Summer Reading List

The newspaper published their recommended summer reading list on Sunday. In the middle of July. Also known as the middle of summer. Seems to me that, were I in charge, I would have published it in oh, I don' t know...May? There's like six more weeks of summer and they're just getting around to publishing a summer reading list.

Of course Oprah published hers early. She wants everyone to read Faulkner. Why, no one knows. Faulkner is literature designed to torture high school students. And to give us insight on the human condition. For example, after reading "As I Lay Dying" I gained insight into what it is like to slowly feel your soul ebb out of your body as the result of a wasting disease. No, not talking about the plight of the characters. Talking about the torture of reading the book. I wonder if someone from the Faulkner Foundation (if there is such a thing) contacted Oprah and offered her something irresistable to make Faulkner her summer reading choice. Either that or a publisher had excess stock and cut her a deal with 3 books bundled together. I just can't see someone choosing to read it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete illiterate. I like D.H. Lawrence. I like Zora Neale Hurston (now *there's* a summer reading list author). I like lots of the classics - modern or ancient. I just don't like Faulkner. Maybe it's because I was the only person in my class who admitted that they didn't figure out that the girl got pregnant "the first time they picked on down the row". All I knew was after many torturous pages somehow she was looking for an illegal abortion and I hadn't realized she was pregnant. I like books that make sense. Faulkner doesn't make sense.

So I will keep to my varied reading diet of mysteries, science fiction, the occasional classic and the occasional non-fiction book (I'm currently reading "Joy at Work" -- highly recommended) and let Oprah and her devotees seek to fill their minds with streams of Faulkner's consciousness.

I think I know who's going to have a better time.