I've been reading a lot more lately. I suppose there really is something to the whole "summer reading" craze. I always thought it was made up by book retailers and libraries. But I was wrong. It is possible to actually want to read a lot more during summer and I have had a full-fledged craving for literary knowledge lately. I began my binge by finishing a book that had taken me 9 months to read: "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."
Let me back up. Earlier in the year I had promised myself I was going to take the GRE this summer. Well, I began to study for it and realized that, after a year off school, I had once again become an idiot (with no special powers). I thought that I could do a couple things to get my mind back in the swing of education, as it were. One of them was to read more frequently. (Another was to go down to the Food Bank and look down my nose at people but that got old.) Once I finished the last 50 pages of AHWOSG, I jumped right into "Fight Club." I devoured it in about two days. I hadn't sped through material that fast since reading everything J.D. Salinger wrote one week back in 1997. I thought I'd slow things down and take it easy with a girly book called "The Lovely Bones." No such luck. I wanted to know what happened to that little dead girl's family so bad that I couldn't stop reading. One night I had planned to read a chapter before going to bed and I completed the book. It had to have been close to 100 pages I read in one sitting. Yeah? Well, it's unusual for me. In all, it probably took me a week to read.
I know you are "fascinated" by all of this. I can tell by the look on your face. My point is that reading has become cool again. (Because apparently I went through a phase where it wasn't?) I'm not neglecting my mind anymore. Now, when I get home at night, instead of falling asleep to ESPN News, I fall asleep while I read. Next on my list is "The Chronicles of Narnia," a C.S. Lewis special that I guess everyone except me read as a child. I hear there's a talking Lion or something. Sounds fine.
Whatever happened to the GRE, you ask? Well, we've parted ways for now. I'm lost in a new summer love and GRE is backpacking through Europe with the GMAT and LSAT. Let's hope they have a three-way.
