seriously? Because it really is an unlikely treasure, especially (but not exclusively) for those who overlap regularly with high schoolers. Murray understands the high school experience, and he captures the youthful voice beautifully, and though there is plenty of slang and profanity and stuff you wish you didn’t know about high school students, it is always coupled with insightful commentary and the prose of a true craftsman. It is no spoiler to tell you that Daniel “Skippy” Juster dies at the beginning of the book - it’s in the title. To reveal more than that, though, would ruin the unsurpassed experience of wading into a book with the same tentative steps one uses with the ocean. You’re not sure of the water temperature, or of your desire to be wet, and you’re never sure what you’ll find beyond the first break or under that endless water.  Skippy Dies is about a group of friends and their teachers and administrators, and there are girls, too, and it makes me want to read everything Paul Murray has written. Thankfully, I already own An Evening of Long Goodbyes, so I have that to look forward to.

Last night, I was playing around with my Google Play and found a bunch of old songs that I used to listen to on my mom’s records. One of those records is seared in my memory - its red Smash Records label; the small, black print; and every word of every song. This morning, I wondered what my kids will remember listening to. I’ve mostly avoided traditional kids’ music with them, so they have a fairly wide musical vocabulary, but the most enduring listening experience in their childhood has been audiobooks. Every time we travel, and sometimes just around town, we listen to audiobooks. This trip, I downloaded three books, all of which feature rats in some way. Interestingly, we listened to them in order from good to (unfortunately) not-so-good. We began with Newbery winning Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The kids loved it, and I was reminded once again of how important it is for young readers to get strong, intelligent writing and a good story. I was also reminded of how uncommon it is. I didn’t particularly love the first Gregor the Overlander book, but the rest of the family enjoyed it, so I got the second in the series, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane. Like all the Suzanne Collins I’ve yet experienced, the story is better than the writing, and there’s lots of action. I actually slept through a good portion of this one, so I can’t really respond to it, but I can tell you that it frustrates me no end that one of the main characters is a two-year-old whom Collins has written like an 10-month-old. I understand the variation that comes with children, but I just don’t buy this two-year-old, and besides being inaccurate, the dialogue written for her is annoying. I also don’t prefer the reader, so I’m hesitant to finish the series. We shall see. After Gregor, we started (but didn’t get very far in) Chris Colfer’s The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell. This series came highly recommended to us, but I was reluctant because I am a book snob, and I resist things written by people famous for things other than writing. Undoubtedly, their fame plays some role in getting the book published, so the quality of the writing does not fall under the same microscope as another emerging writer’s work would. And boy, does it show in The Land of Stories. My daughter is admittedly a seasoned reader, but even she was able to notice the bad writing. When describing the kids’ grandmother giving them an old book, he writes something like “it felt like someone giving you a family heirloom before they died.” Even the 10-year-old knows it’s not like that - it is exactly that. These pseudo-comparisons happened often, startlingly so. Also, words that don’t exist (and not in a good, fantasy-world-building kind of way). Also, a serious lack of editing. Also, well, suffice it to say I hope the kids don’t remember that we didn’t finish it now that we’re back to regular life.

Dinner: A Love Story was a fun, and even informative, cookbook experience. It has much to offer a beginner, but there’s good stuff here for even a seasoned cook. One thing I liked was the idea of starting a meal even if you weren’t sure what you were making. She says sometimes she just starts caramelizing an onion while she decides - it will enhance just about anything, and the smells get her inspiration moving. I haven’t tried any of the recipes yet, but I think there are several that will be a big success in this house. On the other hand, Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms was not such a success - with this reader anyway. It was our Book Club selection last month, and while the girls all seemed to enjoy it, I found it decidedly meh. And that’s all I will say about that.

