A "Good" Book

I don't know how many of you know this, but I only attended high school for about six weeks. I was having a lot of health and family problems at the time. You can't exactly say I ran away from home at fifteen, because my mother helped me pack and drove me out of town. She dropped me off with my dearly beloved aunt, who was only three years older than I was.

After that life was all about work. I lied about my age and got my first job, then my second, then my third. I manage to help with my share of the rent and purchase progressively better vehicles. At 17, I studied and passed my GED. Over the years I've taken a few college courses, and received a 'diploma' in computerized accounting from a commercial college.

I have never considered myself a stupid or unintelligent person. However, there has always been this barrier between what others learned and what I did. Oddly, it seems to revolve around books.

It's odd because my one true addiction is reading. However, I don't read what you might consider good books. Many times in my life I've actually had people refer to my book preferences as "trash" or "smut". My daughters call them porn - and sometimes they are not far from right. :)

I have always read romance of one sort or another. I spend a few years emerged in a sub genre and tire myself out; so I try another one. I've read historical, modern, Christan, suspense, paranormal, and erotica. All within the genre Romance. I can easily read a 300 page book every day - and no, there are no pictures and the type is normal size.

But what I've never read were the books everyone else was forced to read in high school and college. I've never heard them discussed or debated what they meant. And other than Steve's family, I don't tend to hang around a lot of people who are highly educated. Regardless, it is amazing how often a references is made to a book or play while I'm with a group of people and everyone gets it; except me.

I was honestly thinking of making a list of books I should have read and trying to read one a month or something. Just to catch up. Well, I was considering it until this last weekend.

My younger daughter is in her third year at university and called me Friday night near tears. Before I go any further, I have to tell you that she HATES reading. It's not even that she hates it as much as it is really hard for her. She can read for an hour and only get through 8-10 pages. She's been this way all of her life and this has been one of her toughest challenges in school. While told months ago a book report would be due this week, she didn't bother buying one of the books she had to choose from. Her room mate took the same class last semester and just purchased the condensed version to write his essay off of. He made an A.

With time getting shorter and shorter, she went online to buy the condensed version to find out none of the books she could choose from were available. A desperate search throughout town yielded not a single copy of any of the actual books. I told her to call the bookstores in Austin and if she found a copy I would pick it up for her. She found one. I picked it up. It was almost 300 pages so I offered to read it for her and email her a summary from which she could write her essay. I tried to read it all day Saturday and Sunday. I was up until 2:00 AM trying to read it. It was a fascinating documentary on slavery in America. But it wasn't a story. There was no flow. There was information, after fact, topped by conjecture. I found out quickly I could not read while the TV was on. While Will was awake.

I reread the first page of the Preface six times before I felt like I had actually read it. By the time I went to bed Sunday night I had only finished 28 pages! There was no WAY I would finish the book in time. And now I was worried about retaining enough of the information to be able to consolidate it. But I didn't want to let my daughter down, so I went on line and paid $15.95 for a large essay written by someone else. One she could adapt to fit her needs. And I only feel a little bad about doing it.

What really bothers me is the loss of my dream to read "good" books that I missed by skipping the traditional high school and college experience. For after my battle last weekend I'm pretty sure it's a no-go for me.

Unless they have condensed versions.