I come from a family of librarians. My grandma, mom and uncle all spent many years with the Dewey Decimal System and teaching me about books. I remember sitting at our dining room table reading my first book with my grandma -
Norma Jean Jumping Bean - at four years old, and never going back. After that first book, I read everything - and, much to my parents' chagrin, out loud.
Reading is a part of me. My grandma allows us all a lot of leeway, but she would never let us have a TV at our lake cabin. We play games, we talk, we read and we get off the grid completely. I can't tell you how many books I've read on our dock. Page after page and story after story.
I've been having a major internal struggle for the past few years, though. It's two-fold: Teaching standardized tests trained me to read differently. Yes, I majored in English, but they don't teach you grammar skills in school anymore. Not at the level I learned them after graduating. It's been about four years since I taught the SAT, but I still have a hard time escaping into books. I used to finish any book I started, based mostly on principle. Now, if I find myself correcting grammar or judging syntax, I can't concentrate on the story. I've become very hipster about it. Some of that mass appeal stuff I won't even open.
50 Shades of Grey is a great example. Not saying it's bad, just that it's not for me. I had a hard time reading the
Twilight series, but since I'd already started, I finished it all. And I judged the weird flowery language the whole time.
Also, social media. My attention span operates in 140 characters or fewer. I find myself scrolling apps instead of diving into my books. I need to be better. I need to pay devoted, long-term attention.
That's where
Little Free Library comes in. I had set a few books aside that I wanted to donate to the Little Free Libraries around our neighborhood. On one of our recent walks, Raz and I hit THREE of them. I donated to the first and really wanted to bring a new book home to read, but didn't find anything I wanted until the last stop.
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| Donating Water for Elephants. Pretty good read, mediocre movie. |
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| Our first stop. The sidewalk here was made of a strange bouncy rubber material I was really feeling. |
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| Second stop. Raz and I had to pull up a map of the Libraries on his phone, but we found it! |
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| Grocery store status collection here, though. |
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| The last stop, and my favorite. I love seeing Libraries dedicated to someone special. |
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| That side door holds the guest book. |
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| Library love notes. |
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New read! I'll let you know how I like it (haven't seen the movie).
I'd love to know what you're reading - always looking to add to my collection.
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