Dear Mr. Coon, you described my relationship with reading perfectly in class today when you used the roller coaster analogy. From the age of about eight to roughly fourteen I was an avid reader. Mostly I stuck to age appropriate books, but when I began my teenage years I started to drift toward the gossipy novels my Mom would and still calls “junk food for the mind”. When I entered high school, my reading roller coaster plummeted. Swamped with papers, tests, and required books, I stopped reading on my own except for the occasional short paperback book over the summer. However this summer I went out on a limb and along with my required books for school, I somehow managed to read two books that were not on the list.
My taste in reading genres is colorful to say the least. I now find myself agreeing with my Mom and am avoiding the “junk food” books like the plague. Instead, I lean more towards historical fiction. I like this genre because I learn something interesting and at the same time still have the juicy scandals without the book falling into the “trashy supermarket novel” category. Two historical novels I read this past summer were Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo. The first novel tells the story of a young immigrant and his experiences in the chaotic world of a traveling circus. Along with chilling murders and promiscuous relationships, the author wove in historical facts and accounts of circus life. The other novel, Close to Shore, recalls the horrifying shark attacks of 1916 that Peter Benchley had used as the basis for JAWS. I was particularly fond of this book because it satisfied my inexplicable fascination with sharks.
I believe it is a fair argument that my reading status is similar to a double-edged sword. Although my taste has definitely matured and I am moving towards more sophisticated books, I clearly do not read as much as I did back when I was thirteen and clutching the latest Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. This year though, I hope to finish a book that does not contain graphs or a list of vocabulary words, but rather one where I do not mind staying up all night to finish it. (383)
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Natalie,
Thanks for a good first blog. "Junk food for the mind," "brain candy," "beach books,"--I love the euphemisms for the short, quick reads which are at some point the staple of most people's reading experiences. When I was thirteen it was sports novels. I couldn't get enough of them.
On the other hand, the books you read this summer sound fascinating. Did you say the shark book was a novel? It almost sounds more like a non-fiction the way you describe it.
Here's to a good year.
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