OK. This is where I admit that I fudged the elementary school reading contest. Was it second grade? Third? I know it was a grade where you cared about these things, so, for me, it could have been when I was a freshman in college. You know what I'm talking about, right? All the kids would come in with a list of books they read during summer break. The teachers would tally them up and stick a shiny golden sticker next to your block print name. The stars would shine at you from the cinder block walls, all boastful in their shimmery shimmeryness.
One year I won. Here's how: by taking the easy way out. I went to the library that summer and picked out the easiest, shortest books I could find. Nevermind that I probably could have, if I wanted, plowed through all of Mark Twain's stories. Or maybe even Tolstoy's (Ambitious? Yes. Would I have understood anything I read? No, but why would that have stopped me?). Instead, I came home with all the Dr. Seuss' you could carry. And therein came the strung-out golden stars.
Not an out-and-out lie. But, OK. I cheated.
So, in an effort to right this karmic wrong, I'm holding a one-person read-a-thon for the summer. Want to join? I just finished Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital (Interesting, though it seemed like a 600+ page short story.) and Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons (for all the hype, not that gripping).
Now what? There's the summer where I read all of Steinbeck. And this summer I may do something similar. Any suggestions? I'll put a list here, later, when I get my stock of golden stars replenished. And I'll send you some, too, if you want...
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i remember that time you visited me on williams dairy road and i had alllllll those books i was gonna read that summer. i didn't, obviously, read them. but a couple years ago i found the list i had made of those i was gonna read that summer and daggum, i had made it through a good many over the years. my current project is a book a week although harry potter book 5 is tripping me up. daggum movie rights influencing a writer before they've even written the next one. but it's getting good. we read, in my class, this graphic novel/comic called BLANKETS about this christian boy from a fundamentalist family's first love. i liked that a lot. read it in several hours. some beautiful drawings. hey you, angiegirl. this is from kathryn with xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
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