Today folks I thought I would take a trip down memory lane, mostly because the books I have been reading of late have been "easy" reads for me and well I finished them in a day or so. The other thing is I have been thinking about how I am almost completely different then I was when I was a weird-o pre-teen/teenager and how the education that kids get now is almost different then when I was a kid...kind of academic sounding huh?
I started to write this big rant about how I hated school mostly English, writing, Science and Math, which leaves me with Social Studies, Music, Gym, and those electives we had to take, but then I erased it all. I just was thinking how when I am FORCED to read something, I don't want to, and it is uninteresting and blah blah blah, but when I am generally interested in something and it flows and kind of follows my thinking pattern. I like it. Just as an example in the last few months these are the books I have read:
Salt
Cod
Schyuler's Monster
Various Issues of National Geographic
The New Yorker
On the outside people would say huh pretty non-fictionish selection of reading material and I would say yes, it is. I would also say that they are interesting reads. I picked up Salt on a recommendation from my newest Brother-in-Law Ansgar, he is intellectual and well read, MBA from MIT, sailor, cool, and German. Plus I hadn't read anything in awhile, I picked it up and read maybe 100 pages the first day and after that I almost missed stops on the subway because I was so into it. I mean yes, honestly it is about what the title is: Salt...but come on do you know all about salt??? Well Cod is written by the same author, so I thought I would give it a go...finished it in 2 days, and again, it is about just what you think...the fish. So the third on the list is about a father and his quest to be a good father and his daughter who he is discovering can not talk. His struggle with becoming a father of a "word-less" child and so on. I finished it in one day albiet I did have two flights today and I just stayed up for 3 hours finishing it and I have been following his blog, but it was a good read. When I read with fervor I just feel like I am my father's son. I remember growing up and he would spend hours upon houses devouring the latest John Grisham novel or Stephan King book. He would also read them in like a day. I enjoy read when I am interested, when it's forced, it sucks...nuff said, but just to beat a dead horse here is my list of the novels I can remember being forced to read...and hating every word I did or didn't finish:
Moby Dick
William Shakespeare...honestly nothing stuck out to me
Chaucer...hearing my 12th grade english teacher recite them in Old English...
Frankenstein...apparently I didn't "get it"
I am the cheese
Clan Of the Cave Bear
really anything I had to read in High School...sorry I didn't enjoy reading them, I have tried again and again, but to just sit down and read one of those books...makes me want to sleep...
Although the ones I did enjoy:
1984
Animal Farm
The Time Machine
Walden
The Client
Jurassic Park
The Sphere
Andromeda Strain
lots of historical books I found for 5 dollars or less
and others.
Point being... don't like to be forced to read books...but I still like to read, so why force kids to read certain books? Go ahead cut me down...but do you find relevance in Moby Dick in your life or was it time you could have spent reading a different book you were more into?
No comments:
Post a Comment