Tuesday, January 17, 2017

reading profile

It wasn't until partway through high school  -- when I started reading Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech during school lunch -- that I started to read on my own terms. I think a friend might have exclaimed that this was her absolute favorite book as a kid, and I wanted to know what the fuss was all about. Since then, I've often read books based on recommendations from others or by observing what others are reading. Often this is great; it pushes me in directions that I might not otherwise have gone and helps me to feel connected to friends and strangers through individual and shared experiences of the same text. Still, there are many genres that I haven't gotten into, and I'm really looking forward to exploring further in this course.

I tend to gravitate towards fiction that allows me to enter the interior worlds of others. Currently, I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; the wandering descriptions and stream of consciousness style are testing my patience, in a good way. I also enjoy graphic novels, plays, nonfiction, and memoirs. 

Some of the highlights from my last year of reading are: the Neapolitan series by Elena Ferrante, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman, Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman.

1 comment:

  1. Those are some heavy duty literary reads! Go you! I too love to try and understand people better by reading their favorite books. Great profile.

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