Finally, let me tell you about David Arnold’s Mosquitoland. I read Mosquitoland as part of my search for the perfect Summer Reading offering. Our school does a summer reading Book Group experience, where students pick a title from a large selection offered by the different faculty members, and then we meet in the fall to discuss. Last year, my group was not as successful as I wanted, and I blame my choice. This year, I wanted to make sure I had a winner, so I bought a big stack of titles, searching for just the right thing. Guys, I won. Or rather David Arnold wins. Mosquitoland is his debut novel, and it is amazing. I am so impressed with the characters, the pacing, the plot - everything. The main character, Mim, is one of the most unique voices I’ve read recently, and though she is quirky, she is also oh-so-familiar. I loved this book, and I cannot wait to share it with the high schoolers who pick it. Do read it. And love it. I promise you will.

An Open Letter to Nick Hornby

Dear Nick,

I'm sure I'm not the first to behave as though I know you personally just because I've spent the last few weeks reading all the "Stuff I've Been Reading" columns from The Believer magazine, so I'm not going to apologize for addressing you as Nick. It's your name, after all.

Here's the thing, Nick. I added The Polysyllabic Spree and More Baths Less Talking to my Amazon.com wishlist December 5, 2012. I know because Amazon keeps track of such things for me. On February 3, 2015, I ordered these two - plus Housekeeping vs The Dirt and Shakespeare Wrote for Money and (because I couldn't bear to not own all the words) Ten Years in the Tub. If these books hadn't been so ridiculously entertaining, you would have owed me an apology. Instead, I need to ask your forgiveness.

Forgive me, please, for waiting so long to read your work. Forgive me, too, for not yet reading any of your fiction. Or watching any of your movies. I do have Lonely Avenue, but that might have more to do with Ben Folds than you. Sorry.

Forgive me for ripping off your monthly reflection idea for my blog. I promise it won't compete for your Believer readers. Or any other readers, really.

I have a list, Nick. It's called Books Nick Hornby Thinks I Should Read. Really. Here it is:

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
George and Sam: Autism in the Family by Charlotte Moore
Clockers by Richard Price
True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
We're in Trouble by Chris Coake
Tony Hoagland's poetry
How to Live: Or, a Life of Montaigne in One Question and 20 Attempts at an Answer: Sarah Bakewell
The Broken Word by Adam Foulds
Book of Days by Emily Fox Gordon
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje
Skellig by David Almond
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell

I have chosen to exclude from The List those titles or authors I already wanted to read. You don't get to take credit just for increasing my interest in something. That wouldn't be fair.

I've ordered Moneyball (it arrived today) and asked the library to buy The Conversations. The rest are going to take some time, Nick. I can't afford you. But I can thank you.

Thanks for articulating such an understated evangelism for the books you've read. Thanks for agreeing with me on almost all the books we've both read (we depart on Junot Diaz) and for challenging me with books I probably won't ever read and for getting me to read books I really should read. About film reviewer Pauline Kael, you write, "But I loved her energy, her enthusiasm, her informality and her colloquialisms, her distrust of phoniness, even before I realized that these were qualities I wanted to steal from her." Would you accept a ditto?

One last thing, Nick. You write glowingly about Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and conclude with this beautiful sentence:

If you can boil an entire life down to its essence, without losing any of the detail, shape, pain, or joy of that life, then it seems to me that you've done pretty much everything a novel is capable of doing. (Ten Years in the Tub 462)

It might also be true of a magazine column on the reading life. Here's to 10 more years.

Unflinchingly,

Sara

February - it may not be the cruellest month, but it might be the most reviled. Hated for its brevity, for its still-winterness, for its confusing Leap Year uncertainties. But so far, February has been awfully good to me, at least as far as reading is concerned.

It started when someone recommended Karen Swallow Prior’s Booked to me, and I grabbed it one afternoon from the school library. In this book, Prior organizes each chapter around one of the books that have been most formative in her life and faith, creating a memoir of sorts. The chapter on Jane Eyre focuses on identity formation, especially in adolescence - which we all will agree is - as Prior writes - “a time of becoming” (78). Then she goes on to talk about nonconformity and continues to play with the word becoming: “I mistook nonconformity for freedom and in so doing found myself anything but free. For it is in conformity to one’s true nature that one is most becoming in both senses of the word: well-fitted and beautiful” (91). I love the wordplay - here and elsewhere in the book, but it is more than just play. It is an often intellectual, almost academic book, but it is not inaccessible. The life and the literature are well-balanced, and I fully enjoyed it.

