Summer Reading 2007

June 10th, 2007

“To photograph is to confer importance. There is probably no subject that cannot be beautified; moreover, there is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects.”

—from On Photography by Susan Sontag

When I was younger I would read all the time, anything I could get my hands on. My family had a set of Childcraft books and World Book Encyclopedias, and I would read them just for fun. I learned a lot of (somewhat) useful things that way. I still retain things to this day, and I have no idea how. I just remember random stuff that would probably be best used in a trivia tournament such as Jeopardy.

When I entered middle school (6th grade), I encountered the often dreaded “Summer Reading List” for the first time. I don’t quite remember what books I was meant to read. I think it may have been Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. However, it was from then on that I started the habit of never finishing the books I was acquired to read over the summer. Usually it was because the book didn’t interest me, or I had no idea why I was reading it or how it was supposed to relate to my life. Back then, of course, I didn’t intellectualize my failed readings in such a way. But seriously. . . The Member of the Wedding? I think I had to read that the summer going to the 7th grade, and it was the worst book ever. I mean, that book it lost me shortly after the “heroine” cut her toe nails with a butcher’s knife.

When I got to high school, things weren’t much different. The school I attended had both a Magnet and Comprehensive program. Students taking Honors classes had to read two books, while people in regular English classes had only one. I don’t think I read both books on my list until the Summer before my junior year. The books were The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and Fences by August Wilson.

Since my freshman year, the entire county had adopted a new academic system called “block scheduling.” Different high schools handled it different ways, but it was a way for us to earn 8 credits a year rather than 7. My school had four 98 minute classes one semester, and then the next semester, you’d have four new classes. So, if one was fortunate to have English class second semester rather than first, they would have extra time to procrastinate reading their books. I read The Grapes of Wrath first, under the reasoning that since it was a gazillion pages long. I figured once I finished it, I would breeze through the mere 128 pages that was Fences.

To this day, I still feel a small pang of fury over the “ending” of The Grapes of Wrath. Now, years later, I understand the philosophical message about how life must continue on and things don’t have to end happily. . .but goodness, it was so abrupt and unexpected, I would have been more fulfilled if everyone had just died at the end. Then I wouldn’t have to wonder what happened to them (even though, I know, they were fictional characters).

So . . . what am I reading now?

For the past month I’ve been getting through Kingdom of Lies by (N.)Lee Wood. Then after my trip, I got Pendragon Book Eight: The Pilgrims of Rayne, which caused me to put Lies on hold. I enjoyed The first book pretty much. It was a police procedural mystery, set in England, so all the jargon was hard to muddle through in the beginning. Pilgrims of Rayne got more of an emotional response out of me just because I love the Pendragon series so much, and the main character is doing some recklesss things, and the plot didn’t really advance the story much other than to set things up for the next book in the series.

I don’t know if I’ll ever finish Crime & Punishment, which I started a while ago. But I have gone back to On Photography by Susan Sontag. The writing is amazingly analytical of the subject of photography, and the writing is quite sophisticated. I had to read it aloud, in a English accent to be able to understand it. I’m just weird.

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Here are some really pitiful sketches I did recently.

Ciao. =)

Entry Filed under: books,life,photography,school,sketchbook