Reflection on Reading Responses

To tell you the honest truth, I used to HATE doing reading responses in school. It meant I would have to do an extra step and work to remember what happened and to vomit up something on a page. My responses were the usual "I like this story because it was funny." or "This story was crappy because I didn't understand". I never dug deeper into why I thought something was funny or sad or crappy. In high school, I wasn't really invited to think so. As long as I wrote something I received a mark. The longer I seemed to write what I thought was a "good enough" response, the higher the mark I got. I was happy. But not anymore.

I am addicted to reading responses now because of Russ Hunt's courses. I've learned something about myself- I was lazy, now I'm revived. I use to read stories with not much thought going through my mind about relationships with characters, why something believed something or acted in a way they did, or listening to the voice or narrator of the story and thinking about why they thought this particular story was important to share.

For example, when I read "Catcher in the Rye" I felt lost in parts. I still do. Who is this character? I thought it was just a snobby rich kid who thought he was invincible. It's been years since I read the book and I now wonder if I reread it and put thought into the story, plot, voice, and audience, I would understand the book better? Who knows? Maybe I should find out.

I am responding about my love-hate relationship with reading responses after my discovery of John McPhee's sense of humour in both his articles "Whiff" and "Land of the Diesel Bear". In both articles he barely hints a bit of sarcasm towards the George Bush Administration. If you didn't read the articles with thought or clarity, you probably would have missed them and just kept right on reading. I'm glad I didn't do so. I got a good laugh out of McPhee's thoughts on "Bush's possible failures". Read the articles, you'll see what I mean. Don't forget to read between the lines- we aren't in high school anymore.