Jealous

It's the end of the semester, and there are some major projects going on here at Uni.  While working in the library I see groups of students sitting around and discussing/studying Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.  Earlier in the semester I saw students toiling over (and gagging over) Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.  Students are also working on Banned Books Projects, reading texts of their own choosing.  I've seen Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird among others.

 All I can think is, how lucky they are.

How lucky they are to be discovering these great works for the first time!  I remember the first time I read each of those novels, and they changed by life.  Before those, I had read Christopher Pike, Paul Zindel, and Roald Dahl...lots AND lots of all three.  They kind of WERE my reading life.  And, there is nothing wrong with these three great YA authors and others like them.  They are fantastic, entertaining, and made me that covert reader with the books in my lap during class.  But, Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Shelley, Dickens, Bronte, Wharton...they are the ones that sent my literary heart through the roof, and kept it in the clouds of epic words, devastating romances, and gritty realism, and may my heart never find its way back down to the dark doldrums of life without great classics.

*sigh*  I think I need to discover a new classic over break.  You know what?  I've never...read...Jane Eyre.  I know.  I can't believe it either.  I think I know my new assignment for this holiday.  Maybe if a classics kindred spirit sees me reading that for the first time while having a coffee break in the 'Bucks, they'll be jealous of me.

P.S.  Want the tee-shirts I've "advertised"?  Check out Litographs:Books on T-Shirts.  You won't be sorry.  Well, your bank account probably will be, but not you!