What’s Your Favorite Story About Reading?
When I was attending Occidental College, it felt like I spent most of my senior year with Willa Cather. Never mind that she was a dead author. It’s more that her novels were the focus of my senior thesis and I spent a lot of time reading her words. Of all Cather’s works, My Antonia will always be my favorite for three reasons:
I’m a sucker for books with settings that are just as important as the main characters. Without the prairie, there is no My Antonia.
I’ve always had an affinity for pioneer women and the wild lands where they lived. Maybe it’s just a preference, like preferring chocolate ice cream over vanilla. Perhaps it comes from reading all the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a little girl. Or, maybe (and this is the one I’d like to believe) I was a badass pioneer in another life!
Cather’s writing is sparse and clear, descriptive, but never overwritten. To me, that’s a marvel—creating images and characters in my mind that are vivid with the least words possible.
Two things happened as my thesis due date loomed: First, I got really sick. Yeah for the obligatory college case of mono. Second, it was 1985—the early days of desktop computers. My brother, who was also attending Oxy, and I shared a massive Compaq computer.
Even though he had an exam the next day, he spent an entire night formatting and typing finished chapters while I was in another room composing my conclusion. Around 2 AM, he checked in on me. His face was white. Just hours before, he thought he’d lost the entire 100-page document—no such thing as autosave in those days. Fortunately, he found it and I met my deadline a few hours later.
You can imagine I got punchy during the long months of research and writing. I even decorated my dorm room door with an image of Willa and an ever-so-witty pun.
Willa she get it done or not?
When I finally finished, I took a thick black marker and proclaimed YES! The big, aggressive cross-out circle also suggests that I needed a little distance from my dear Willa Cather.
But decades have passed and to this day, Willa Cather’s words are still under my skin like dust blowing off the prairie.
Guess what’s at the top of my trip bucket list? I’ve got a travel trailer and want to drive to Nebraska to visit Cather’s home and the Homestead National Historic Park! While most of you dream of sandy beaches in the Caribbean, I’m excited to know what it’s like to sit inside a sod house and watch golden prairie grass sway in the wind like ocean waves!
I tell you this story because I think we’re good at asking each other, “What are you reading?” but, we should also ask each other, “What’s one of your favorite stories about reading?” It’s another way to discover how we are the same and different. It’s another way to be surprised by people we know even better than our favorite books.
So think for a moment. What’s one of your favorite stories about reading? I can’t wait to read it.