The Curious Incident of the Teenaged Girl Who Was Finally Assigned Another Book She Enjoys

Up until middle school, I was an avid reader. In fact, my mother would often come into my room late at night and tell me to stop reading and go to bed. Once I hit seventh grade, though, all of that changed thanks to a little thing called Accelerated Reading. Thanks to "AR," reading became nothing more than a task, something I had to do for a grade. It wasn't fun anymore, and I couldn't just read whatever I wanted; I had a 12.9 reading level and wasn't allowed to choose books that were below a 7 or 8, and those were harder to find in the school library than you'd think. (It was comprised largely of picture books.) So, I was left to read books that generally only mildly interested me, and I only read those so I could pass the AR tests we were forced to take for an English grade. The whole system totally destroyed my interest in reading, and it wasn't until high school that I had even a remote interest in it again.

We read some good books in Mr. Klassen's class, although I never quite fell in love with any of them. I do have him to thank, though, for my ability and desire to look deeper within a text and find hidden meanings and subtexts, which likely led to my high AP Language test score. In sophomore year, I was, once again, forced to read books I didn't want to read. Mr. Hardcastle (or as the girls this year call him, "Hotcastle," for some reason) assigned us a different novel every month, and after our three or four weeks of reading were up, we were to write an essay or report on the novel. I, of course, had trouble with this, and, needless to say, I ended up with a terrible grade. However, the last book I read that year was Albert Camus' The Stranger, and it was the first book I'd read that year (excluding the one he'd assigned for the summer, All Quiet on the Western Front) that I actually finished. I suppose it's a good thing, too, because instead of writing a report, we had to talk to him one-on-one about the books we'd read, and if I hadn't read it, I'd have been (for lack of a better word) screwed. For some reason, that was the first book I'd read in a long time that could actually hook me. You'd think it might be the association with The Cure's "Killing an Arab," but surprisingly, it took me a while to figure that one out. I've come to think that maybe, despite the fact that Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is my favorite book of all time, I enjoy very blunt, thoughtful books with an emphasis on human thoughts and emotions. I guess that could also explain why I like The Picture of Dorian Gray so much, too, but I digress.

I've read plenty of books since then, but none of them have been able to really hold my interest-- until now. This year, one of the first books I was assigned was Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and as soon as I opened it, I was intrigued. I've never read a book that was so clearly well thought-out and carefully-written, and never before has a book inspired me so much to want to write one of my own (which has been a dream of mine ever since I was six or so). It feels good to want to read again! Of course, I've been trained never to read without annotating, so I always read with a pen in hand, but it really is good to finally be interested in an actual book again. As I said, I can only assume that the reason I enjoy this book so much is that it's rather blunt and focuses more on the human thought process and emotions than on flowery language. It's funny, though; in my own writing, I prefer to use more figurative language, and I prefer to write from a third person point-of-view, whereas both of these books are written in first person.

My point? I don't know that I really have one. All I know is that to force a student to read a book he or she has no interest in, and to make them do it solely for a grade and not for their own enjoyment, does more harm than good. For years, I was unable to enjoy something I was once so passionate about, and now, I've finally found another book I'm excited to read, and I hope this isn't the last time it happens.