Lucien, is that you?
Oct. 16th, 2005 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liri
Last night I dreamed I was wandering through a huge library, unable to find Lloyd Alexander novels. There was a gaming convention of some kind going on, which seemed to involve lots of fratboy-looking guys running around in underwear and teeshirts. (The effect was "ick, put some pants on," not "mm," in case you're unfamiliar with my violent loathing of all things frat.) Why it would be fratboys since it seemed to be for a MMORPG (Ragnarok Online?) I don't know. Early in the dream there was some weirdness about having really irresponsible parents - I got the vague impression we were Ed and Al. It was definitely a "we," but I think I was Al. Maybe. What's really odd about this is that while this library looks like no actual library I've ever been in (most of the ones I've seen do not contain bridges, for example) it's appeared in at least one other dream of mine. I don't have recurring dreams, I have recurring settings.
When I was a kid, reading was non-negotiable. I breathed books. I read constantly - during class, frequently - and indiscriminately, such that I remember books without their titles and authors. When I got to high school, I could easily have bounced off of the Brontes, Shakespeare and Dickens and written off "literature" as largely boring and not something I felt like pursuing. I really hate the way literature was taught at my high school and probably others. You start off with Romeo and Juliet, probably in hopes that fourteen-year-olds will relate because Juliet's the same age, but this is a play where the tragic missed connections and fatal decisions just read as stupid to a skeptical teenage audience. And Julius Caesar, apparently because it's free of bawdy puns? Then we got an edited-for-length Great Expectations, and I was totally missing the fact that it's actually funny... God, that class was a trainwreck. Later I'd learn to love Shakespeare and Dickens, and while I don't love all the Brontes, Anne's cool. And I liked Villette, which makes me one of a select cadre of, like, eight people worldwide. I don't blame people for hating it - "It's a detailed and accurate portrait of depression and emotional paralysis" is not the kind of cover blurb that makes for beloved classics - but I liked it.
But I'm also insanely competitive in odd ways, and I'd joined Academic Team. One of my classmates had also joined, and he had massive classics knowledge that instantly bumped him up to Varsity. I was going to compete with him. I immediately began buying Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald paperbacks from the used bookstore. It wasn't the best way to get a grounding in the literary canon, but it did get me into the habit of reading non-genre fiction, literary fiction, and it got me started. Mike still whupped my pansy ass in Academic Team, though.
I'd gone through high school taking AP classes and reading the assigned books in advance so I could like them or hate them on their own merits, without the forced-march thing looming over my head to make me hate it for that reason alone. I decided English was my favorite subject, chose it as my major, and like all English majors, soon forgot that I'd ever read for pleasure. I know there was recreational reading going on during that time, but very little of it. So when I finally got out of college, I was out of the habit of reading for fun, and it more or less stayed that way for a while. It wasn't until I'd been in the phone center job for over a year, and was sick unto death of playing puzzle games online to keep myself occupied between calls, that I started bringing books to work regularly. I'd done it intermittently before that, but then I'd get a call in the middle of a favorite character's death scene and swear it off again, or swear to only do it with short-story collections, something like that. Now, even though I don't have a job that gives me time to read, I keep something in my desk drawer.
But I don't just inhale books like I used to. I do other things with my time, sometimes less productive and satisfying ("I've got a book in my desk but I'm still going to spend my lunch hour playing Cubis on Yahoo!") but I still do them and often they preclude reading. The reading-for-a-goal thing hasn't died - I find myself keeping track of my reading tally, wanting to finish a certain number before the year's done or hit certain classic milestones I haven't read yet (hence Don Quixote. And I have The Tale of Genji on my shelf.) I miss the old way.
On the other hand, now if I read a book I like I remember its title and author and I can find it again... "Um, there's a girl named Paramecia, no, really, that's her name, her parents were scientists, and she time travels back to the Dust Bowl and meets an ancestor who'll later grow up to be a famous scientist or something, and she's from a future where the environment sucks and, like, rabbits are extinct somehow,and, um, there's this thing about Mobius strips?" does not find you a specific book, usually. That was a real, if half-remembered, book, btw.
I need to go to the grocery store. This will take me perilously close to Borders. Let's see if anything other than it not being on the shelf can keep me from buying Bleach 9.
When I was a kid, reading was non-negotiable. I breathed books. I read constantly - during class, frequently - and indiscriminately, such that I remember books without their titles and authors. When I got to high school, I could easily have bounced off of the Brontes, Shakespeare and Dickens and written off "literature" as largely boring and not something I felt like pursuing. I really hate the way literature was taught at my high school and probably others. You start off with Romeo and Juliet, probably in hopes that fourteen-year-olds will relate because Juliet's the same age, but this is a play where the tragic missed connections and fatal decisions just read as stupid to a skeptical teenage audience. And Julius Caesar, apparently because it's free of bawdy puns? Then we got an edited-for-length Great Expectations, and I was totally missing the fact that it's actually funny... God, that class was a trainwreck. Later I'd learn to love Shakespeare and Dickens, and while I don't love all the Brontes, Anne's cool. And I liked Villette, which makes me one of a select cadre of, like, eight people worldwide. I don't blame people for hating it - "It's a detailed and accurate portrait of depression and emotional paralysis" is not the kind of cover blurb that makes for beloved classics - but I liked it.
But I'm also insanely competitive in odd ways, and I'd joined Academic Team. One of my classmates had also joined, and he had massive classics knowledge that instantly bumped him up to Varsity. I was going to compete with him. I immediately began buying Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald paperbacks from the used bookstore. It wasn't the best way to get a grounding in the literary canon, but it did get me into the habit of reading non-genre fiction, literary fiction, and it got me started. Mike still whupped my pansy ass in Academic Team, though.
I'd gone through high school taking AP classes and reading the assigned books in advance so I could like them or hate them on their own merits, without the forced-march thing looming over my head to make me hate it for that reason alone. I decided English was my favorite subject, chose it as my major, and like all English majors, soon forgot that I'd ever read for pleasure. I know there was recreational reading going on during that time, but very little of it. So when I finally got out of college, I was out of the habit of reading for fun, and it more or less stayed that way for a while. It wasn't until I'd been in the phone center job for over a year, and was sick unto death of playing puzzle games online to keep myself occupied between calls, that I started bringing books to work regularly. I'd done it intermittently before that, but then I'd get a call in the middle of a favorite character's death scene and swear it off again, or swear to only do it with short-story collections, something like that. Now, even though I don't have a job that gives me time to read, I keep something in my desk drawer.
But I don't just inhale books like I used to. I do other things with my time, sometimes less productive and satisfying ("I've got a book in my desk but I'm still going to spend my lunch hour playing Cubis on Yahoo!") but I still do them and often they preclude reading. The reading-for-a-goal thing hasn't died - I find myself keeping track of my reading tally, wanting to finish a certain number before the year's done or hit certain classic milestones I haven't read yet (hence Don Quixote. And I have The Tale of Genji on my shelf.) I miss the old way.
On the other hand, now if I read a book I like I remember its title and author and I can find it again... "Um, there's a girl named Paramecia, no, really, that's her name, her parents were scientists, and she time travels back to the Dust Bowl and meets an ancestor who'll later grow up to be a famous scientist or something, and she's from a future where the environment sucks and, like, rabbits are extinct somehow,and, um, there's this thing about Mobius strips?" does not find you a specific book, usually. That was a real, if half-remembered, book, btw.
I need to go to the grocery store. This will take me perilously close to Borders. Let's see if anything other than it not being on the shelf can keep me from buying Bleach 9.