Ain't got time for hate

This week at the SFF Seven party-in-a-blog, we're talking about books that we loathed, specifically those classics that teachers or mentors forced upon us and threatened us on pain of Fs until we read them.

I studied literature in college, so yeah, I read quite a few things that I didn't especially dig. But I was also a stubborn and spiteful child, so fairly often I'd choose to write papers on the worst fictional offenders, the books I initially loathed. Which meant I had to read them again. And again.

And you know what happened sometimes (most times)? On about the third reading, I'd crack the bitter nut, peer inside to the meat, and realize the deep parts of that book were actually delicious.

I remember specifically that happening with a a half dozen Russian tragedies (hello, Anna Karenina), everything I had to read by Goethe, and E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. The thing about literary classics that suck superficially is that there is subtext. So if you dig deep enough, you will find something else, especially if the author has done a good enough job layering to have a book join the literary canon.

These days, no one is forcing me to read, so I read what I want to. Sometimes it's layered, high-protein, literary nuttiness. Sometimes it's deep-dish genre pizza. Sometimes it's birthday cake fluff consisting mostly of icing and sugar flowers. Sometimes it's just a snack, a cookie, a lollipop, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get confectioner's sugar joy ride.

Because these days? I don't have time to read a book twice or thrice before I see its beauty. And I sure don't have time for hate.

How to Teach a Kid to Hate Reading

Here's me and RITA Finalist Darynda Jones at the RITA ceremonies at RWA 2018. A fabulous evening!

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is Which “Classic” Author’s Work Do You Loathe and Why?

Mine? THE DEERSLAYER, by James Fenimore Cooper.

Yes, I read it in 5th or 6th grade - because I was forced to - but the scars remain. I had been pushed into some sort of advanced reading pod with other unsuspecting dolphins book lovers, and told that we had to read this book.

It was the first time IN MY LIFE that I DIDN'T ENJOY READING.

I mean, my mother read to me every night, until I started reading over her shoulder and correcting her mistakes. At which point, she threw up her hands and just handed me the books. I think I was about six. I was allowed to check out five books a week from the library and it was an effort to make them last. Once I had allowance money, I spent it on books. I read books in class, on the playground, at home, in the car. I even invited my friends to come over and read.

I was that kid.

Probably a lot of you were, too.

So to make me hate reading took a lot of effort. I still remember the woman who insisted I should like this book. When I told her I didn't want to read it, she said I had to.

I loathed everything about it and her.

Many years later I found the Mark Twain essay, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, which made me feel at least validated in my loathing. But really, at ten or eleven, I wasn't thinking about all those excellent points Twain makes. I hated reading about this guy who was boring and hateful at once, about women being scalped and raped, and about things I had zero interest in.

This kind of thing is how we teach kids to hate reading. I know things have gotten better and I celebrate those teachers and librarians out there putting books into kids' hands, helping them find books to LOVE.

That's what reading should be about.