Nowadays, I mainly do my book reading on an electronic device, mostly that's a Kindle Fire, and recently I read a novel on my new Mac laptop, using the Kindle app for the Mac as the reader. I prefer to make the font sans serif, comparatively large, and the page with ample line space. This is easier on the eyes for me and that matters, particularly in persisting with the reading. I end up buying several books at a time from the Amazon store, deliberately intermixing "great works" with "page turner" fiction. This year I've been on a kick to read through books I've given a go at earlier in life but couldn't make it even halfway through.
I'm currently reading Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon. Not that long ago I read Ulysses, by James Joyce. I was in over my head with Ulysses, often not getting the intended meaning. I felt underprepared as a reader. Maybe the experience gave me some empathy for students in that category, but as I no longer teach, there is not much benefit in that. Stylistically, Gravity's Rainbow is in the same mold and there are definitely passages which I don't get. But they are less frequent than with Ulysses and my background knowledge is better suited for understanding what Pynchon serves up.
In both cases the Kindle software aids in getting through the book. There is something called "reading speed" which is calibrated based on how fast prior pages were read. Then the software infers how long it will take to read the remainder of the chapter as well as the remainder of the book. In this way the reader can track the progress made - not in gaining understanding, but in completing the reading task. Even if such aids diminish the ability to concentrate on what is written, they do help in persisting with the reading. That is something.
For books in the page-turner category, recently I've been relying on detective fiction, either by Raymond Chandler, whose protagonist Philip Marlowe is well known from the movies, or by Colin Dexter, whose Inspector Morse character I first encountered in the prequel Endeavour, which can be watched now on Amazon Prime. Yet quite recently I reverted to an old reliable, John Grisham, and purchased the trilogy: Camino Island, Camino Winds, and Camino Ghosts. The oddity in my title refers to the first two of these books.
At least in the Kindle version, there is a Study Guide with questions for discussion that appear immediately after the novel concludes. (I was somewhat disappointed that Amazon.com gave a table of contents for the preview of the print version but not a table of contents for the full book, so I don't know whether the Study Guide is also in the print version.) A study guide for page turner fiction, one that is included with the book rather than appear as CliffsNotes! Hmmmm!!!
I can only guess as to why this is happening and I will give my conjectures below. But let me say first that I would be delighted to learn what is really going on here. This is a case where I hope my guesses are off the mark.
First, whether Johnny can or can't read, it seems pretty clear that Johnny doesn't read. School is failing most students this way. When my kids were little there was Harry Potter, which received so many plaudits because it seemingly made Johnny interested in reading. And at least one of my kids developed the reading habit as a consequence. But for him, pleasure reading was mainly (perhaps exclusively) fantasy fiction. What about branching out from there? Might it be that English class has been restructured in that they have kids read page turner fiction in a variety of genres so that the kids can experience pleasure reading and thereafter self-direct their reading as a leisure activity?
I recall that when I was in junior high school and high school, much of what we read in English class was selected because it was thought to be "good for us" to read great works of fiction, even if the takeaway was nebulous to us students. Let me mention just two titles here, Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye. I would guess that most of my friends read those in school. Assuming that, could they point to how reading those books contributed to their own personal growth? A discussion along those lines might be interesting for considering what English class should be doing today.
The other possibility is that the study guides in the first two books are really a setup for the third book, Camino Ghosts, which does not yet have a study guide. Without giving away the plot, the book title refers to the ghosts of former slaves and Africans who were brought to America but then escaped slavery. I should add that Camino Island is fictitious, but is set off the Florida coast northeast of Jacksonville. Florida is a state where banning books and not teaching Black history is happening now. Maybe Grisham novels might escape the scrutiny of Florida censors. Could it be that Camino Ghosts is aiming to be taught in the schools, a backdoor way for students to learn that Black history is real?
When I said above that I hope I'm wrong about this, it is because I'd prefer a front door way for students to learn Black history. And I'd rather that students develop the reading habit early, preferably in elementary school if at all possible. Reading is critical to learning to think reflectively. Yet there are obstacles to this, beyond book banning. Given those obstacles, maybe a pragmatic solution is something to hope for now.
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