When you're a teacher, May is both the shortest and the longest month. As the school year wraps up, all your deadlines loom large and student behavior degenerates. The days drag by in an endless cycle of paper airplanes and increasingly less funny pranks (I got a dead wasp on my chair this year). It feels like June, with its promise of lazy summer afternoons, will never arrive. At the same time, when you look back on everything that's happened during the school year, it feels impossible that it's almost over already. The days are slow but the months are fast. It defies the rules of time.
My reading during the month of May didn't exactly help time fly by. I tackled two of the classics on my list that I suspected I wouldn't enjoy, and unfortunately, I was right. On the Road and Absalom, Absalom! are probably two of the worst classics I have ever read, and I had the misfortune of trying them both in the same month. I did enjoy some of the other books I picked up, but I ended up spending the majority of my time on things I didn't like. On the bright side, the overall amount of reading I got done exceeded what I was expecting. Here's the breakdown:
About 125 pages of Les Misérables
My least favorites of the month were definitely On the Road and Absalom, Absalom!, which were not at all to my tastes and included a lot of troubling content. I found myself struggling a lot with how much racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. to excuse based on the time period the books were written in. You have to do this a lot when you read classics; a lot of older books have passages that haven't aged well. These two in particular, however, were felt mean spirited and were difficult to get through. I don't think I'll be trying anything by those authors again anytime soon.
My favorite read of the month by far was Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. This middle grades contemporary novel handled discussions of police violence in an appropriate and meaningful way. It was refreshing to read something so thoughtful and beautiful after suffering through the virulent racism of Absalom, Absalom!.
June is my birthday month, and as a gift to myself, I'm going to try and pick up some classics that I think I will actually enjoy. There's not much left on my Classics Club list that I'm really excited about, but I'm going to take my best guess at what I will like the most from the books that remain. My plan is:
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
At least two books chosen from my owned-not-read list based on my mood
At least 100 pages of Les Misérables
As my summer break begins in early June, I will have more time to read this month. I'm hoping to read what I have planned and then maybe squish in another classic. I'm getting so close to the end of my Classics Club challenge that I'm starting to get excited about finally finishing! I do have some tough reads left before I get there though. Hopefully I'll end up liking at least some of it.
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