Autumn: The Season of Unassigned Reading!

Autumn has finally hit Northern California, and I couldn’t be happier. However; when it becomes fall around here, yours truly loses any and all desire to do schoolwork. All I want to do is curl up with my British edition of Harry Potter, drink chai and snuggle with Jeff (the boyfriend), Hermione(the cat) and Zelda(the dog). The last thing I want to do is do assigned reading. Anyone who has ever majored in Literature knows what I’m talking about – it’s a problem that is unique to us. Anyone who has never been a Lit major doesn’t understand how you could take courses where all you do is read novels and somehow find time to procrastinate due to your own reading.

I didn’t used to be like this. I remember in junior high I used to kill my school reading before I did anything else. The first time I ever picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I couldn’t get through my schoolwork fast enough. Study hall with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger? Yes, please! While everyone else was out at recess or lunch, I stayed behind to do my reading so that by the time school was over I had my book pulled out of my backpack and was there with Harry in Potions before I even reached my grandmother’s old Chrysler. I would devour books, and I would always finish my homework first.

But now? Now I have this weird problem where I’ll really jam on an assigned reading for school, but then I’ll get bored with the next book and do my own reading for pleasure. I also have, and always have had, an issue with assigned reading. I just think it’s shit. I always wanted to be a part of the class where a teacher just got the students stoked as hell on something they wanted to read.

Why is this so important? Because not enough people are exited about reading and I think it’s because “literature” is shoved down our throats before we are even cognitively aware enough to know just what the hell it is we are doing in a classroom full of other eight-year-olds!  Because teachers teach to tests and because some of them became teachers just to get weekends and holidays off. Because you are told that if you don’t read (insert novel here) then you will be punished. Who wants to read anything under those conditions?

I’m also just a hippie about reading. Read what you want as long as you are reading! Read the hell out of that Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey, as long as you’re reading.

When you aren’t reading, just do what I do and look at photos of autumn-ish things on Shutterstock. Like this:

Relaxing beauty!

Peaceful. Majestic.

Look at how happy she is! I bet she’s reading something whimsical as fuck!

Poor assigned reading . . . it got left behind.

Now, excuse me while I go to the used bookstore and buy books that won’t further my education.