YAY for YA!

Young Adult books are one of the the best-kept secrets on college campuses. What if I started a volunteer book club, aimed primarily at Education majors, but open to anyone? And what if there were only a few ground rules:
1. We meet once a month for an hour.
2. Anyone is welcome to attend (you don't have to read or prepare--you can just hang out and listen).
3. We only discuss young adult titles.
4. Each month, anyone who wants to can read the "chosen" book (chosen by the group attending the last meeting). And then we discuss it.
5. Each month, there's also time for people to talk about what else they are reading or have read. Like Reading Rainbow, attendees are invited to "sell" others on their favorite books, sharing reviews and reactions.
6. Nothing too academic--just reading and discussing books that can be read quickly and easily, even during the school year.
7. And food. Maybe pizza? Maybe off campus? But definitely food. :)

So now the big question: if I build it, will they come?

Five Things I've Gained from Reading

I've decided to take up Traci Gardner's challenge and blog on what I've gained from reading.

1. What piece of literature has stayed with you, even though you haven't read it recently? Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, because it's a great story of friendship and creativity, and I've always loved the line "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
2. What character or story has influenced something you've done? Neighbor Rosicky (from Willa Cather's short story of the same name) realizes that his entire corn crop has been destroyed after a hot July day of searing heat. He leaves his fields in the late afternoon, returns to his family and to his wife who is preserving plums, and he arranges for a picnic in the orchard. Only after the evening meal does he tell his wife that after all his work, they've lost everything. When she retells the story to her sons, she says, "An' that's how your father behaved, when all the neighbours was so discouraged they couldn't look you in the face. An' we enjoyed ourselves that year, poor as we was, an' our neighbors wasn't a bit better off for bein' miserable." I've thought of Rosicky's example often when confronting failure or disappointment.
   
3. What character or piece of literature seemed to relate to a recent news story or personal experience? I've often identified with the mother in Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing." Reflecting on her daughter's childhood, she says, "What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost to her of such goodness?"
   
4. What character has made you wonder why he or she did/said something? Why did Marlow feel the need to lie to Kurtz's Intended at the end of Heart of Darkness? Although Kurtz's dying words were actually "The horror! The horror!," he told her that his last words were her name. Was Marlow protecting himself, Kurtz, or the fiancee?
   
5. Name something from a work of literature (such as a character, setting, or quotation) that you find beautiful or vivid. I love these lines from Longfellow's poem "Snow-flakes":
   This is the poem of the air,
   Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
   This is the secret of despair,
   Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
   Now whispered and revealed
   To wood and field.
   

Books in Waiting

Some books sit on my shelves for years waiting to be read. They are the Duty Reads, the Guilt Books, the ones that Oprah recommended, the ones chosen for the National Book Award, the ones received as gifts. Currently, the Old Maid prize (given to the book that has sat the longest on the shelf) must go to The Red Tent. I can't bear to give it away, but I don't really want to read it. Book guilt.

This year, I actually girded my loins and read two of the Books That Have Been Lingering: Regeneration by Pat Barker (a wonderful novel of the World War I poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen) and The Northern Light (a luminous coming-of-age story entwined with a real-life historical murder mystery). Great books--so what had I been waiting for?

Reading experiences like these remind me of three truths:

• Blurbs and cover art don't always do a good job of motivating readers,
• Some reading just depends on the proper alignment of the stars--like love, we need the right one at the right time, and
• I need bigger bookshelves.