WhateverBlog

Today was a quiet day spend working around the house. I woke up feeling sick, so David made me breakfast in bed, and an hour or so later I was feeling a bit better, so I moved my computer out to the front porch and worked there a bit.

After lunch, I helped David with long division (again, since it's absolutely not sticking in his head at all), and worked until we had to leave for his karate class.

Yesterday David wanted desperately to fly his kite, but it didn't work out, so I promised him a chance to go to the park after supper.

Unfortunately, a friend ended up calling in a panic because she accidentally 'shared' a document containing personal information about her kids on Microsoft SkyDrive (which is apparently a little too easy to do) and needed some coaching to figure out how to unshare (which is apparently nearly impossible to do). So by the time we made it out to the park, it was 8:30pm, and the mosquitoes were out looking for supper.

Still, David got his kite up by himself, with a little coaching, and had some fun with it till 9:30, when the REALLY BIG mosquitoes came to call.

We reeled the kite in very quickly, and sprinted back home while we still had a bit of blood left in our bodies, laughing all the way.

Now we're both itchy as hell, but very glad we took the time to get to the park. It may not have been the most important moment of our lives, but it was fun, and as long as we don't come down with a case of West Nile, we'll look back on the evening as one of the best of the summer.

I have been thinking lately about the books that were assigned in school when I was growing up. The thing is, I can't remember them.


I remember reading two books in Grade 9... Don Quixote and I Am Mary Tudor.  I remember a lot about both books, including how they made me feel and think.  But I read both of those books over the summer before I entered Grade 9. I don't recall what we read as a class in Grade 9. Maybe Romeo and Juliette? Probably something by Margaret Atwood. We were always reading something by Atwood. The curse of growing up Canadian. She might be a brilliant author, but school turned me right off her. 

When I entered high school, during the summers I read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy (having a thing for Russians at the time), but during the school year, I stuck to Stephen King, Heinlein and Azimov.  One of my teachers once asked me why I read such "low-brow fiction" when I clearly could read at a much higher level. I didn't have an answer at the time. It just worked better for me that way. 

But now I understand that you can't read Dostoyevsky on the bus. You can't appreciate Shakespeare in 40 minute blocks twice a week.  You can't squish good literature into a homework session between algebra and chemistry.

Reading is different. It's intense and personal, even with pulp.  More challenging books require even more attention, focus and time, and the life of a high school kid with a part-time job, friends and homework isn't conducive to that kind of reading.

So for me, summer was the perfect time to delve into something bigger, more intense, and more difficult than typical beach reads.  And I remember every brilliant summer literary experience I had since I was about 12 years old. Books I read in school? Don't remember much about them at all.

And now I have a son. I clearly want him to read good books, and I have occasionally pushed him toward some reading purely for the purpose of cultural literacy.

I made him read Alice in Wonderland ("Girl's book," he said), and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ("What a rip-off. He wasn't even a real wizard!"), and he's currently reading Frankenstein (because he challenged me when I said that Frankenstein was the name of the monster's creator, not the monster itself). 

I give him all the time he needs to read the books. The Wizard of Oz took one day. Frankenstein is taking several weeks.

But I wonder if he will remember these books, or simply forget them because they weren't of his own choosing. Is there a good way to teach good books, or is the best thing to let the reader stumble upon them on his own?

Homeschooling, at least, allows him to devour books at his own pace, to choose between ebooks, audio books and the paper versions, and to take all the time he needs to understand and appreciate what he's reading. No whole-class reading for him.

But even while I choose some of his reading for him, I hope I can restrain myself enough that the joy of reading something difficult and challenging stays with him for years to come.

SON: "What's spirituality?"

LEADER: "Umm, it's sort of the belief that there's something 'out there' bigger than ourselves."

SON: "Like an elephant?"