While reading Booked, I was reminded of Nick Hornby’s “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column that originates in The Believer magazine and is collected in several volumes, and one afternoon, I went home and just ordered them all. I had the completely ridiculous idea that I might use one of them as my Summer Reading selection. Why ridiculous, you ask? Because Hornby’s hilarious and oh-so-insightful thoughts are sometimes laced with profanity - not a thing that bothers me so much, but probably not what the parents at my school would be most interested in me assigning. Upon realizing their inappropriateness, I should have set them aside and picked up another Summer Reading possibility, but I couldn’t. In fact, I could hardly set them aside at all. February may be a short month, but I have read them all this month, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The column is (usually) a monthly thing where Hornby opens with two lists: Books Bought and Books Read. As I read (and read and read) these columns, I found myself making a list of my own: Books Nick Hornby Thinks I Should Read. Seriously. It’s a list I’ve actually made.

I’m going to write more about my joy over these collected columns in a bit, but besides The List, reading these pieces gave me an idea for the blog, and I thought I might steal the concept in just one important way. I can’t be as smart and honest and humble and straight-up funny as Hornby is, but I can write one longish piece on each month’s reading experience and maybe, just maybe, the blog might come back to life.

Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer by Antonia Murphy

When I was a freshman in college, my parents bought the farm. Not a euphemism. They (with another family as partners) bought almost 200 acres and returned my daddy to his farming roots. For the last 18 years, we have watched and learned as mama and daddy have navigated gardening, chickens, horses, goats, and a beautiful herd of beef cattle. There are fruit trees in the orchard and grapevines and blueberry bushes; there is a greenhouse that hasn't yet been put to use and barn cats that sometimes will tolerate human attention and sometimes won't. There are calves to wean and tag and cows to take to market. There is hay to cut, hay to move, and hay to put out in winter. And there is swimming in the ponds, canoes and rope swings, campfires and hikes.

In short, there is a working paradise, emphasis on the working.

Every time I leave there, yesterday evening being no exception, I wish again that I could be farming, too. I have long harbored an irrational desire to stay on the edges of life in the city and still have horses and chickens and bees and large-scale gardening. It doesn't work that way, of course. Farming is a commitment move. You go "all-out" - all out in the middle of nowhere, all out of touch with the pulse of city living, all out.

I suppose that is why I was immediately interested in Antonia Murphy's Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer, a review copy of which was kindly offered by the publisher. Frankly, I can't get enough of these types of stories, and I've come to realize there are a bunch of us reader/blogger/writer-types who agree.

Dirty Chick tells the story of Antonia Murphy and her family (husband and two children) and their decision to move to Purua, New Zealand (from San Francisco after a few years of sailing around the world) and become farmers. Actually, the book makes it seem these were less decisions and more just "what happened next" kind of things. Let's get some alpacas! How about this goat! Sure, let's bring home lambs! Murphy writes with an irreverent, breezy tone that sometimes belies the seriousness of what is actually going on.

Let me be frank: this book pushes a lot of boundaries. I actually like the somewhat graphic explanations of their interactions with and observations of their animals. Life on a farm is not G-rated, and I appreciate her willingness to not sugar-coat any of these stories. I also don't mind too much the profanity she uses. The boundaries pushed here for me have to do with how she represents her children and parenting in the book as well as the lack of respect she pays the land and animals she is working with. These are personal issues, though, so another reader might not carry similar concerns.

The parenting issues are hard to define. Murphy's son is explained to have a severe developmental delay, which doctors can't seem to identify in any useful way. I acknowledge my lack of personal experience in this area even as I admit I didn't like the way Murphy seemed to disregard her son's needs in the book. It is just a book - a representation or fragment of life - but it still sat uncomfortably with me how often she would wink at her laid-back parenting style, celebrating her daughter's odd behavior or laughing at her son's difficulties. I, too, embrace a benign-neglect approach to parenting, but drinking a fair amount of wine without knowing where your children (ages 5 and 3) are goes too far for even me. I don't mean to question her concern for her children, but her brash tone often made it seem she didn't care. 

