You may want to skip past all of this commentary. Although, there is some explanation of my though process which may be beneficial or it may just be all too complicated which I understand if you choose to avoid.
<rant> I suppose I had a hard time making a list of more high brow (or what BYU may name high brow) literary things that inspired awe in me. I am including some YA lit thing in this list though because I am at a time in my life where 1) I need to get more into YA lit because that may be what is most important for my future career and 2) because of that I have been reading a lot of YA lit and it is what is most fresh. Also, because I think Dr Crowe would push for YA lit to be on a list.
While this list is definitely not comprehensive and definitely does not include some of the largest sources of awe in my life, I tried to focus solely on things that seemed monumental in my life. Those were really the only things that I could look back on without over analyzing and eventually taking off my list.
I am beginning to think that awe is a hard thing to study because it is so subjective and trying to look at these subjective things are starting to make them feel non existent to me because it has all become so distorted and overly abstract in my mind.
And when I go back to look at things of awe, I am getting the, as we have already noted, "well that't not that cool" feeling. That's why my much larger list kept dwindling.
Perhaps I am just overly critical of what deserves to be named AWE in my mind. And looking at my Good Reads reviews... I must be hard to please.
oh man </rant>
The List:
(being italicized to emphasize the incompleteness of this list)
Harry Potter Series: I think I have this series to thank for my love of reading. If I were to go back far enough, it would probably actually be Go Dog Go but the HP series is what first opened my eyes to the wonders and beauty of reading and what reading can hold.
Emily Dickinson "Because I could Not Stop for Death": In eighth grade we had a poetry unit where we had to memorize one short poem. I don' remember exactly what it was, but I loved this poem for some reason. Not only was it way longer than what everyone else memorized, but it was also probably the only poem that wasn't Shel Silverstein. There was something that created a bond between me and Emily Dickinson that makes her my go to girl every time I need a poem and that has helped to create bonds between her writing and my ideals.
Macbeth: This is probably a high honor and probably not the right location to place it, but I think I owe my career in English to Macbeth. It was after reading Macbeth that I changed my mind on Elementary teaching and shifted towards English. Lady Macbeth stands to be one of my favorite characters in literature. This may be owed more to my English teacher or probably all of the literature of that semester, but I am going to assign the awe to Macbeth even though it may be unfitting.
Ethan Frome: Let me just right out clarify that I hate this book. Okay, probably don't hate; but it does not have any where near the appreciation or favoritism that anything else has on this list. However, it did change my life. This book helped me get through a seriously hard time in my life. Something I still struggle with but it was after reading this that things just seemed to change in my mind. I will save the long story and the sap, but I owe a big change in my life to eye opened brought on by this great *hint the sarcasm* novel right here.
Emerson's "Self Reliance": This essay is sort of right there with Ethan Frome --except this time I don't hate it. I really do like Emerson, but it was through reading this that I was able to come to terms with some things in my life. Again with out all the explanation and the sap, this essay helped me see something in a different light and come to an understand about life and about being happy.
The Fault in Our Stars: I have a different sense of awe brought on by this novel. This was the first thing that I read for my Young Adult Literature class that I finally came to an agreement that YA lit is okay. Okay meaning it isn't a waste and full as I had originally thought. This was an important book for myself as a teacher to remove the reserve I had felt about young adult literature. I may be hitting this one hard, but I am seeing more as I study how to be a better teacher of reading and how we can better help our students that YA lit is really important and I owe the beginning of that respect to this book.
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