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.