For me, work ended on July 14th. However we hosted a party on the fifteenth. That following week, we also had a three day conference in Baltimore and a summer cold. So I got down to some serious summering on June 24rh, when my brain decided the one thing it wanted to do more than anything else was read.
Not sure why, it just felt like a craving that needed to be satisfied.
So I put a chair outside under a tree, poured myself a tall coke zero with ice and sat. I finished a book I’d started a long time ago, The Thursday Murder Club. Next, I tackled a book I’d read a review of, “Lessons in Chemistry.” By Wednesday, I began hunting for another title and found a book I’d bought at the Gaithersburg Book Festival a few years back but never sat down and enjoyed. “The Swamp Story” zoomed by in a day, which meant guess what, find another book.
As I looked through the stacks that each room of our home contains, I pondered why all of a sudden, I wanted to throw myself into the head of another person. Part of it addressed the struggle as of late with feeling tapped out. During the school year, I’d attributed it to dividing my energies in too many directions to give quality focus to reading. I also reasoned cancer recovery brain is real, as is covid brain and I’d endured both. Still, it didn’t quite answer the need to plow through all these books, like accomplishments even if no one was assigning them.
Speaking of assignments, I figured I should read some material to improve my educational skills.
I decided to switch it up and read “Lessons in Directing,” a purchase I made for teaching drama this year, which I had skimmed but never fully digested. It took a day. So I went back to my unread blind bought stack from the book festival, “A Writers Retreat,” but made it only through the first third. Something was bothering me. It wasn’t the sticky weather, I’d loved sitting under the tree with my puppy and a soda. It was the lessons imbedded in the stories. Any book written has within it, themes the author wants the reader to take away.
Warning, if you want to read these books, there are spoilers in the coming paragraphs. Not ruinous mind you, but spoilers.
One thing I noticed, I didn’t like the themes. Thursday Murder Club had an underlying message of killing a person quietly because you love them and they’re old being an act of love. I didn’t like that, but it came in the third act of the book so I finished to see how it all ended. We always have to have a person of the cloth doing wrong things somehow. That also seems to be a constant requirement.
“Lessons in Chemistry” included this conceit. I let it slide but when we came to the ending, we discovered a secret athiest millionare who acted as a type of fairy godmother to the main protagonist. Of course we’d been rooting for this woman, but it felt like a cheat to have her economically rewarded when up to that point, she’d made it a point, to stand on her own and stand for her own principles. The end of the story undercut all the strength and resiliance the character showed up to that point, even if it felt like a reward for her suffering.
Swamp Story, suffered from the opposite consequence. It was a romp, but also felt like a bit of a cheat when the main protagonists don’t get a minor fiscal bonus from all they endured, but those who plotted against them who were evil are conveniently done away with or paid off and get to start over with zero consequences. I wanted to somehow switch something of the endings for both books because of the tonal quality of what preceded in each story. Humor stories need a happy ending and all loose ends tied up neatly –but it doesn’t satisfy as a read when the tale included real peril at certain points.
“Lessons in Chemistry” and “Writers Retreat,” suffered from a common conceit of stories set in the past –always the characters of the past were anachronisms to their when but not to the present. Writers write what they know, and publishers want people today to purchase the books –so anachronisms as protagonists are almost a necessity –but when books are seeking to present universal truths –if they are universal truths, then they should shine through without the main characters needing to somehow be ripped from their time, gifted with present sensibilities and inserted back into the stream.
The thougthts and actions themselves should guide the understandings of the character then, and thus influence the readers of now, not the understanding of now be the voice and thoughts and understandings of the characters then. I also thought it would be a murder mystery but seemed very interested in not merely the horror of solving a murder, but of delving into the occult and I could not stomach that in my reading. So I stopped reading.
I’d read all these books and the only one that seemed to have something afterwards I could take with me that felt meaningful was “Notes on Directing.” I loved when it said, “Every scene is a chase scene.”
It reminded me of “Save the Cat” –another non fiction book I’ve reading, discussing how the only reason a reader stays with you is if they care about what the character wants and needs and who the character is. Those were things I could take to the classroom and if I considered my students characters, I needed to recognize every lesson is a chase scene, and I need to know what my students want and need and who they are.
But the reading fairy wasn’t done with me, so I opted to pick up one more book, weary from feeling like the books I’d read didn’t feed me enough. My kids have all read “The Outsiders” so I decided I should too. Here I found themes that resonated with reality –that “things are tough all over,” that “staying gold” is important, and that family often don’t see what is love, because it is the baseline they expect. I could trace all the points, of every scene being a chase scene and of how the characters gained support from the reader by the little things they did to cause the audience to care.
The pace of reading slowed as the summer progressed. I’m still reading “Save the Cat.” A writer friend who is very successful recommended it. I hope the writing picks up as a result. What I’m looking for I guess, is a story that doesn’t cheat me in the end, and that doesn’t require I suspend either my heart or my head while I follow the adventure. Would love some reading suggestions in the com box. Have a great July.
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