Remember those books you had to read in junior high and high school? Remember "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Great Expectations"? Remember how your teacher raved about how wonderful they were, while you sat and tried to figure out how to write the essay without reading it?
Has it ever occurred to you to look at them again? As an adult, you may find in them the treasures that your teachers saw. You may see them in a different light, and understand them differently.
I love literature, and always have. I grew up with Shakespeare, Tolstoy and O Henry as bedtime stories. Wordsworth and Tennyson often became the foundation for Family Home Evening lessons. It is in my blood to love devouring a good book.
Even with that background, there is something about someone telling me I have to read a book that takes some of the enjoyment out of it. Thinking about the essay, or how many pages have to be read that night, takes my mind off of truly immersing myself in the pages.
I think there is value in picking up those books you dreaded reading in high school, and approaching them again. What do you remember reading?
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I read quite a few classics in my secondary days-The Old Man and The Sea, Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Pimpernel, All is Quiet on the Western Front, The Scarlet Letter, lots of Shakespeare, Wuthering Heights, Tess of d'Uberville, Moby Dick, The Screwtape Letters, Cireno de Bergerac (sp?), The Crucible, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, On Walden Pond . . that's all I can remember. We read some others, but they weren't really "classics".
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