The other piece involves a different kind of carelessness. Coming as I do from the Wendell Berry model of land-appreciation, I found Murphy's approach to farming self-centered: I want to raise animals because of what they do for me, and when these animals stop making me happy, I will move on to something else cuter or more interesting. At one point, she describes her infatuation with lambs as akin to a drug addiction, and it seems an appropriate comparison. The lambs are sleeping with the humans in their beds and being carried in baby-slings until they start to become sheep, and then they are "put out" and the book moves on to the next cute or funny thing. Both are inappropriate ways to care for animals, I think. Though it exemplifies the thing that bothered me, that section on the lambs was equal parts disturbing and hilarious. 

And maybe that's the best way to sum up this book: equal parts disturbing and hilarious. It is not the traditional farm narrative, and they are not the traditional family. But it is funny and interesting and, if you can get past some of the difficulties, a quirky addition to the average-Joe-turned-farmer genre.

Dirty Chick goes on sale January 22, and it might be a great way to wait out the mid-winter blahs until you can start turning your own soil over wherever you live. If you are interested, check back tomorrow for a giveaway!

Nonfiction November: Be the Expert

This week in Nonfiction November is one of my favorites. Lu at Regular Rumination explains in her post:

This week’s topic is Be/Become/Ask the Expert. Share a list of titles that you have read on a particular topic, create a wish list of titles that you’d like to read about a particular topic, or ask your fellow Nonfiction November participants for suggestions on a particular topic.

Though to presume expertise in this topic is ridiculous, I suppose my post falls under the Be the Expert category. I have a small selection of titles for those interested in looking deeper into the Christian faith and its interactions with and in the world. There are a lot of books out there for Christian believers - those who want an easy read to reinforce or inspire their faith; however, the great thinkers and writers of the faith often wrote books and essays that were difficult, that demanded intellectualism hand in hand with one's faith. They wrote with a pondering spirit, a questing mind, an insistence that one need not empty one's head to have Christ fill one's heart. The books in this list are all smart. They are challenging. And, for this does matter some times, they are all short (under 200 pages). They are also all by white men, so take that with the appropriate reservation but do not dismiss them and their wisdom on that basis alone.

Five Books for the Faithful Thinker

C.S. Lewis, best-known for his earth-shaking Chronicles of Narnia, was a prolific writer and a superior mind. I believe his words are some of the most important in literature. Is that an overstatement? Maybe. But for all the greatness of Narnia, and even acknowledging the power of Mere Christianity, many readers do not know how excellent his essays are. My favorite collection, The Weight of Glory, is full of thoughtful questions and exhortations and rebukes. Flipping through my copy, I find countless passages to share with you and choose just this one from the close of the title essay:

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. (46)

 WE. MUST. PLAY. I couldn't agree more.

--
Next up is one of the great figures of the faith: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Unlike with Lewis, the work I'm recommending is perhaps his most "heard-of," but I think fewer people have actually read it than are familiar with it. Life Together is a brief guide for how it could (and perhaps should) look to live in Christian community. Bonhoeffer experienced some actual communal living, and he draws on that experience here, but it is applicable even in today's society of detached living. Again, I admit that it is more full of thought-provoking and intelligent passages than I have room for here, but I will provide one:

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. (99)

The everyday acts of meeting one another's needs (even terribly minor needs) are so very important - to each of us individually and to our communities.

--
I would be remiss if I didn't include Wendell Berry in this list. Though he is not so obviously wrestling with religious matters, his faith infuses and informs his writing in so many ways. I include here two titles, one I've read years ago, and I one I am currently reading. The first is a collection of essays Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community. I first read (and blogged about) it in 2010, so I don't remember as much of it as I should, but I do recall the intelligence and seriousness with which he approached the subject and that despite that seriousness (or, perhaps, because of it - see Lewis quote above), there is humor and spunk. I believe we don't get enough spunk in our daily lives. The second title I recommend is Berry's This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems. I've only just started this beautiful collection, but I see it as something I will likely ponder and savor for years to come. Written over 35 years, often as he walked his property on a Sunday morning, these poems capture the "set-apartness" of the Sabbath and cause you to yearn for a similar stillness in your life. I include one poem from 1981:

Here where the world is being made,
No human hand required,
A man may come, somewhat afraid
Always, and somewhat tired,

For he comes ignorant and alone
From work and worry of
A human place, in soul and bone
The ache of human love.

