Literariness

Last weekend I took the Praxis exam so I can student teach in an English classroom next semester. I learned a couple things while taking it.

First, I learned that I don't know the difference between the different types of novel: Roman a clef, picaresque, blah blah blah. I'd never even heard the words. I'm pretty sure I missed a few of those questions.

Second, I learned that I miss being literary. I read a lot, but while Harry Potter and the Princess Diaries are fun, they don't feed your soul the same way beautiful literature does. I read some passages on the test, and just reading and contemplating them for those simple questions afterwards made me realize how much I miss reading.

So I'm determined to become literary.

Right now I'm reading Anna Karenina, which is Kevin's favorite book. He gave me a copy while we were engaged (it's easy to give gifts to your fiancee, as you know you'll soon be getting them back), and I read it that summer. However, even though I read it all summer, I didn't finish the darn thing, and now I've forgotten all of it. So I started over. I'm already almost 100 pages in, so in a few weeks I'll have finished it.

After that, I have a few books in mind.

On the test, there were passages or "name that author" selections from books I'd read in high school, and I felt pretty good about them. However, when I say I read something in high school, it usually (always) means my class read it and I just participated in the class discussion while reading snippets here and there. I'd like to go back and read some of those.

And then there are so many great novels that I've never read. I found a list of Time magazines "100 greatest novels" from this century, and I'd like to read some of those. 1984. A Passage to India. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Beloved. How can I call myself an English teacher when there are so many books I haven't read?

I was talking about this to my awesome husband, the Comparitive Literature major. I was whining about how I'd start some of these books (like Death Comes for the Archbishop), and they were just soooo boring! That one in particular just felt like reading an old day-in-the-life sort of diary with no drive or direction. But it was included on this list, and it's a "classic." But I couldn't get into it at all. I whined some more about how I could never figure out these books and why they were great or what there was to appreciate about them.

He said simply, "It's written like stained glass windows in a cathedral." (Um, and I'm the one becoming an English teacher?)

Now I want to read it.