Sorry. That was a muscle spasm. Okay. Anyway, nothing measures up to the shit that I’ve had to read so far in English this year. Richard Wright just flew an airplane over my house and wrote out "RACISM IS WRONG" in large, fluffy white letters. I get the freaking point. The book we’re reading right now, Go Down, Moses, is a really horrible joke. I started to read it, but I didn’t have enough money to bail Boredom and Contrivance out of jail, so I’m just reading the Cliffnotes. (I figured I was destined for a "B" anyway in this class.)
In all fairness, while most of the stuff in English class is crap, there are three books that I did somewhat enjoy. Eighth grade: The Giver. Ninth grade: To Kill a Mockingbird (although, in all honesty, I don’t recall a damn thing about that book, so it probably wasn’t that great). Eleventh grade: Lord of the Flies. In fact, in English Usage/Writing class, the only book we had to read all semester was Lord of the Flies, and it was actually a decent book, which is why my English teacher, Caffeine McLiquor, will be spared from capital punishment once I am dictator of the world.
Anyway, not making exceptions the rule, teachers have typically mastered how to drive all the enjoyment out of reading with their psychoanalyzations and tests on every five pages and what-have-you. So I just forgot how enjoyable books could actually be.
The Exorcist and Helter Skelter. Those were good books. I didn’t have to read them for school, I didn’t have to write essays on them, all I had to do was enjoy them, and even that was optional because I could throw them in my fireplace if I really wanted to. (Although the library probably would’ve gotten mad.) They were both extraordinarily disturbing, unlike certain other nameless books which are pseudo-demi-quasi-wannabe disturbing.
I went to the library this afternoon and got a book that I can’t put down. It’s really great so far, and once I finish it, I’ll probably write another entry on it, because so far I love this book. I have not read a book for enjoyment in so long because I didn’t know that enjoyable books actually existed. I thought all "good" (snerk) books had to have a mission and make a statement and such, and thus by definition, had to be boring. But this one, while it probably has a million themes embedded in it, is actually not boring. I’m not lying. Really.