summer reading and it's difficulties
"No longer will I ask the sky / Why I can't relate to it / Why am I afraid of it / Why do I fear spreading out my wings?" - Jakeneutron in "Understand the Sky"
for me, the summer is coming to a close... yet i haven't gotten much reading done. not as much as i'd like, at least. i've either been working or relaxing. my definition of relaxing is simply just doomscrolling instagram as a brainbreak. i've used my brain a lot, so i just want to let go.
i think i've also begun to associate reading and books to be brain work. from reading fiction and analyzing it to going through psychology research talking about social media and echo chambers in terms of politics and conspiracy theories, i have read for school and nothing more. i was a huge reader up until sophomore year of high school. i read for fun a lot and sometimes had 0 screentime because i spent the day reading.
sophomore year is what kinda ruined fiction for me. i had never really had any interest in non-fiction, so it kinda left me with nothing. sophomore year ruined fiction for me because it was the year i transferred, and the school i transferred to had an assigned summer reading that the first few weeks were based off of. i was never informed of this until the first day of school. my teacher told me, "your counselor should have informed you and given you the summer reading packet!" in which she did not.
so now, i was given 2 weeks to read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. i asked for a 3rd. she allowed it. had i read it without doing anything else, i would have read it all. she required we annotated every page, highlighted, and gave a 3 sentence summary of every chapter. in 3 weeks, i had barely done half the book. in 3 months, everyone had already finished the book. in those 3 weeks time, i was also required to join in on the discussions. i was not given an exemption because, "it's an honors class. you need to participate." shortly after, we read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. i didn't really like the book. not because oh it was school assigned, it just... wasn't my thing. to me, it didn't make sense half the time. having pop quizzes didn't make it better either. we didn't do anything else with it, other than the occasional discussion, but it was more relaxed and summary based than opinion based like tkam was.
then came along Something Wicked This Way Comes. Ray Bradbury is among some of my favorite authors. i'd loved reading Fahrenheit 451 back in 8th grade. i had read some of his other stories. loved them! reading swtwc just made me so violently unmotivated to do anything. my teacher assigned so much. tests, quizzes, pop quizzes, projects, you name it. she made us analyze every tiny bit of the book, but if your analysis wasn't what she was thinking then it was wrong.
i was, however, reading some of my own books at the time. i had begun Solitare, This Winter, Nick & Charlie, Radio Silence, and I Was Born for This all by Alice Oseman. i had been keeping up with Heartstopper around this time and loved Oseman's work (still do!), but as i got more and more burnt out over the year... as soon as i finishes iwbft, i stopped reading for leasure. i still, to this day, have yet to read Loveless. it's in my bookshelf!!!
just a cute little warning, the next paragraph or two will have mentions of sm*t and sexual content.
junior year came around, didn't read. didn't wanna read. though, my history class had required a book for us to read, "The Woman They Could Not Silence" by Kate Moore. i loved her book on the radium girls back in 7th grade. again, non-fiction isn't really my cup of tea, but if it seems interesting, i'll like it. i slowly entered back into reading. i compiled a list of books i wanted to read. "Him" by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kenedy was the first one i started with. did i know it was going to be gay hockey smut? absolutely not. i still fell in love with ryan and jamie's story.
it seems like a cliché "he turned him gay" trope, but Bowen and Kennedy pull it off well in my opinion (the things that happened that Wesley did at camp was actually crazy bro, he deserved to feel bad about it in my opinion). the whole book isn't about sex, either. it actually discusses their love lives, their careers, their future. ryan goes on to ontario for pro hockey, and jamie follows him, teaching hockey to younger kids. i have read him and us, but i haven't read epic yet. i'm reading good boy purely because of jamie and ryan getting married. i really do not care about blake and whatever jamie's sister's name is. like jessica or something. her gay best friend, dyson, intrigued me though. imagine finding out your childhood crush could have liked you as he is marrying another man. literally devistating.
i had noticed i ate these books up (other than good boy i lost interest so quick) that i realized what was my cup of tea: queer romance. i wanted to find a book about people like me. suddenly though, my reading declined, crashed even. around these times, my school assigned reading was going up. i had to read a bunch of articles and research papers and write essays on them. i enjoy writing, i really do, but there was a lot.
this summer, i had hoped to read just a tiny bit. i hadn't even picked up one book to read. i work 4 days a week for 8 hours and the 3 i have off, i'm doing something at home or i'm doomscrolling instagram for my previously mentioned "brain break." so now, with the little time i have, i'm gonna try to read "The City We Became" by N.K. Jemisin. it was a book i picked up because my school was handing out free books because no one checked them out in like... for ever.
i picked this book up because the cover design is immaculate. i'm not one who looks for awards or compliments from other authors. that doesn't matter to me. if i look at a book, the cover art and blurb have to appeal to me. both sure did keep my eye. it has three different characters from this blurb: a grad student who suddenly gains amnesia, an art director looking at graffiti, and a politician/mother. i found it rather interesting they put politician before mother, since most would put mother first. not because it defines who they are, but because their kids are more important to her than their job. anyone would catch a grenade for their kids, but would they for where they work? i feel as though her story is gonna be she focuses too much on her job but discovers what her kids are doing and tries to connect with them and, in the process, connect with the people whom she is representing and actually make NYC a better place. i am excited to see whatever this story has to offer, and i might post a review of it (or just a dump of my thoughts while reading, who knows).