Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 12,802 as of 7:30am on Tuesday, mostly journaling again though I wrote on another blog and also on The New York Times.

Revised novel EMD word count holding steady: 74,883

Local drama! It has come out that one of our neighbors whose house rents by the day has built two structures in his back yard with concrete footings, and a concrete walkway along the house without permits. Another neighbor who is trying to restore a wetland feels bad because his plans require inspections that may reveal the un-permitted work of that rental. It would be sad except that the neighbor who built without permits or inspections has done this before. The owner doesn’t believe in paying taxes or getting permits unless he’s caught. He pretty much yelled that at me a dozen years ago. It seems that attitude has not improved. 

He’s caught. 

More local Drama. It seems our bathroom window obscure glass is not so obscure. I have put up a curtain.

And I am writing a review of the nonfiction I finished.

A friend expressed her frustration as a student about reading assignments. “I’m a slow reader and rarely could I finish an assigned novel even once through, knowing that some analysis would be expected. It took a bit of the pleasure away from reading, even though I know that wasn’t the intent of the professor.”

Yours is a very common concern. I tried hard to address it. Over the two terms I offered students multiple strategies for both reading and note-taking. The goal was for them to discover a method that worked for them, a way to enjoy and recall the text so that they could talk about it. I am not a fast reader myself, much slower than is average for someone with my education, though I can skim. My “fast” readers were usually not reading at all, but skimming. They read only for content and missed the art, missing the music of the language because they often couldn’t (or wouldn’t) slow down to hear and enjoy it.  

Some books I read aloud in class, just the beginning or every other chapter.* When we read Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, each student chose a short story (1-2 pages) to read aloud and I read all the rest. Sometimes hearing the novel, hearing the voice of the book is enough to catch interest. The reader becomes invested. We focused on the poetry of Mango Street, and of how our understanding of characters changed—the girl who seems so selfish and superficial rides with a dying young man to the hospital, a man she doesn’t even know but whom she grieves for. We find there is more to her than the careless ambition we first recognize. 

* I will always remember the girl who came to school excited about a book. I had read the first chapter of Dorris’s A Yellow Raft in Blue Water on Thursday and then she was home sick over Friday and the weekend. Her family went off without her and the cable was out so she picked up the book and read to the end. She said she couldn’t stop. She said she had never read a book all the way through. She was college bound and smart, but this was the first assigned book with a person of color and women narrators and women at the heart of the story. That book often turned students around (though I cannot talk about Dorris). It was the boys who wanted to come back and give it a testimonial. In anonymous reviews it was rare for a student to give it less than top marks. 

The sky is pouring rain and so we may not get our walk till later perhaps.