I suspect that many readers of this blog are people with my longtime love affair with the printed page. I don't remember learning to read. I was the kid who got sent to the library to read Nancy Drew books while the rest of her class was learning the basics. In some ways, that was cool. In some ways, it made me a weirdo. If I am correct in my assumption, most people reading this were also weirdos. Group hug!
I have a compulsive relationship to print. If I'm walking down the hallway of any nameless institution and there are things posted on the bulletin boards, I need to check them out. (Apartment for sublease! Cheap!) In the shower, I read the shampoo bottle, which was a big help when I took organic chemistry, because I already knew what sodium laureth sulfate was.
At the moment, I'm taking a literature class and a literary criticism class, so I've recently read Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and various scholarly essays on feminist, Marxist, and psychoanalytical criticsm. There is a reason these books are classics, and I am loving my classes. Yeah, I'm a weirdo. So sue me.
I can't wait to turn these new critical skills loose on my shampoo bottle.
That lovely feeling of really READING a book, of reaching deep and finding all the things the author has done (deliberately or not) to move, persuade, frighten, or soothe us. Nothing is quite like that, eh?
A fellow weirdo!
Posted by: Mysti | October 29, 2012 at 03:32 PM
Ha! I also read the bulletin boards, the walls of restroom stalls, etc. etc.
It's a lifelong compulsion, and I'm not stopping now!
How lovely it must be to take a literary criticism course. :-)
Posted by: Ann | October 29, 2012 at 05:12 PM
You'd love this course, Ann. Mysti described it well--"reaching deep and finding all the things has done (deliberately or not)."
It's like physics, only with words. :)
Posted by: Mary Anna Evans | October 29, 2012 at 06:16 PM
That class sounds fascinating! Jane Eyre and Frankenstein? What are you doing with that combo?
Posted by: Priscilla | October 30, 2012 at 08:52 AM
The class is called The Novel and Its Tradition, and the tradition being studied this semester is the Gothic novel. My reading list was The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Rebecca. It's rather awesome.
Posted by: Mary Anna Evans | October 30, 2012 at 09:07 AM
Wow! Where are you studying this?
Geez, I'd love to sign up for a course like that. Shade of my days at UCB! :-}
Maybe that's why I liked both physics and "English Lit" ... I was using my analytical skills with both!
Posted by: Ann | October 30, 2012 at 11:55 AM
I'm taking it online through Northern Arizona University, which is also where I'm taking the into to literary criticism course. It's a rather cool setup. I think you can get an MA in English totally online, but I'm not sure about that, because I'm registered as a non-degree-seeking student. I'd like to start a PhD program in English next year, but I'm not the most plausible candidate, given that my degrees are in engineering. With these two graduate courses and a third one in creative nonfiction I took through NAU this summer, plus two undergrad literature courses I took through the University of Florida this spring, I'm doing a good bit to beef up my street cred as a literary scholar. I hope...
Posted by: Mary Anna Evans | October 30, 2012 at 12:03 PM
I got sent every day to the second grade class for reading while in first grade. Talk about embarrassing. I was so glad when I moved to another school and they left me with the rest of the class, where I could be a secret weirdo. :P
Posted by: Karen Russell | October 30, 2012 at 05:16 PM