Just pokin' along...

Not much to report...this is a reading week, as opposed to a knitting week. Worked on a scarf for a bit yesterday, and started that swatch thing the other day, but otherwise, stuff's getting neglected on the fiber end.

Instead I paid about 2/3rds of my library fines and got into reading mode. South Mandarin branch had copies of Big Girl Knits and Mason-Dixon Knitting, so I'm entrenched in both at present. Also got in a classics mood and grabbed Middlemarch and Mansfield Park...I never got to read decent classics in high school. I don't know why, but it just seemed like my classes got the duds--when other classes were reading Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, I was reading Steinbeck's The Red Pony. You ever read The Red Pony?! Four chapters, and the pony's only in the first one; then he dies. Whoopie! Definitely could've used Of Mice and Men; ended up seeing the play and the ending surprised the shit outta me!

I barely remember getting any book assignments in high school, because the books they assigned were unremarkable for the most part. Plus, I had your basic public school education, so we weren't guided at all in the understanding of the books. If you knew how to read, then you were expected to read it and then answer the questions posed afterward. When you got the questions wrong, was when you were told the meaning behind the book. I was baffled, and they threw books on us too early without enough explanation. Seventh grade may seem early enough for the dry, longwindedness of Oliver Twist or the flowery language of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but if it's your first shot at combining reading with analytical thought, you've gotta have a little guidance or else the books will sail right over your head. I gave up early on understanding the meanings within the meanings, and it took the fun out of reading. I didn't get that fun back until after college.

I read Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird on my own in college, nestled myself in the heath of Wuthering Heights just last year, and am working my way up to Moby Dick and Anna Karenina. Classics sneak into my bookshelves a couple of times a year. I may not read them right away, but there's a comfort somehow in knowing that when I'm ready to tackle Last of the Mohicans or Walden or Homer again, that I'll have them on hand.

Speaking of decent writing, Stephen King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes was on again last night, and it was excellent! Last night's two stories weren't scary or gory; they were thinkers, translated by some of my favorite actors (superb casting so far!), and I found myself reveling in the neat/sad/utopian/doomed ideas behind the stories. The man's an artist.