High School Illiteracy: Mine

In high school I did not read a single book assigned to me in my English classes. Yet, I'm appalled that many schools are taking novels out of the curriculum, because it doesn't directly relate to the state's standardized test. I used to pride myself on getting decent grades on assignments with reading as little as possible. A couple times I decided to open the book and cover some of the pages. I remember in the 9th grade I read chapter chapter 10 and the last 100 pages of Jurassic Park. I found it fascinating. One person created such in depth character development. A couple years later I got sick and had to miss about a week of school. I was so bored at home I decided to read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My class had already read the first 20 chapters so I read those in the Cliff Notes and then I read the rest of the novel. It was amazing. I never read, but the two times I tried it I thought both books were great. Maybe other books are also great. So the summer after my junior year I decided I wanted to read a book in its entirety. I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that I was indeed literate. I read The Firm.

That's it. 3 books. The only 3 books I read by the time I graduated high school. That's even using a very loose definition of "read." (Read at least 100 pages of the book.)

More thoughts on reading to come...