My summer wasn't too eventful. It started with World War Z, an interesting and multi-faceted look into what life might look like after a zombie apocalypse. Trust me; it takes a very new twist on the whole zombie craze! My reading continued with some Emily Dickinson, Fernando Pessoa, a book called Casual Lex (a look at the entomology of various colloquial phrases), and The Kite Runner (a tragic, but very well done, book in my opinion). I'll be finishing other books before I leave for Oberlin, but that's not too important - really, I want to talk about is why I do read, why I’ve read this summer and why I hope to continue reading.
I can't say books have been a medium of refuge for my overactive mind all these years of my life - I always found solace in the Internet as a child - YouTube, online communities, perusing Wikipedia articles to quench my thirst for varied knowledge. I can't say I read quickly or closely, but I can say this - I read to be left with thoughts. I read to understand different points of view and different ideas. I read because, even when the words are scrambled and forgotten years later, I'm always left with ideas: how characters feel, how narrative works, how I could learn to be brave or strong. I'm left with a fantasy even when devouring a long biography. Of course the facts, the details, of books are important - I digest those too - but, I love the place a book will leave me days, weeks, years after I've read it. I read, now, to be filled by things more powerful than the black glyphs between the pages of dust jackets - I read for the ideas.
This summer, though, I've been reading with another motive. Honestly, I want to be more well-read, more idea-filled, as I enter college. I don't want to impress anyone - my summer exploits would be much more ambitious if that were the case - I just want to feel adequately "prepared." See, I don't even know what prepared means for me - I haven't met my peers, I haven't had serious and sprawling intellectual and philosophical conversations with these people (Facebook, I assure you, is not a credible platform for constructive debate, and shouldn't be a foundation for my judgments). So, what then, am I left to worry about? I feel a need to be prepared to have these conversations, meet these people, and form proper and sturdy bonds with people I’ll be spending the next four years with. It's a month away, as I write this post in advance, and I have these shocking fears already. (I'll have you know, as I've been writing this post I seem to have conquered my fears, or, at least, reasoned with them. I think I'll be alright, I think this whole "meeting new people" thing will be a success.)
In the future I want to get a hold of myself (well, doesn't everyone?) I want to read for the pleasure of inheriting an idea and toying with it again. More importantly, I want to someday love the thought of sitting down with a book for the pleasure of reading - not just to extrapolate ideas from it - to bathe in an author's work, to sit under the shade of a thought expressed tirelessly through the written word. I think I'm on my way and I hope to work on this in my upcoming college days (between laboriously fantastic academic reading assignments, of course). I can't wait to take what little summertime I have left and read for myself, read to be happy, read for the future.
Hope you all have a great day. On the day this gets posted, I'll be meeting people and conquering my fears - wish me luck!
