Summary of A Summer of Reading

     This summer I read four books, three for this class and one for the all school read.  Of the three AP Lit. books, I enjoyed How To Read Literature Like A Professor the most.  I found it entertaining and funny at times which was certainly needed as the topic could have been made incredibly boring very easily.  My second favorite of the AP Lit. books was Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  I thought it was okay as the writing was very dense and wordy but also at times brilliantly descriptive.  The story was decent and at times compelled me to read onward.  My least favorite of the AP Lit. books was The Thing Around Your Neck.  My reasons for this are extensive but in short, it lacked cliff hangers, it was disjointed and the characters and stories weren't memorable.

     While I didn't read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson for AP Lit. I thought I would share my thoughts on it to wrap up my summer of reading.  Of the four books I read this summer, A Walk in the Woods was by far my favorite.  This is for several reasons.  First off, it is about the outdoors, a topic that I thoroughly enjoy.  Second, the book had many comical moments which made the book even more enjoyable.  Third, it was non-fiction which always adds enjoyment for me as I enjoy hearing stories that actually happened.  Fourth, it was well researched as Bryson didn't simply recount his journey along the Appalachian Trail.  He added in historical facts about the towns he passed and the trail itself.  He also added hilarious commentary about some of the people in the towns he passed and the sad state of some of the towns.  Overall, it was an enjoyable read and I'm glad it was a part of my summer of reading.

I Didn't Like The Thing Around Your Neck

     As the title indicates, I truly didn't like this book.  I had several problems with it.  First off, the short stories didn't have a good ending.  It seemed that every single story had a random, abrupt ending that didn't bring closure to the story.  If this effect of brief snapshots with abrupt endings was the authors intent, then she did a good job at it but I didn't enjoy it.

     My second problem with the book was the fact that it was short stories.  I don't dislike short stories but this collection didn't do it for me.  They didn't have much of a connection to each other and at times were difficult to follow.  They also weren't very memorable to me as I can only recall one or two of the stories and only a few character names despite having read the book recently.

     Something that I and I think many readers enjoy is a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter that makes the reader hungry for more and encourages the reader to continue reading.  This book lacked cliff hangers that would be answered in the next chapter because the next chapter was a new story with new characters.  This effect made the book difficult to read towards the middle and the end because I wasn't encouraged to read onward.

     Another enjoyable aspect to literature that this book lacked was getting to know the charterers.  At the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, one of my favorite books, I felt that I knew Cheif Bromden, McMurphy, Cheswick, Nurse Ratched, Harding and all the rest of the characters very well. I could relate to them on many levels and this made the novel very enjoyable.  In The Thing Around Your Neck, I wasn't able to relate or get to know any of the characters as they were on a constant ferries wheel of change and weren't written all that memorably to begin with.

     Despite my bashing of this book, I don't think Adichie is a bad author.  In fact, she writes very well in flashes throughout The Thing Around Your Neck.  I think if she expanded on the idea of one of her short stories and made it into a novel that had a coherent beginning, middle and end, with cliff hangers and relatable memorable characters, then she would write a fantastic novel.  I had the opportunity to talk with some of my classmates on the senior retreat about this book and I found my response to the book to be a common response amongst the five or so people I spoke with about the book.

How To Read Literature Like A Professor So Far

I am well into Thomas C. Foster's book about reading literature smarter and like a professor and thus far I have enjoyed it.  When I first picked up the book and read the title I thought it would be the worst thing I had ever read.  I assumed it to be a long boring examination of reading techniques and other fancy, old-fashioned garbage written by some old geezer.  I was wrong however as the book has been enjoyable as Foster gives readers enough humor to keep them going through a subject that could be made excruciatingly boring very quickly.  In addition to his humor, Foster's ideas and thoughts about reading literature have been interesting to me.  I have found myself relating to his writing on many levels whether it be through his mention of a work I have read or an idea about said work that I too thought of or discussed in a previous English class.  I still have a bit to go in his "lively and entertaining guide" and I hope it continues to be as enjoyable as it has been.