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Books I Read 2/26/2012 8:48:17 PM
Grade six was a significant year for me. It was during this time that I am made aware of things about literature. I know that I can write but writing about what? Most of the prior years were spent declaiming. I know I declaimed “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and other poems I memories. But this year, I had a teacher who exposed us to literature. He made us memorize snippets of poetry. He explained what a poem meant. He was a good teacher. Here, I learned about Robert Frost and the wonderful poems he wrote. I could not recall any of his poems, now. But I let his language flow through my lips like a creamy pie too sweet and melancholic not to notice. This was the time I learned about “Jabberwocky”, a poem I loved so well, I can recite the first two stanzas of it. And I can declaim it as if I understood every little silly word. We also had a laboratory to listen to professionals declaim the poems we learned in class.
When high school came, “Beowulf” was my first encounter into the world of literature. And then Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” immediately followed. I did not understand much about them because the language they used was old English. Our teacher was very accomplished but unfortunately, her students were not. She was patient enough that it helped us understand the nuances of what the prose or poem entailed. We had projects, though but it did not require us to declaim it. Even though we had difficulty in studying these classics, this was much better than not studying it at all. Public education would not have provided us with these rudiments.
When I reached my third and fourth years in high school, we were required to write sonnets and haikus. We were told to follow Shakespeare’s poem, and we did. It was a thrill to write my first sonnet. It was very memorable to memorize and declaim it, although I could not recall now how it went. I remembered that Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”. It was a beautiful poem, indeed.
I’ve written a lot of poems by then. They were all stashed in my trunk. Not only poems but I also stashed away essays and letters. Yes, letter. I wrote long letters and I copied them because I though that they could become important one day. Here, too, I began writing novels but my novels did not amount to much. Perhaps, I thought about a story but I could only write up to four chapters at the most. Sometimes, I had stories in my head and they were formed stories but I could not sit down and write it down.
Then in college, we learned about saints and political figures that influenced Western Thought. We argued each case such as St. Augustine’s and the other Greek classics such as Plato and Aristotle. We also discussed plays by Plautus and the Japanese Noh Plays. In my literature class, we discussed Jane Austen. We knew that Jane Austen wrote several books such as “Mansfield Park” and “Sense and Sensibilities” but only touched upon “Pride and Prejudice”. Jane Austen did not interest me a whole deal when I was in college. But I gained respect for her when I saw the films about her novels.
But after college, where there were no more the rudiments of reading novels, political treaties, essays and the like, I began my healthy appreciation of things I really wanted to read. I know I read about the real life of Bethune and other authors when I was young. But the novels, political and economic treaties were more enjoyable. “Tender is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald was my favorite. This was the novel I try to pattern my novels after. I did not enjoy “The Great Gatsby” though, because it was always mentioned and it becomes tiring. For Hemmingway, I only read “For Whom the Bells Toll”, even though he wrote “The Sun also Rises” and “The Old Man and the Sea”. “The Grapes of Wrath” was another. There were also political and economic treaties I read such as “The Secrets of the Temple” and Kennedy’s “Rise and Fall of Great Powers”. I also read biographies about the Russian monarchs’ Peter the Great and the Tsarina Catherine the Great.
Anne Rice was the most enjoyable. It seemed that the Vampire Chronicles was her most famous. But the most frightful and big novel I encountered was “The Witching Hour”. It was about a family of witches who spawned a monster called Lasher. I was on a drive in provincial California and in one old bookstore, I found the book. It intrigued me and subsequently, I read it every night with my hair standing up and my spine shivering with fright.
Oh what a thrill to go through these books. Of course, I read a whole lot more books such as “Atlas Shrugged” and “Steve Jobs”. Everyone on those books was as memorable as can be. I can only hope that I could be one of those great writers who wrote those great books. If only I could be.
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