Some you devour, some you savour

Last Friday, during Fun Friday Reading I told my students about what I've been reading. It was like this blog, only talking.

Since I had last seen them, I had finished The Girl Who Played With Fire, read a Buffy comic, and inhaled a Libby Fischer Hellmann mystery.

My kids stared at me. Confused.

"You read all of those in a week?"

"Yes," I replied, "and now I'm reading Craig Ferguson's autobiography."

I proceeded to regale (vocab word) them with stories of giant men who can't feel pain, abduction, time travel, centaurs, and terrorists.

Then we read.

This week, however, will be more sedate. Last weekend, upon returning from the family's yearly pilgrimage to Notre Dame I didn't feel like planning or grading or working at ALL.

And so I watched The Namesake. If we remember, the madre importuned (vocab word) me to read The Namesake for years before I finally gave in to the lyrical majesty of the novel. The movie has been sitting in its Netflix package for approximately four weeks.

But then I watched it.

And then I cried.

Just watching the movie reminded me of the quiet awesomeness of the novel. I needed more quietness.

And so I started The Ana Papers, by love of my life Ellen Gilchrist. I can read ridiculously fast. I normally don't read all the words because I don't have to. For Gilchrist, however, I slow down. I savor every word on every page.

Tomorrow, when I share what I'm reading, I will read the following quote from The History Boys: "The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."

And then I will tell them how Gilchrist has been holding my hand for years.

"Once a man I was leaving told me I could go if I would leave my skin behind. I was so young I didn't even know that I was wonderful, didn't even know that I was soft. I didn't know a thing."
Word Magician Ellen Gilchrist