I found Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar on my local library shelf’s today (and will be taking it off my to-read shelf shortly). I kind of wish I had come in knowing nothing about the author. Digesting an author’s work as autobiography, is a dangerous temptation. I would hate to have every single creative text I write be interpreted as a personal life experience.

I feel like gobbling up the story in one sittng. I won’t. Because if I get attached to the world Plath has created, reading the last page will crush me. Final pages are always a small reminder that good and beautiful things must come to an end.

When I was younger, such thrills over reading were frequent.

There’s something about finding in a text a little mirror to your self, that’s so very special. That those words speak to you, seem to be made for you, that somebody who has never met you wrote those words… it’s nothing short of a happy coincidence. I grew up, in part, raised by the stories I read. I don’t remember them all. I just know they’re among the reasons I see things the way I do, believe what I believe, find humor in the things I do…

Tonight, I’m thinking there’s something wrong in the way academics reduces reading into analytical work. I’ve always been good at essay writing. Though, somewhere in tackling texts for an A’s sake, I lost track of the little girl who read for leisure. I’m sure I can find her again–though she’s not so little anymore, and she’s certainty not reading children’s stories.