Rereading Books--Do You or Don't You?

I am an avid rereader of books, and I find myself having to explain why on a fairly regular basis in a variety of settings and situations.

I don't know why the concept of rereading is so foreign to some people.  I can't imagine just reading a book once, and saying, "That was cool" or, "That really got me thinking" or, "I am so appalled at this piece of garbage I can't understand how it's on the freaking best-seller list when I can't get my book published", or whatever.

The only argument I can think of against rereading a book, in fact, is the reality that there are so many books out there and only a limited amount of time.

But I am a dork.  I don't just read books, I live them.  I allow them to change my life, my philosophies, my beliefs, and my outlook on things.  Many of my books are in execrable condition, in fact, because I fall asleep on them, write in them, and occasionally throw them against the wall (yes, Stephen King, it's true ... I should have heeded your advice toward the end of the final Dark Tower book and just stopped when you warned me to).

I also learned how to read at a freakishly young age.  I read Cujo as a first grader, and as you can imagine, the book is rather different as a teen or an adult.  I can remember picking up a copy of The Thorn Birds at my family's beach house when summer when I was eight or nine (I'd read pretty much every other book there by then) and loving the writing, the history, the characters, but knowing somehow that I was missing the point.  There are some points you just can't get when you haven't reached puberty.

I've also found that books are very different to me based on where I am at in my own life.

I have read this book over 200 times.  I also teach it.

I was a child when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird, and so I identified with Scout.  I was a tomboy.  My father was a lawyer, and not just a lawyer but one that was occasionally involved in cases that touched him on a moral basis.  I was a tomboy with an older brother.  And so on.

As I grew older, though, I read Harper Lee's masterpiece through many, many lenses.  When I became a teacher and realized the cruelty that some kids are raised with, my heart ached for Boo Radley and the Ewell children.  Coming to the whole "the universe works" conclusion about life, dealing with rape on a personal level, recognizing that there are truly evil people in the world, understanding that change comes through a lot of hard work and bitterness over the course of time ... TKAM was always there for me.

And then there's the enrichment that TKAM gave me in terms of other works of literature.  I loved Joe R. Lansdale's The Bottoms (and strongly recommend it if you haven't read it), but I would not have appreciated it the same way if not for Lee's work.  My Truman Capote phase was far cooler because I just thought of him as Dill.

It's not just Harper Lee and, of course, Stephen King (whose Dark Tower series completely altered my belief system).

Simply put, there are almost no books I've only read once ... and I've read an awful lot of books.

So how about you?  Do you reread?  Are you a selective rereader (in other words, are there some books you'll tackle more than once, but it's not the norm)?  Or are you of the ilk that reads a book once and calls it good?

I don't judge any approaches, by the way ... I'm just curious about where the wider world stands on the issue (I know my family, friends, and students think I'm kind of bizarre regarding books).

Book Parallels: "The Bottoms" and "To Kill a Mockingbird"

I've spent the past two days home sick with some really horrific cold/flu/high fever/horrible headache/body ache/cough/generally feeling like crap kind of thing.  

I hate being sick for obvious reasons, and I hate missing work for reasons too numerous to name.  However, one of the few positives is that I was pretty much confined to bed (I'm not a "lay in bed" kind of person ... when I choose bed over lounging on the couch or in the recliner, it means I really feel dreadful), which meant, of course, that I got to read.

Henry lent me The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale several weeks ago, and I'm ashamed to say that it's taken me this long to read, even though I liked it from the start.  Once I got a chance to dig in, though, despite it being in and out of fever-riddled sleep and Nyquil daze, I couldn't put it down. 

Especially when I started noting parallels to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, probably my most beloved book ever.  I was in English teacher ecstasy throughout, I tell you :-)

I know that To Kill a Mockingbird is both well-loved and widely read.  Lansdale, who is considered more of a "cult favorite", achieves masterpiece status in my mind with his very similar offering.

Both books ...

*  Explore the strong bonds of love that exist between siblings.

Interestingly, The Bottoms is narrated by "big brother" Harry Collins, who feels deeply the tremendous responsibility of keeping his younger sister, Tom (short for Thomasina) safe.  Makes me wonder how different Mockingbird would be if told from Jem's point of view ...

