A Year and a Day

It's April 3, 2012. In the last year and a day, I have read 50 books.

** ACTUALLY, only that sentence is from April 3, 2012.  Just after April 3, 2012, I as a student teacher interviewed for and obtained an excellent job teaching high school English at an amazing high school in St. Louis, MO, and my life became busier than I had ever imagined possible.

However, I still find time to read.  I read some amazing books this summer, and I feel the urge to begin another blog to discuss those books. When I get that figured out, I'll add the link here. For now, I just want to say this:

Learning about my own reading has been, really, kind of crazy.  I read a lot of books I didn't like this year, strangely enough, but I figured out more about how I choose books. I finally learned how to put down a shitty book and I continued my time-consuming habit of reading late into the night, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, in waiting rooms and in lines at just about anywhere, when I found a book I loved.  And, ultimately, I've learned a lot about how to think about (and write about) books -- a skill that I am sure will come in handy starting on Tuesday, August 14th, when I start teaching high school students why reading still matters.

That was ultimately my idea when starting this book: I wanted to be able to show my future students that I, as their teacher, truly love reading and still find time to read as an adult.  I wanted to show reading as a legitimate pursuit of knowledge and fun, an idea that seems to be dying in the modern high school community and an idea that I do NOT, under any circumstances, want to die.  I want to inspire my students to read, and so I have tried to document my efforts, reactions, critiques, and loves about reading over the course of this year.

I hope that something good will come out of this blog, I really do.  I will try to continue to write about my love of reading, but next time I won't be counting the books I'm reading or writing about every single one. Instead, I want to choose those books that I found stunning, incredible, meaningful, dark, comedic, everything that I love about stories, and share that love with my students.

I have no idea if anyone is following/reading this blog, but if you are, thank you, and hopefully I'll see you on a new blog about books before too long.

- M, 8/12/2012