Not teaching

Oof! There are some school related blog posts that have been brewing in my head for so long that they’re growing positively stale. No matter! I’m not writing them now, because I’m on blissful Spring Break! I’m not even going to write about immigration, which is the other topic On My Mind recently.  Nope, instead I’m going to write about some books, since I went on a book buying spree followed by a book reading orgy. For the last two days I’ve been reading like a…person who reads alot. And hasn’t been able to read much lately. etc.  A trip to my local B&N, which I still patronize even after one of the booksellers called me pretentious. (I was being pretentious, but I’m Working on It), yielded the following:1. The Time Traveler’s Wife2. Know-it-All3. The MayflowerLet’s start with The Time Traveler’s Wife. Before I say anything about it, I have to confess the following sins that I committed against it:1. I started it after spending several hours on a different book, and then I finished it the same day. Reading fatigue gave it a slightly tiresome patina towards the end.2. I looked up the ending of the book on Wikipedia months ago, before I even considered buying it. I’m sure that at the exact moment I did so, son1 felt a disturbance in the Force and cried without knowing why. More likely, he was shaken out of a programming-reverie and felt compelled to shake his fist at the general direction of Texas. Point being, I cheated, and it lessened my enjoyment of the book somewhat. I’m ashamed! ashamed!These circumstances aside, it’s a nice read.Regular readers here might have noticed by now that I often judge books by the following (unfair, shallow, inconsistent) criteria:1. The cover2. The title3. adventure4. scandal5. Actual literary merit.I will use that rubric here: The cover: meh. The juxtaposition (an awful word) of small maryjane shoes next to men’s dress shoes looks a bit pervy, but the book itself is not pervy. 2. The title is serviceable and descriptive, though it would be more accurate if it was called The Time Traveller and His Wife. It doesn’t live up to my favorite title of the past year (Brutal Journey). (sidenote: the author has a goofy sounding name, and that makes me feel more warmly towards the book).3/4. No real scandal, middling adventure. That is to say: engaging, but not seat of your pants. I must reiterate here that this is an entirely personal and very flawed metric. It was this precisely this kind of terrible judgement that caused me to undervalue David McCullough’s John Adams because I happened to be reading a dual biography of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I at around the same time. Adams, you’ll recall, was faithful to his wife, nice to his children and a loyal patriot. This bored me to tears in comparison to MQof Scots and E1 who plotted endlessly and, in the case of of Mary, was accused of bombing her husband. And YET, even I have to admit that only crap movies are made about the Tudors while HBO is airing a real corker about John Adams. I digress. Also, I think I may have made no other point other than establishing that judging the literary merit of a biography based on the entertainment value of the film adaptation is probably worse than judging the literary merit of any book based on how much scandal it contains.You probably shouldn’t pay attention to anything I say about books, but if you have a spare afternoon, I recommend The Time Traveler’s Wife.