Required Reading

 

My on-line book club operates a little differently than most. Our fearless leader chooses a dozen or so categories and lists them on January 1. We then have 365 days to choose a book from each category, read it, and report briefly to the group. This year's categories (more about which later) are interesting and I'm excited about possible selections.

Except for one: "Required reading that you never finished (or maybe never even started)."

Hmmm. There was that book that we were assigned in New Testament 101 back in my first year of seminary. I no longer remember what it was called and I never read a word of it. I carried it around, though, for about three weeks until a classmate pointed out, "We're finished with that, Nance." I guess I'd been thinking I'd somehow absorb it via osmosis. 

In 1958-59 in Miss Bateman's 9th grade English class we were assigned to read Great Expectations. I started it and actually got pretty far into it. But there were other books that held far greater appeal . . . . I kept thinking I'd get back to it and then one day we walked into class and were told to write a book report. I only panicked for a moment and then began to write. I began at the beginning and wrote in detail. In great detail. In such very great detail that just before I came to the part where I had stopped reading, the bell rang. Miss Bateman gave me a B+ and a comment about not being so verbose.

Fast forward to 1961-62, 12th grade English with Mr. Givler (and Judi Chodash had the worst crush on him!) and the assignment was A Tale of Two Cities (Senior English was British Literature). Now, what you have to know is that from the time I learned to read, I couldn't get enough of it. My father would take me to the library and I'd bring home a dozen books at a time and be finished long before he was ready to go back for more. I'd acquired a flashlight during my Girl Scout years and mastered the art of reading under the covers long after I'd been told, "Turn out the light!" I carried ATOTC around and tried, seriously tried, to read it. Then one night I was babysitting for the people down the street and for the first time in my life, fell asleep reading a book. And that was that. Any book that would put me to sleep wasn't worth my time.

What am I going to do? I tremble at the thought of going back to Dickens (and I note here that another of the categories happens to be "two books by the same author").  And I've long since sold that mysterious book from Biblical Studies. At this stage of my life, I don't get a whole lot of required reading. And now it's getting late and I need to go to bed. Oh, well.

After all, tomorrow is another day!