My mom and I were having a discussion over the weekend about required reading.The idea had two different potential applications: students and adults. Mom had been to a reading teachers' conference last week, and had been inspired by a speaker that urged teachers to allow students to put down books they weren't enjoying. The argument is that, if you force children to read, it will be seen as an unpleasant chore. Conversely, if you encourage them to read (appropriate) fiction and nonfiction that they enjoy, you'll help them cultivate a lifelong love of reading.
On the other hand, there's adult "required reading." As in, the great literary books that are intimidating, but I feel like I should read them and if I do, I'll be a better person for it. As in, the Top 100 books of all-time list that I'm trying (and failing) to read 12 books from during 2006. As in: Don Quixote.
When I chose Don Quixote as my next classic read, in a kinder, gentler time that seems like many eons ago now, I thought it was a good choice. True, it was a thick book. And old. But if high school Spanish students can read it, surely I can get through it, right?
Mom foolishly offered to read it with me. So for several months now, we've both been struggling to get through it. I have to tell you, I'm not really enjoying it. And because I haven't been enjoying it, I've been starting and stopping ... and every time I pick it back up again after a hiatus, it seems even more difficult to get through, and to have grown immensely in size and weight. Don Quixote definitely feels like required reading.
So after her conference, my mom put forth the argument that we shouldn't have to finish Don Quixote. If we're not enjoying it, we should just put it down and move onto something better.
I (somewhat reluctantly) argued against this position for several reasons. First, I'm stubborn. I'm not going to be defeated by some inept "knight" that's hundreds of years old.
Secondly, I think that adult-chosen required reading is different from that of kids in a classroom. I've inflicted this on myself. And suffering through Don Quixote is not going to make me stop reading. I'm already a bibliophile, and will continue to be one long after the Don has grown dusty on my bookshelves ... again.
So I'm curious as to what you guys think. Mom and I have now given ourselves until Thanksgiving to finish Don Quixote, which would make me very thankful indeed. If you've committed to reading a book for one reason or another (book club, classic, recommended, etc.) and you don't enjoy it, do you put it down or keep reading until the bitter end?
8 comments:
I was going to say that in the last five or six years I've started to quit reading if I wasn't interested after the first few chapters/fifty to one hundred pages, but then I remembered that I was assigned a ton of reading in college that I never did, so I suppose the accuracy of my statement is off.
I still say: Find it on tape. Or get a comic-book version or some other illustrated adaptation -- if such a thing exists.
And the title of the book I couldn't think of the other night was The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost.
Your mom is a smart lady. I agree with her. As an English major, I always feel a certain obligation to like certain writers that I don't, really. I keep trying to ready Jane Austen, for example, but can't ever get into the story or finish the first chapter. But when I see the books in movie form, I like them.
I say it's ok to give up, even if you brought it upon yourself. Just because someone else out there likes a book doesn't mean that you have to.
So you both are siding with my mom, huh? Thanks for the support!;)
But her argument makes so much sense.
Anyhow, here's something that probably should have been required reading before your vacation:
http://www.wikihow.com/Escape-from-a-Bear
My feeling is that if pleasure reading needs post-it notes and a reading journal to keep track of characters and/or plots, then it is no longer pleasure reading and has become work. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0758215282/sr=8-5/qid=1154102793/ref=sr_1_5/102-9828240-1009722?ie=UTF8 is a truly pleasurable read. ;)
Well, now that the dog will have to be walked 90 minutes a day, it's a great time to find an audio file of Don Quixote -- load up the MP3 player, grab the leash and the pooper scooper, and you're good to go!
I cannot recommend this version from Project Gutenberg, however -- unless you enjoy creepy computer voices. It's like having the entire book read by the default setting on my answering machine.
You can get it on CD from the Cuyahoga County library. It's read by Michael York (You know -- Asher Fleming from Gilmore Girls ... the professor Paris had an affair with). Bonus: It's abridged! Only three hours -- you'll knock that out in no time.
Anyhow, this book group you're considering -- Do you want to make it a Classics-Only reading list? Like, "Books You Should Have Read in School"?
More Don Quixote tidbits:
"Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalry romances that he determines to turn knight-errant himself, and roam the world in the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Sane madman and wise fool -- together they have haunted readers' imaginations for 400 years now."
Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 in Spain, and he never obtained a university education. He started writing Don Quixote in 1597 while imprisoned for debt. And in December, 1604, Juan de la Cuesta prints in Madrid the first edition of the book recognized as the first modern novel.
With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been enormously influential on many other writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."
-- http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Espanol/donQuijoteEnglish.shtml
I'm willing to accept audiobooks as "reading" on my reading list ... but I draw the line at abridged audiobooks. I can't do that.
And if I needed any more proof that Faulkner was an eccentric person, the idea of re-reading DQ every year definitely makes him certifiably insane.
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