30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #11—Hunt Down Our Summer Reading

It might surprise some people that the first thing (besides snowcones) that David and I love to do just as soon as school gets out is go to the library and bring home heaps of books we want to read. Even I am surprised that after a semester of barely getting things read, barely getting things written, and barely getting through grading, we would have any desire at all in returning once again to the stacks so we could burying our noses into even more dusty old tomes.

But summer reading is very different than the required forced marches through a semester. This last semester, I took a class on Charles Dickens (this year was the celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth) and we read most of the books that Americans typically find "too long" to read. This is a shame, because some of his best works also happen to be his longest (he was writing in monthly installments over periods of several years, though, so you have to think them less as what we think of as novels today and more like serialized television dramas). Even though I loved these novels, it was tough! In one semester we read The Pickwick Papers (848 pages), A Christmas Carol (an easy 80 pages—go read it if you haven't already!), David Copperfield (950 pages), Bleak House (942 pages), Great Expectations (400 pages), Our Mutual Friend (880 pages), and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (248 pages—this one is a murder mystery that Dickens died before he could finish. That's right: a MURDER MYSTERY in which the author never got to say whodunnit. Who murdered Edwin Drood?! We'll never know!)—not to mention all of the journals, letters, and criticism that was part of the syllabus. Just these books alone consist of approximately 4,350 pages. And that's just one of my classes!

Summer reading is lovely, though, because there is no pressure, no writing assignments, and no classes that you have to wake up and go to. Even though most of my summer reading consists of books I am studying for my qualifying exams sometime next spring (instead of coursework this year, I just have to read a few hundred books and then take the scariest essay tests of my life sometime around March), they are books I have been looking forward to reading (the whole reason I am in school is so that I can read these books, after all).

So David and Hollie and I embarked on our hunt this afternoon. We took a half-hour walk to campus, and by the time we reached the library David and I were sweaty (it was 90 degrees today) and Hollie was asleep. The crisp air-conditioned air of the library shocked some life back into the three of us—I don't know what scholars did before electricity was invented. Hot, sweaty, sticky books.....I can't imagine.

With call numbers scrawled hastily on scrap pieces of paper, I sent Dave and Hollie to the top floor stacks while I hunted down Samuel Johnson and Fanny Burney and the rest of the 18th-century gang on the third floor. After a complicated check-out (a billion books, two separate graduate student cards, and a baby passed back and forth—that's enough to throw off any librarian on a drowsy Friday afternoon at the end of finals week), we tossed all the books to the bottom of the stroller and made our way home. It was a grim adventure at times: we were too hot, the books were heavy, and it was Hollie's nap time, but once we got home and took a look at our loot, we were satisfied.

Exhausted Baby Girl and a whole heap of books.

Dave quickly showered and then went to help some LDS missionaries teach a lesson to a person investigating the church (sometimes it's easier for investigators to ask questions to a regular old member of the local congregation, and it certainly is easier to visit a church you've never been to if you've already met someone who goes there), and on his way home he bought a bookshelf with some of our monthly "fun" money (our bookshelves are overcrowded, you see).

A few of our summer reading highlights:

• collections of essays by Dorothy Van Doren (last year, David and I obsessed over the Van Doren family. Charles Van Doren is the guy that Ralph Fiennes plays in Quiz Show, the professor involved in the tragic quiz show scandals of the '50s. Dorothy is Charles's mom, and we love her essays.)
• collections of essays M.F.K. Fisher (David wraps up library books every year for my birthday and "gifts me an author." Last year, he gifted me Richard Peck, and this year he gifted me Fisher, an essayist who is also a cook and a really rad woman. I can't wait to start reading!)
• Toni Morrison's Home (every summer I read a Toni Morrison book. This year, Dave's mom got me her newest book, which came out on the same day as my birthday. How great!)
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince (That's right: it's The Little Prince. In French. Wanna know why? Because David and I are going to learn French this summer! Someway, somehow. As an 18th-century scholar, I pretty much need to know some French. Most critics in my field don't even bother translating French passages into English. The least I can do is learn how to pronounce the words.)

One little bookshelf taking up some space beneath our Christmas presents from my photographer brother Will (fortunately, these pictures had not been packed in The Boxes).

Thing #10—Hunt Down [at least some of] Our Summer Reading = ACCOMPLISHED