I Still Like Reading

After getting more bad news yesterday, I decided to deal in my time-honored way: with a binge read. I have now finished the Da Vinci Code. It was actually pretty good--the writing was not-bad enough that it was possible to concentrate on the plot which has a formulaic but still in-its-way lovely intricacy. Still, main characters should, in my view, only wince once or twice a book, otherwise you have a tic on your hands and other characters are sure to notice.

Also, I am LOVING literary journalism. Not that I'm eager to grade the stack of papers in my bag, but the process of talking about passages in articles with my class, and describing the way that the authors create their various complexities, is really fun. Since I tend to discover what's amazing in the articles while I'm talking about them to the class, rather than in advance so that I can construct thoughtful activities to lead the students to them, it's not a teaching high as much as a reading high, but it's still pretty great--and if I teach the class again, I now understand what it's important to point out, and could do it more pedagogically. Maybe it's so fun because I'm learning along with the students, whereas in poetry I've been so far ahead of them that the subject matter itself seemed more static, and what was interesting came from figuring out how to convey it.