He may come and be still, not go
Toward any chosen aim
Or stay for what he thinks is so.
Setting aside his claim

On all things fallen in his plight,
His mind may move with leaves,
Wind-shaken, in and out of light,
And live as the light lives,

And live as the Creation sings
In covert, two clear notes,
And waits; then two clear answerings
Come from more distant throats -

May live a while with light, shaking
In high leaves, or delayed
In halts of song, submit to making,
The shape of what is made.

--
Finally, I am in the midst of reading and can't recommend highly enough Frederick Buechner's The Hungering Dark. Buechner has long been one of my favorite writers (see my thoughts on his Godric here), but even knowing this, I've been surprised by how powerful and convicting and stunning this book is. It is a small collection of relatively short essays, each preceded by a passage from scripture, each concluded with a beautiful prayer. Often, I really hate those prayers that people write in devotional books. Actually, often isn't strong enough. I never like those prayers. They seem so forced and artless. These, however, are beautiful and touching and inspiring and all the things I would ever hope my prayers could be and none of the things my stumbling mind and mouth usually lift up. Thus far, there are two pieces that are focused on Christmas, so if you are looking for an alternative set of readings for Advent, I believe these would be a really good fit. Even though many of the essays depart from the actual events of Christmas, they all have Christ at their center, and they are all so full of good.

Do read these, friends. Let me know what you think, even if you disagree wildly! I welcome your feedback.

French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

For all my compulsions toward order and organization, there are some things that just don't make a dent in my care meter. Being on time is one of those. I know, I fully know, how rude it is to be late - really late - when someone is waiting on you. I never disregard the human element in my timeliness, and it usually means I am close to on-time. But, honestly, close-to-on-time is much more my norm than my exception. My husband considers being on-time equal to being late, so he likes to get somewhere early, but for me, sliding in a few minutes after the designated start time is fine. Thus, my late entry into the fun of Nonfiction November (#nonficnov) - hosted by Lu at Regular Rumination, Katie at Doing Dewey, Becca at I'm Lost in Books, and Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness. Thanks, ladies, for the fun idea.

I am currently reading Mireille Guilano's French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure, and though it officially counts as nonfiction, I am beginning to question that status as my annoyance with the author grows. As the title indicates, Guilano - a native Frenchwoman - provides a model for healthy living based on how French women approach food. In many ways, I like this approach because it does reflect a greater appreciation for food than many Americans take. The problem is that she doesn't acknowledge that some Americans face extreme obstacles to "eating for pleasure" as the French do. She makes the astute observation that "America, the paragon of egalitarian values, somehow suffers from a gastronomic class system unknown in France. The right and the opportunity to enjoy the earth's seasonal best seems to be monopolized by an elite" (76). Her use of "somehow" and "seems to" points to an incredulity regarding this class system, when it is quite obvious: some people simply do not have access to or cannot afford the kinds of food choices she advocates for. Just a few sentences later, she expounds on this idea, but to her detriment:

But what seems like a luxury to Americans is a necessity to the French. Of course, not all luxury is within reach of everyone (the beluga appetizer is not a universal right), but the French do live by one principle that Americans sometimes forget, despite having coined it most eloquently: Garbage in, garbage out. The key to cooking, and therefore living well, is the best of ingredients.

Part of living like a French woman, then, will mean searching out and paying a bit more for quality, whether at the open-air market or at least a good grocery shop with market suppliers. This is now within the means of a great many more American women. French women live on budgets, too, but they also understand the value of quality over quantity.

