Reading about Reading

How Reading Changed My Life – Anna Quindlen

One of the 1st challenges I signed up for this year was the one Lesley created, The Bibliophilic Book Challenge.  I thought it would be interesting to read about reading AND Lesley oked my plan to read some professional books about teaching reading that have been on my TBR  list for years. 

In reality though, this is the last challenge have tackled.  The other challenges are all at least 1/4 completed, some more than 1/2, but I hadn’t touched the Bibliophilic challenge. 

I have many of the books that I’d planned to read for this challenge, they just seem uninteresting.  I’m not as interested in reading essays or non-fiction, unless it’s written like a story.  Also, I’m just coming off a graduate program where I had piles of, interesting mostly, professional reading to do so now that I’m done I’m not as interested in reading books for school.  When I was at the library last time I checked out How Reading Changed My Life – Susan had recently read this book and wrote a rave review (ok, so Just searched through Susan’s blog to find what I thought was her review of this book, but it wasn’t this one that she’d read – it was Ruined by Reading – oh well.)  – so I decided I needed to read it. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a thin book.  Only 97 pages. And the last 20 or so were book lists, so only 70 pages of actual reading.  Ok, I could do that.  Even if it was boring, which it was not.  

Monday morning I picked up the book, thinking it would be perfect to “pad” my monthly total since I could finish it quickly. I ended up reading it in one sitting!   It was neat reading about Anna’s reading habits and her explanations about why we read.  It was a bit highbrow – quoting classics and waning philosophical in places, which is exactly what I hate about essays' so I was glad it was a quick read and I could skim for the good stuff.  I enjoyed the view into Anna’s life and plan to read more of her fiction soon!