Randomness and Readering

I am amazed, every day, by how little I know.

I thought I'd be pretty good at this teaching gig -- and I am good at the teaching part of it. What I'm struggling with (today) is the sheer amount of detail. Kids going out of class, kids coming in. Report cards and marking and lessons and homework and whose program needs to be modified in what way in order to please absolutely everyone.

That's why I so enjoy my reading time. It's time in which I can do only one thing. My attention is not pulled thirty-eleven ways from Sunday, and no one is shouting for my attention.

I'm edging up on 200 books, which is my personal goal for the year 2008 (isn't that crazy? If I was capable of math I'd totally figure out how many books a week that is), and because I really do want to reach this random and arbitrary goal I'm reading as fast as I can.

Also, I'm reading very, very short books.

Last night I started the sixth book in Margaret Peterson Haddix's "Among the Hidden" series. It's really good young adult stuff: about a world in which third children are illegal, their existence not recognized by the authorities, forced to hide their entire lives. The author has expanded the series to include other characters, each one an illegal third child (a "shadow child") and each with their own background and story.

I take comfort in books because reading is something that I am, without a shadow of a doubt, very very good at. No one can accuse me of not doing my reading properly. I do not wake in the night afraid that I have made a critical error in my reading and that everyone I respect will now think less of me. Reading belongs to me in a way that no other activity in my life does.

And that, on days like today, is the one thing that keeps me going.