Another issue, of course, is availability. And though the market in America has yet to become what it is in France, only a few are beyond the reach of quality on account of where people live. ...One must take the trouble to find them. And thanks to the Internet, many quality foods not in driving (or better, walking) distance are but a mouse click away. (77)

It is a ridiculously long passage to quote, so apologies, but friends, there is so much wrong in these paragraphs, and if I can't call it outright fiction, I at least want to question the nonfiction status of these words. Yes, some Americans (as well as probably some French people) choose junk despite plenty of education, income, and access to better options. Most people who eat junk regularly, however, have multi-layered reasons for doing so that have to do with what they lack: money, time, confidence, education, and access to these better choices. If you don't have a car, or a credit card, or a computer, these suggestions quickly become absurd.

As I write this, I realize this author is writing to a specific audience. She is demonstrating rhetorical awareness by understanding that the people who buy and read her book are likely to be upper middle class women who just want to think about being French for a few hundred pages. Perhaps they will actually take some good ideas from her suggestions and recipes - I haven't gotten to most of them yet. I am aware her target audience might respond well to this encouragement, so I shouldn't be so harsh.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of this book turns out and maybe picking up something new before the month is out.

 

 

The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin

A few weeks ago, when I finished the first book in a wonderful series for young readers (The Wilderking Trilogy by Jonathan Rogers), I took a look at my reading log (a new thing I'm doing with my students) and realized I had a decided lack of color and femaleness in my selections. I don't always pay attention to such things, but because I'm requiring my students to see some diversity in their reading year, I chose N. K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon for my next read.

This one landed in my house as part of my first Book Riot Quarterly box in May, and I hadn't gotten around to it. In fact, this is the first Book Riot Quarterly book I've read yet. Alas. I'm glad I picked it up because it is a good one. Go now to Jemisin's website, and you can read the first few chapters yourself.

An excellent example of fantasy layered on historical fiction, The Killing Moon is set in Gujaareh, where peace is maintained by the Hatawa. This peace is built on the work that Gatherers and Sharers do - the Gatherers collect a tithe offered by the sick and the dying and the Sharers heal by using this tithe. This tithe is housed in the power of dreams, the dreamblood that is part of every soul as it is tethered to this earth and that is released when that tether is severed and the tithebearer goes peacefully to Ina-Karekh for eternity. It is an interesting concept, and the built world unfolds just right in this book - not too quickly, leaving the reader some good bits to chew over before new information is added.

The plot centers around Ehiru, a master Gatherer, and his apprentice Nijiri. Together with an ambassador/spy from a neighboring country, they uncover corruption within the leadership of their Hatawa and the Princedom, and though the plot is not complicated, it is still suspenseful and enjoyable. Jemisin's writing is even and thought-provoking, and though I didn't underline or pause long on any other of her fine sentences, this one is well-worth holding on to:

True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict. (335)

That line speaks truths a-plenty.

The Killing Moon is the first of two books in The Dreamblood series. I probably won't read the next one, but this one was fun and makes for a good recommendation to my fantasy-loving high school students.

You've Got Mail

What reader doesn't love this movie? Actually, don't tell me. I don't even want to know you. Some time ago, I watched this movie again and made the following notes:

• Starbucks is genius - it sells coffee and a defining sense of self
• This movie is good despite Meg Ryan not because of her
• Tom Hanks is brilliant. I want to watch Big now after watching him in that boat at the carnival
• "I lead a small life. Well, valuable but small, and sometimes I wonder: do I do it because I like it? Or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book when shouldn't it be the other way around?"
• So many annoying things: Why does she have THREE employees? What bookstore ever had the phones ringing and people at the door when it opened? And why a chapter book (Boy) during storytime? Ok. Maybe that last one doesn't totally annoy me, but curious still.
• "It was that she was helping people become whoever they were going to turn out to be because when you read a book as a child it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life ever does."
• Steve Zahn!! Mossy!!
• Why would they ALL be at the NYC Fox Books all the time? Don't they have corporate offices?

Obviously, these are just a few small thoughts. And now that I'm typing this up, I may just have to watch it all again. Sigh.

Random Thoughts, Some About Teenagers

I meant to promise to post once a month. Not once a week. I didn't mean it. 

Oops. 

