book lust

so, the onion's av club had (as usual) a lovely article on friday in their better late than never feature. it's all about book and novel of to kill a mockingbird. the article is short, well composed, totally worth reading. the insanely huge comments section (or at least the first thread) is also worth your time.

i'm here, at work (the bad one) on a saturday (the second to last saturday that i'll have to be here) so i've been doing lots of hiding in my office and dicking around on the internets. i read a lot about ol' whatsherface, the one that mccain just chose (she's a nut job), found a new to me lefty political blog, and have generally been sad that i'm not somewhere else. and of course, read that first thread of comments on that article.

which has gotten me thinking about the books i was assigned to read in high school and how i generally didn't read them until after high school. or haven't read them at all. or have picked them up several times (i'm looking at you, Huck Finn) and gotten distracted.

i've always considered my self a logic-based person who bases personal logic on intuition. if that makes any sense. i do a lot of things according to my 'gut'...lots of experiences i give myself are cravings based. i have seasonal whims and i try to follow them. along with that, i feel like sometimes i need to be in the right place to appreciate certain things - novels, music, movies, plays, stuff along those lines. so, i could make the argument that i didn't read my assignments because i didn't feel that whatever book it was fit me at the time.

this would be a lie. i didn't read the assignments in high school (and to a large degree college) because i've never given a shit about grades or grading and have always been smart enough to come out on top. i have written MANY a research paper on intuition alone (as opposed to actual research) and still been factually correct (and lost points for not citing my sources...which makes perfect sense). also i have issues with authority, although there was only one english teacher i had that i chose not to read things out of spite. i liked all the other ones.

still, whether it's from guilt, or wanting to catch pop culture references, or feeling the need, i have been trying to plow through old reading lists. i figure, at the very least, i still have the books, i've been trying to read more lately, what the hell? i even brought a HUGE pile of books down from my parents house that i intend to approach or re-read in teh near future.

i have found in doing this that (a) high school kids know jack shit about anything and (b) i believe that 'classics' are classic for a reason. they hit you on a visceral level and they're hard to shake. that may be my favorite thing about to kill a mockingbird, actually. it just stays with you. forever. and granted, that's one of my favorite books and i've read it like 4 or 5 times now (and am now craving it again), but even in the 4 + year break from my initial read of it to my first re-read, it's been a cultural marker for me.

so, here's what i'm going to do. i'm going to make some lists. this is mostly for my own personal edification. but i guess it's also to see what a slacker i am.

Books that were on the syllabus in high school (a * denotes the things i actually read...when they were assigned):
A Separate Peace*, Great Expectations* (i shouldn't include the * here, actually. we read it out loud in class from our text books and it was GREATLY abbreviated. i would not have read it outside of class. in fact, i didn't. oh, if there were only a half-star...), The Grapes of Wrath, The Scarlett Letter, The Adventures of Huck Finn, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Reviving Ophelia* (this was SO not on the cirriculum, and SOOO just what i needed to read), The Great Gatsby*, Trinity (i have since read this one, and it is amazing), Canterbury Tales, The Screwtape Letters, Cry the Beloved Country*, Beowulf*, Things Fall Apart*, Siddhartha*,
- i know i'm forgetting a lot from this list. which makes sense...i didn't do a lot of the reading, so, how the hell could i remember it? -

Things I read that were 'assigned' but on a list of books to choose from (or were a particular style we had to learn):
Rebbecca, The Stranger, The Last Days of John Lennon, All My Friends (it was a george burns book. not an autobiography like it was supposed to have been...oops)

Things I went ahead and read (and remember reading) in high school while i wasn't reading the stuff on the reading lists:
1984, Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse 5, In Cold Blood, Gone With the Wind, The Shining (the unedited version), Farenheit 451, a whole bunch of plays...other ones, too, but i don't remember them as vividly.

i'm not even going to try with college...oh man...so much i didn't do for class, and so much that i read. and i couldn't afford cliff's notes/wasn't industrious enough for sparks notes. but i did all right. and right now i'm going back and have picked up justine from the one brit lit class that i took in college. it's okay. stream of conciousness, so it takes a lot of effort to follow it. effort that mama don't have right now.

a lot of things that most kids were required to read (Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Catch-22, etc...) i've read as an adult. which, i can see how i would've gotten a lot out of these as a kid, but they (or at least the four i mentioned) knocked me on my ass as an adult. and there's a lot of books that i've added to the collection and been unable to read (for any number of reasons). they're on the pile. in fact, i've got a MASSIVE pile of 'to reads'. and if any of you, oh faithful readers who have made it to the end of this rambling, mostly personal blog, have any books that i HAVE to read, please let me know.

Because...and here's the point...i used to read all the time and it makes me sad that i don't anymore. because reading makes me real happy. so, the goal is to start reading again. i've got a pile (a sprawling, massive pile) but i'm always happy to add to it. so, lemme hear what you've got.

Ah...yes.