She Can Read

This idea occurred to me today while I was browsing through a bookstore - all of the books I want to read, and how quickly I forget which books I have read. I thought of how ordinary and average I am, but how I have not read many "classics" as my mother would deem them, or even a lot of the "must reads" of this time period.

A little background is this: I was always big on reading when I was a child. I remember a million trips to the library with my Grandma when I was younger. After I worked my way through the current Babysitters Club selection, I was on to what my Grandma was reading, which mostly included Lillian Jackson Braun (of The Cat Who... fame), and Maeve Binchy (of Circle of Friends fame). I still read quite a bit through high school and I remember falling in love with many stories that I read on my own, which included the aforementioned Binchy book. I hated assigned reading in high school, but I distinctly remember the anxious and trapped feeling that Poe's The Pit and Pendulum gave to me as I sat in Ms. Lathrop's classroom.

When college happened, so did a lot more assigned reading, and pleasure reading often got pushed to the sidelines, only making its way out for school vacations. But during this time I started discovering a lot more than I had before. One American Literature class, I believe, set me off on a search for those "classics". After reading a few excerpts I then started reading Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, and fell in love. My favorite kind of literature is probably mid-twentieth century American. I count To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee as one of my favorites, along with East of Eden by Steinbeck.

So, that's the long of it, and the short of it is that I want to keep better track of what I read and I want to talk about it. My reviews will always be honest, even if they don't match what critics and fans says ("You can't possibly think that of Flannery O'Conner!"). This is what I like, and what I think, which is why I made a blog for it. Happy reading.