Revisiting Required Reading

As Wendy pointed out yesterday, this week we’re talking about, simply, what we’re reading.

Being that I was currently in-between books, I realized that this was the perfect time to pull out from my to-be-read pile the water-swollen, yellow-paged, twenty-five cent copy of Willa Cather’s My Antonia that I recently found at a used book sale. It was time for my long-anticipated re-read.


The last time I read it? In 11th grade. When it was assigned English class reading. I remember looking at the cover (a barren field) with disgust, thinking it looked even more boring that the books we’d already had to read that year...and would this torture of reading the classics ever end?

Then I started reading it. And the most amazing thing happened. I liked it. A lot. Soon, I loved it. To the point that for the first time ever, I read beyond what was assigned. And finished well pretty quickly because I could not stop reading.

Reading such quotes now as, “No romantic novel written in America, by man or woman, is half so beautiful as My Antonia,” [H. L. Mencken], I see the sparks of my own interest in reading and writing romance.

And so how is it standing up to my first read? Well, I’m still in the first half, but I think it’s fair to say I've already jumped ahead to loving it again.

So now I’m turning the tables to you. What’s an assigned reading book that you’ve loved? And if some time has passed, what was your experience with a re-read?

Tina

Tina Ferraro
The ABC’s of Kissing Boys, 2010 Rita® Finalist
How to Hook a Hottie, 2009 Rita® Finalist
Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress
www.tinaferraro.com