*  Take a contemporary reader into a world where blacks are treated horribly.

Perhaps because of Scout's tender age, the specific horrors of life as an African-American in Maycomb, Alabama aren't expounded upon in detail.

Lansdale pulls no punches in the small east Texas town portrayed in The Bottoms, with the KKK figuring prominently into the story, white doctors refusing to perform an autopsy on a brutally murdered black woman, tarring and feathering, and the lynching of an old black man who was very briefly considered a witness in the murder of a white woman.    

*  Force the protagonist (well, brother/sister team of protagonists, I suppose) to realize that the person-cum-monster that colored the nightmares of childhood are both more and less than what they appear to be on the surface (or in local legend)

Call him Boo Radley or the Goat Man, but this lesson is one that stays with a reader.

There are lots of other connections between the two (too many to list, actually, without being a total spoiler), but I just had to share how cool I found it that another book was able to, in some small way, address the very tough themes and issues brought up in what's arguably my favorite book ever.

I'd never seen it done before on such a grand scale, and I'd never really heard much of Joe R. Lansdale before Henry introduced me.

I figured it was  my responsibility to pay it forward.

Wicked Cool: I've Gotten Over My Literary Snobbery (A Little)

At one point in my life, I was a ridiculously voracious reader. I'd read two or three books a day, often more, never less. When you suffer from insomnia beginning as a toddler, I guess you're bound to be either a hard-core reader or a television addict.

As I've gotten older and found that free time is at a premium between my daughters, my students, and the never-ending cycle of grading, planning, keeping on top of professional development and such, I just don't have the time to read that I once did.

It's kind of funny, though ... I always fancied myself something of a literary snob that took pride in avoiding the "book of the moment". I was late to the party in terms of excellent works including Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, and even the dreaded Twilight books (which I couldn't stop reading until I was finished and realized how poorly written and unoriginal they were).

Perhaps the greatest proof of what an idiot I was? I received a copy of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird from my eighth grade English teacher as a prize for a writing contest. Totally refused to read it because it was "supposed to be so great and all the books that have that reputation totally SUCK." Well, it didn't suck (it is, in fact, my favorite book of all time)

I even eschewed Dan Brown for months even when everyone on the planet was reading The Da Vinci Code.

So I guess it's no surprise, really, that I somehow missed this one.


Published in 1995, Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West tells the backstory of Elphaba (sound out the initials of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum for the pronunciation) ... including her run-ins with Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion.

Can I just say that this book is blowing my mind?

I'm a huge fan of Baum's Oz books, and this book is making me question motivations and points of view and bias and bottom lines and so on to the point where I'm probably going to be rereading Baum's canon as soon as possible (which will probably be next Christmas vacation at this point).

The intent of this post is not to be a scene spoiler (plus, I'm only halfway done the book ... I plan on finishing it tonight), but just to contemplate why I am so reluctant to read "popular" books despite the fact that I am almost never disappointed once I give in ... and to see if anyone else has this tendency.

Also, I've got another conundrum ... I have very strong feelings about movie adaptations of books I've enjoyed. Since Wicked has been made into a very popular musical, should I make an effort to see it, or would it be the same kind of limiting, unsatisfactory experience movie adaptations usually are?

If you've ever turned up your nose at a book, eventually changed your mind, and ultimately loved it, please share titles in the comments (and of course any other thoughts this post might inspire ;-))

To Read is to Breathe

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday, I decided to give my freshmen a quote about reading for our Tuesday quickwrite. Since I had a meeting this morning and didn't have time to go searching for that perfect quote, I had to grab for one quick within the dusty annals of my brain.

What I came up with is this, ironically taken from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that they will be reading in about a month:

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

Turns out that was the proverbial perfect quote. Sometimes my students really surprise me, and this was one of those days. Not only did they understand the gist of the quote, they really started connecting it to their own lives on a--dare I say it--philosophical level : )

In my world, reading is essentially akin to breathing. It is something I do to relax, to learn, to escape, to entertain, and so on and so forth. I learned how to read at a very young age and have never really stopped. Simply put, I cannot imagine my life without books. It would be like existing without a right hand.

So what about you? Is reading your breath? If not, is there anything in your life (beyond children, of course ... speaking for myself at least, that goes without saying) that you would equate with breathing?