Summer Reading

I have always been a bookworm, but I never cared much for required summer reading. “The summer is my time, to read what interests me,” I would protest. And inevitably I would be frantically reading (and writing the required journal entries or other assignment) the last week of summer break. With A Tale of Two Cities in middle school, I remember finishing on Labor Day. I read many books over the summer—mysteries, biography, geography, “the classics”—but I simply was never interested in the required books (and even more so the dreaded assignments designed to make us “active readers”).

Now, I find myself drawn to the selections of common reading (required for incoming freshmen and encouraged for others) at the university where I am currently working and at my alma mater. They are usually nonfiction and explore a wide range of topics. I am looking forward to beginning The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which I have on hold at the library. I have seen it on display in the campus bookstore, but wrongly assumed that it was a work of fiction. A good reminder that one can’t judge a book by its cover.

Last week I read In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. This book is written by a college English adjunct and published using the pseudonym “Professor X.” Many of his complaints about the state of American higher education resonate with me and his experiences are similar to those that I have had as an itinerant adjunct. It reaffirmed my perceptions but does not offer much more “meat” than an article he wrote for Atlantic Monthly a few years ago. Much of the text is either autobiographical or describes his students whose literacy skills leave me wondering about the state of the future.

“We return to the old problem that my students do not read very much. They do not understand that most educated people read a fair amount. For my students, reading is just another thing that they happen to not be into, the way some people aren’t into scrapbooking or Pilates or watching Lost.” (p 170)

I had a heated discussion with some friends online last month about the new “bookless library” at a nearby university. I maintain that without books (or other tangible media) it is not a library. The banks of computers, comfy reading chairs and cups of coffee are no different from the computer labs, student union or other study locations. I can access all of the library’s electronic resources from anywhere through my library account. If this trend continues, will the future be library-less?

So this rambling post about reading comes back to my bibliophilia… Would you care to guess how many books will I read in the month of August, before the hectic academic semester resumes? I currently have over 60 checked out (the progress made during the great book return in May was overpowered by the severe case of I-want-to-read-it-all-itis that I had in July)! So far I have read three—one fiction and two non-fiction—and am partway through another two books. My guess is that I can conquer an even dozen before the month is over and I’m going to attempt to wheedle my borrowed book holdings to fewer than 40.