This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .  Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass

So I’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with modern life. You may have noticed it too. We’re operating at an inhuman pace, distrustful of establishment and each other, using technology as a very effective numbing agent, desperately trying to bring ourselves back into alignment with our most essential human selves.

I tend to think reading is the way back. Can it be so simple?

Good writers invite us to ask the right questions, and sometimes it just takes a little bit of background or inspiration to help us excavate those answers for ourselves. Perhaps in the same way that those writers were trying to answer them by writing the books in the first place.

I think knowledge and freedom of thought are linked. I think connection to others and connection to ourselves are linked. I think books make plain what we already believe, and in a way that lights up our lives. Especially when we’re still in the process of learning how to be human (ahem, teenagers). (Ok, fine, everybody.) They are coded archetypal structures that teach us who we are and how the world works, that humanize what is Other, that improve our levels of empathy. And that are an absolute gosh-darn delight.

Whether you’re here as a teacher/educator or (even better!) as an adult looking to read or reread one of the great works of literature with us, let this space be a landing pad for all things thoughtful, delightful, and human.

Some rules of thumb:

• All opinions are valid… if you can back them up with textual evidence. I am an English teacher, after all.
• It’s the thinking that matters, not the speed or ease of getting there. All reading levels welcome.
• And the one that really matters, as Kurt Vonnegut would say: Babies– you’ve got to be kind.

So pull up a comfy chair, put yourself a cup of tea or something stronger, and let’s get in touch with our inner Wild Child . . . one book at a time.

Further reading: The Novel Cure