I have a scandalous confession: I don’t read much. I’m a professor and an intellectual, and I don’t read much.
Of course, I have to qualify that. I do spend a lot of time reading: student papers (when I’m not on sabbatical), e-mails, web pages, memos from the Dean, the readings for my classes, textbook brochures, calls for papers. Much is lacking in this reading, however. Most of it is fragmented and all of it is fairly short, the Dean’s memos excepted, of course. I do an approximate job of keeping up in my new field, but that feels even more fragmented since I don’t yet have a solid routine for that.
When I was a child I read constantly. I would talk in class just before recess so that I would be made to stay inside, where I could read any book in the empty classroom. My mother once punished me for some forgotten trespass by forbidding me to read anything that wasn’t homework. A really bad idea that nearly killed us both. In college I always had a few books going at once and had to carry at least two with me everywhere.
What changed all this? My dissertation. I used to joke, “I don’t read in English any more.” But it was almost true: I read the secondary sources (mostly in English) necessary for the dissertation, the intricate sonnets in French, and that was it! Most of that time I was not reading in a linear fashion because I was skimming, taking notes, checking one paragraph here, one quatrain there. Always I was taking notes. Never did I get lost in the pleasure of reading, of devouring a book, of letting the book consume me.
Since the dissertation I’ve had some great reading jags: feminist theology, French colonial history, Acadian sociology, Cajun music, French travel writing from North America. These are short-lived, though because pedagogical and administrative responsibilities come back to me like bleeding children through summer’s screen door.
A sabbatical goal, then, is to find again this habit of absorbed reading. Linear. Devouring. Maybe a novel!
This weekend I made a great start with the perfect book. I’ll later this week.
Et quel est ce livre idéal pour une prof qui ne lit pas assez? Quel livre est-ce que j’ai lu avec tant d’intérêt? C’était The Cajuns : Americanization of a People par Shane K. Bernard. C’est une histoire sociale du peuple cadien, de la Deuxième guerre mondiale jusqu’au présent.
