One of my quirkier reading habits is that I enjoy re-reading certain books during certain seasons. 100 Years of Solitude is a fall book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is for spring, and I like to pick up some Ann Patchett books in the summertime. Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love is another summer book, and I usually get a hankering for Tim Gautreaux in the winter.
But my favorite seasonal read is Hamlet, which I weirdly associate with springtime. Or perhaps not so weirdly. In high school Brit Lit, Macbeth was the winter Shakespeare, and Hamlet came around in March.
A few years later, when I found myself teaching 12th grade English at the ripe old age of 22, I held to the pattern. I had so much fun teaching Hamlet that year that now, it always makes me think of spring.*
Does anyone else do the "a book for all seasons" thing?
__________________
*One of my most vivid memories of teaching it was holding a press conference from Elsinore, where I had a few students play the roles of the principal characters, and the rest pretended to be the paparazzi. Good times at Wooddale High.
Dear reader, life is too short for crap books.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
For me I have authors for certain seasons. J.D. Salinger must be read in the fall (especially if you're living in NYC). Graham Greene must be read in the winter; you won't get that same sense of melancholy from his stories if you're reading it on a bright, summer day.
Post a Comment