How I love to read. Once a student asked if I felt forced to read because I was a librarian, as if reading were an onerous professional task. Having just finished the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman the night before, I answered that reading was one of the greatest pleasures of my life.
Until recently I imbibed literature as an addict would: gobbling, devouring, consuming books for the high of being transported into another setting, another mentality, to experience the thrill of leaving my identity behind. I then tossed each completed book into a pile that translated into a statistic in the library catalog’s circulation system, a number in my Goodreads “Read” column. Seeing the numbers climb, proliferate, prosper was enormously gratifying.
Then again, once I noticed that an acquaintance read as many books as I did, but she didn’t seem to incorporate what she read into her conversation or character. Was that not odd? And was that me? Someone who skimmed books solely for entertainment? No, not all the time. My year of discovering feminist literature and women’s literature (in those days not so easily done) changed my very being, as has every book in translation partaken.
All this is to say that I’m rethinking my reading program. The magnificents books of November want futher engagement. They ask that I devise a cheat sheet to remember the different parts of speech as discussed in Sin and Syntax; make a list of Mary Oliver’s figurative descriptions of the sky found in Devotions; practice the writing exercises included in Annie Finch’s The Poet’s Craft.
By reading slowly, I’m able to read more demanding literature. The demands don’t end just because I’ve reached the final pages of a book.