Reading rainbow

In middle school, a summer reading list was given every year.  If I remember correctly, you were supposed to read a couple books and then write a report on at least one.  I don't think anyone actually took up the paper that you wrote but it was made to be a very big deal, as if you were not accepted in to the 6th grade if you didn't do it. 

When it was mentioned among my friends, I complained and grumbled about it along with everyone else.  Secretly, I was so excited when I was given the list;  I adored reading and writing (as was noted in my last post).  I still have a few of the books and they truly did make an impact on me at that time.  One was about this girl who lived in a trailer with her parents and they kept having a God awful amount of kids that she had to help raise.  She fell in love with this guy with a weird P name like Percy or Parsal, and I don't remember if she saw him as a way out or if she thought she'd end up with the same life as her mother.  Either way, it was a good book at the time because it was all about choices and growing up and becoming a woman.  Relevant reading for a 13 year old girl.

Earlier this summer I posted about my summer reading goal.  Since then, a few books have not made the cut and got substituted for something better.  I've read Sex God, Traveling Mercies,  and On the Road, a few from the original list.  I hate to give up on a book or a movie because I have hope that it will redeem itself.  But I could not bring myself to finish Brideshead Revisited, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, or Daybook.  Brideshead was so thick with English dialogue that it just got cloudy and muddied for me.  I'm a simple person, I like simple sentences.  Jesus Wants read like a textbook.  And Daybook was over my head artsy fartsy.  While it was heavily about being a mother and Anne Truitt's normal day to day routine, it also talked about her seeing herself as an artist.  Some of it I found brilliant but overall I couldn't deal with what was going on with her and had to put it down.  (Maybe because of what's going on with my own self as an artist?)  It's kind of like watching a movie and imagining yourself as the lead actress: if you can't see yourself being the heroine or the damsel in distress that gets saved by Leonardo DiCaprio, you might as well quit while you're ahead.

I'm sure they are wonderful books but they did not interest me.  Maybe I'll pick them up another time when my mind isn't so busy.

There are a couple books left and, as I'm sure you mathematicians- or smartasses-out there noticed, I haven't been able to read a book every week like I'd hoped to.  However, I've swapped a couple books in place of the ones that I didn't finish.  Such as The Picture of Dorian Grey, Operating Instructions, and Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.  I have fallen in love with Anne Lamott completely.  I've soaked her up and breathed her in for a week.  Don't you hate when you've read all of your favorite authors' books and there are no more out yet? 

So that's the latest with the reading list.  As for another list, my sculpture count is up to 6.  I'm adding to my embroidery/people+things/tangible attachment series and hoping to have them exhibited at a local restaurant in November.