You're Testing...

...I'm reading, but I can't read in here with you because this new book (the post Tiny Beautiful Things book) is just as much of a dagger.  And the fact that someone else's words can evoke such emotion in me (and millions of others) is mind blowing.  Someone somewhere decided to think something, write that something down, and put it out into the world.  If that isn't beautiful, what is?  So then my brain scuffles over to those of you - yes, you - reading this blog who don't read IRL.  More importantly, what about those of you who don't even read this blog let alone books.  How can you possibly expect to be whole and real and true and good?

A recent study (it was published in Time so insert credibility here) found that the brain does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life.  The same neurological regions are stimulated.  WHAT?  The study goes further and states, "Individuals who frequently read fiction seem better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective." So basically...reading great literature enlarges and improves us as HUMAN BEINGS.

Shut the front door.

And some of you don't read.

That desperately makes my heart ache - like in a visceral way.  Have you never found yourself so immersed in a book that the entire world falls away?  Have you never found yourself on the pages of someone else's writing and look around to see who's been watching you because how else would that author have known...known how you feel and what you think?  Have you never been cracked open with a sentence that so deeply resonates with what you believe that you get in your car, drive to the nearest bookseller and buy out their inventory so you can hand out the book like candy on Halloween night? (Not that I've done that...wink wink.)

My God.  READ.

You eat, don't you?

You pee, don't you?

You breathe, don't you?

As teachers we make you read such crap, right?  Why do you think you're told to just read in this class?  And how bone rattling to know some of you don't even do that?

If you take nothing else from this class as you move forward into your senior year and adulthood and beyond (besides don't be an a-hole), well...read.  So you won't be an a-hole.

Take me to the bookstore.  I'll show you the way...it's the first step in a journey that will change you for good.

DFTBA.

xoxo