In humility, I offer a few random thoughts for your Sunday night:

1. I've been grading Poetry notebooks, an assignment where students have to read poems until they find 5 they like, collect them in a notebook, and reflect on two of them. Some of the poems surprised me and even made me want to add them to my notebook. Some, on the other hand, were repeated so frequently I began to wonder what they revealed about my students. The most frequent poems? "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou, "If" by Rudyard Kipling, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe, and "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost. What does that tell me? That they all desire to be sassy, black women and strong young men who stay in love even after their childhood loves die, who take the uncharted path, and who aren't sure how the world will end? Hmmm....

2. Enos. My husband said I should title this post "Eno"ugh Already. He's funny. Not funny was watching three girls hanging an Eno from two immature trees in our downtown riverwalk area and then getting frustrated when a park employee told them they couldn't hammock there. I've decided the Eno is the single-greatest totem of today's young people. It covers all their complexities. They are burdened by stress, claiming to have hours of homework (though studies indicate they don't have more work than their predecessors). It makes sense, then, that they would need to carry with them the possibility of comfortable lounging at all times. You've got to have somewhere to put all that stress. Also, these things encase the user. It's not uncommon to find a pod of three of four enos together, with all the hammock residents safely ensconced inside. They are together but apart. Probably on instagram or tumblr. Like toddlers with parallel play but bigger. Finally, they like to be seen in their Enos. It's like wanting to be seen on instagram - always on, always visible, always obscuring the person within.

3. When I was 14, I asked for and received a hammock for my birthday. An old cotton rope hammock, no pillow. I loved it. I read for hours in that thing. Just me and a book and sometimes a blanket. It was never my aim to be seen in my hammock. In fact, decidedly the opposite.

4. Though I will try to argue otherwise in April and again in June, Fall is definitely my favorite season.

5. I ran 9 miles today, and it felt good. Half-marathon in two weeks. Then what?

6. I do not understand high school football and the fervor that surrounds it. Granted, the school I attended did not (and still does not) have a football team, but I cannot imagine being a grown-up with a real job, living across the country, and tuning in to watch your high school team play football on T.V. I do not understand making a young man feel that his athletic abilities are the most important thing on the planet, even for a few hours. I do not understand.

7. I need to grade some more.

What Are You Reading?

As any reader knows, one of the best questions to be asked is "What are you reading?" - at least under the right circumstances. On a plane or a bus, not so much. I'd rather be reading, thank you. But, when my students ask.... that's another animal entirely. Those times when I can share my enthusiasm for the written word outside of whatever book I've assigned them are golden. If I've done my job right to that point, it is those tiny moments that teach them about books more than the moment we finish discussing Book 6 of The Odyssey.

Yesterday, the entire 10th grade and their teachers went to a nearby camp for the day. There was swimming, blobbing, soccer, ultimate frisbee, battleball, eno-ing, and more. Also, after destroying some 15-year-old boys on the soccer field (slight overstatement), this old lady decided to sit down with a book. In that hour, I probably hand-sold the book I'm reading a dozen times. And friends, it is an easy book to sell.

First, I show them the "cover" of S. by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. The cover is actually a box/sleeve thing, but I start there because that is the name of the book: S. I remind them of who J. J. Abrams is (Lost, Felicity, Star Trek - which are, by the way, all things I have not watched), and their eyes light up a little.

Then, as I pull the physical book out of the black sleeve, I start to explain the concept. The idea for this book was J. J. Abrams' - Doug Dorst is the writer who brings it all to life. 

See, this book is called Ship of Theseus.

It's made to look like an old library book, down to the sticker on the spine and the aged pages inside. It is fiction, written by the fictional V. M. Straka. In S., it is the foundation of a grad student's research. The student, Eric, leaves the book outside his study carrel, and an undergraduate who works in the library, Jen, finds it, flips through it and his notes, and returns it to his carrel with a note penned inside:

Hey - I found your stuff while I was shelving. (Looks like you left in a hurry!) I read a few chapters and loved it. Felt bad about keeping the book from you, though, since you obviously need it for your work. Have to get my own copy! -Jen.

He writes back:

Here - If you liked it you should finish it. I need a break, anyway. (Leave it on the last shelf in the South stacks when you're finished.)

