Derailed, Despairing, Differentiated.

I have finished three chapters of Don Quixote.  Three.  I have been “reading” this book for four or five weeks now.  The chapters are not long at all, just kind of tedious.  I find myself thinking, “Dude.  This is so lame.  I would way much rather be reading something, anything else.”  (Yes, that is how I talk.)

So.  I am giving Mr. Cervantes seven more chapters to pick up the pace.  To give me a reason to continue my reading project.  To make me want to love old literature (I didn’t think it would be so hard!).

In the meantime, I have been reading Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.  I have been following Susan Wise Bauer’s grammar stage note taking and I am about half way through the book.  Fried Green Tomatoes is one of my favorite movies and I have been lucky enough to partake in ACTUAL fried green tomatoes from the ACTUAL Whistle Stop Café (something so wonderful I will never forget it).  For Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, it is so easy to whip through chapters, take my notes and move on.  I am eager to start digesting the book as soon as I am done with it.  I want to think deep, wonderful, meaningful thoughts about this novel.

Therefore, I present you with my new plan.  As I travel through The Well-Educated Mind, I am only going to read one book (of my own choosing and interest) from each type of literature.  It’s cheating, I know.  I won’t be reading classics, I KNOW.  My hope is that reading one book per chapter of that marvelous book will help me expedite my reading of The Well-Educated Mind, then perhaps I will find a “favorite” category that I will more deeply explore.  Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater:  I totally know. 

So far, here are my (cheating) reading choices:

- Novel: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg

-Autobiography: A Little Bit Wicked by Kristin Chenoweth

-History: Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle by Thea Cooper & Arthur Ainsberg

-Drama: Probably something by Henrik Ibsen

-Poetry: ??

Any suggestions on the last two categories would be greatly appreciated.  I hope you all don’t look down on me for not totally, exactly following through.

SuperFreakonomics by Dubner and Levitt

I really loved Freakonmics.  It was a highlight of the depressing Summer of 2009, when not much was happy in my life.  It was sandwiched somewhere between my readings of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Outliers and Blink.  I ruminated on beautiful tidbits about naming children and Roe v. Wade’s influence on crime rates 15 years after its passage.  I was so into microeconomics.

SuperFreakonomics did not have the same effect on me.  I found myself bored in many sections and my Kindle’s next page buttons got quite the work out during the chapter, “What do Al Gore & Mt. Pintabo have in common?”  I liked the genial writing style; it reminds me of taking a class with your favorite professor.  Intellectual, but fun and funny.  Beyond that, SuperFreakonomics lacked the interesting stories and ideas that kept me engrossed in Freakonomics.  I wanted to love it, but I didn’t (and I ended up wishing I had bought What the Dog Saw by Gladwell, instead).

In a rating system based on Elijah Wood films, I would rate this book as All I Want: I enjoyed it in the beginning, remembering previous endeavors, but about half way through, the enjoyment was long gone and I just wanted it to be over.

Beginning the Adventure.

I’ve just finished Chapter 5 of The Well-Educated Mind and I am perched on the edge, ready to dive headlong into this journey of reading.  I am excited by the snippets the author gives of many of the novels.  I am invigorated by the understanding she provides – I might have read these books in high school if my teachers had broken reading down in this way.  Had we had the time to take each novel at our own pace and had we been able to look deeply into each one.

My adventure begins with Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.  I plan to have my “Grammar Stage” reading done by the end of  February (when I will also willingly join the ranks of the unemployed.)

The Well-Educated Mind

I found this book over a year ago and have started this project many times in that time.  I have really enjoyed what I have read of The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer.  It is well- and convincingly written.  The author has a sense of humor.  Her ideas are clear and, in theory, extremely helpful in digesting those classics I never got around to in high school or college.

Unfortunately, I have not progressed past the fourth chapter because of a few things.  My first and seemingly largest problem is a lack of access to used book stores or adequate libraries.  Living on a small island south of Japan, it’s been tough to find the books listed for reading in The Well-Educated Mind.  This issue has been recently put to rest because I received a Kindle for Christmas this year – lucky me!  My second problem is the author suggests it is necessary to have a reading buddy to accompany you on this journey.  This is to keep you accountable to reading, to keep you on the right path analytically and to assist in the final synthesis of the books.  I’ve had a few friends who at least intended to read with me but no one who followed through any more than I did, myself.  So I’ve decided to skip the buddy and just start this blog.  We will all see how that turns out.