Some Questions to Explore Reading Lives

 

Some Questions to Explore Reading Lives

How does your current book travel around with you? What exact part of your backpack, pocket, purse, or whatever is involved?

To my personal shame as a graduated English major, my book travels around in my front pocket. No, it isn’t a pocket Gospel of John, Constitution, Communist Manifesto, or an unpaid parking ticket. It’s a Google Pixel 4a that I purchased from www.BestBuy.com for $330.

Before you judge me, I’m not allowed to have a backpack at work. It clutters the common area too much. I could leave it in my car, but I’m not going to spend a single minute of my break trekking back and forth across a parking lot.

I read on my phone. Next question.

 

What are the regular sections of your day? What little reading appointments might be possible in there?

On days I work, I have time to read during my breakfast before I leave for work and during my lunch break. Other than that, I must wait until I get home in the evening. I have found audiobooks and podcasts very useful for the time I spend driving.

On days when I’m not working, I can read whenever I’m not doing homework or housework.

 

What are some possible places for reading? How might different places go with different types of reading? Like hat could you read on the bus, in bed, at the kitchen table, in school? What are the challenges about each of those places, and how do you deal with those challenges?

I read in my living room. The window behind my couch gives just the right amount of light to hit the page without turning it into a papery high-vis vest.

I can’t read in the car because I don’t like vehicular manslaughter. I don’t even read in the car as a passenger because I don’t like being motion sick.

I don’t really read in my bed because I’ll fall asleep. I like my couch. I will keep reading on my couch. When I’m at work I read at my lunch table. When I’m at home I read on my couch.

 

Who knows what you’re reading right now? Who do you sometimes think about telling about your book? Who gives you recommendations? Whose reading do you wonder about?

This class knows what I’m reading—New Kid. I think about telling the class about New Kid, but I’m not doing that right now because I’m saving that for the book club assignment.

I’m also re-reading Red by John Logan. It’s a play about Mark Rothko, and it’s brilliant. When I discover something new, I discuss it with my friend Augusto. We did a scene from this play for an acting class we took together, so it’s always fun to bring up new things when we notice them.

I’ve gotten most of my recent recommendations from Bearden Coleman—a cinema and writing professor at HBU. I wonder what he’s reading right now... 

What could you read if you wanted a real challenge, something you could understand, but that would make you work?

The A Song of Ice and Fire series by G.R.R. Martin. I’ve heard wonderful things about these novels, but they’re so long (and not even finished). The struggle would come from the hundreds of characters. When I read the Lord of the Rings, I constantly got the B-plot characters confused with each other. I can’t even imagine how many hybrid characters my brain would create if I actually read Martin’s work.