And thus begins a back and forth relationship in the margins of this book. Their marginalia pursues some serious scholarship questions as well as exchanging personal stories, and as their relationship develops, the mystery surrounding this book and its authorship does as well. There are codes, secrets, dangerous encounters (for both the characters in Ship of Theseus and for Jen and Eric), and lots of stuff inside the covers of this book (postcards, letters, photographs, etc...). S. is not so much a book as it is a reading experience. It is so clever and sharp, and I remain intrigued even though it is a literary type (political thriller-ish) I don't usually gravitate toward.

By the time I finish, students - all students - are fascinated. Their eyes are sparkling and they say things like, "I might actually have to read that book."

So, what am I reading? Come sit down next to me. I'll be glad to tell you all about it.

And I bet when I'm finished, you'll want to read it, too.

 

 

Unexpected Tears

The joke in my family has long been that I am dead inside. I don't cry at sad movies or sappy commercials or even at funerals. But there is one time and place where I can predictably find myself welling up:

At races.

Yep. If I'm a spectator at a 5K, a half marathon, a marathon, or a triathlon, you can count on me getting a little weepy. I know. That's weird. It is one of the weirdest things about my totally weird self. But it is also not weird if you think about it. Those races, especially the long ones, are a beautiful demonstration of the power we carry within us. There is, of course, the physical aspect. People are pushing their bodies to the limits, they are showing what it is to be strong, fit, lean, and fast. It is a thing of beauty. There is also the mental aspect, and often, it is this element that pushes me over the edge. When you consider the discipline, the focus, the sacrifices, and the effort these events demand - even for the totally able-bodied - you should stand in admiration. You should cheer their spirit and feel your own lifted as they run past. And when you can see the obstacles facing a competitor, when that runner is using a handcycle, or pushing a disabled adult child in a jogcycle, or running on a prosthetic limb, you should feel that spirit soar.

It is weird. But it is reflective of who I am, and Frederick Buechner has a word or two to say on that subject:

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next. 

On Reading Logs and Other Experiments in Teaching

This year, my high school students are getting credit for reading. Wait, you ask, isn't that what an English class always does? Well, yes. And no.

See, high school students are always being assigned things to read, being assessed on their comprehension of what they read, being made to slog through a book they might not have read on their own, and all of these are good things. I do not believe it is wrong to train a student in how to persevere, in how to be disciplined, in how to tackle something outside of his/her comfort zone; however, I believe we have been teaching these skills in the absence of those other, readerly skills we all know and use:

How to choose a book. How to enjoy a book. How to stretch yourself from one type of reading to a new genre or style. How to have an opinion. How to reflect. How to abandon a book that is not serving you well.

These are the marks of a mature reader, and unfortunately, school doesn't often teach these, so if a student is not a reader already, he or she will never learn how to be one. And though it may be naive, I believe every student is already more of a reader than he/she may think and every student can be a mature reader. Even students who "hate" to read.

In an effort to encourage, develop, celebrate, and stretch these skills, I have reduced the number of complete works we will read together to make room for them to read things they choose themselves. I've had them create a Google Sheets Reading Log where they must record all titles (books, audiobooks, stories, poetry collections, articles, blogposts, etc...) they read this year. They will set goals for themselves at the beginning of each quarter, and they will be assessed on how satisfactorily they meet those goals and the ones I've established for every student. I've required them to read diversely (not just all white men) and to read something from at least two countries of origin. I've asked them to read at least one item from a list of genres I provided and to use their goal-setting as a way to stretch themselves each quarter.

They get to pick. They are asked to rate what they pick. They are given the chance to DNF something and mark it in their log as such. They are, in short, doing what you and I do everyday.

It is an experiment. What if students fake it? How would I know? (in part, their weekly journals will do this, but it is still possible to fool me). What if students just don't do it? What if they still hate reading at the end of the year? (this last one is, of course, not just possible but likely in some cases).

But if just a handful of kids move from hating reading to seeing themselves as actively engaged readers, I will consider it a success. After all, what's more important: that they read every word of The Odyssey or that they appreciate words and writing in new and exciting ways?

I'm putting my money (and my grades) on the last one.