Know Rhymesâ€Know Reasons

My p arents are nerds. I acceptt mean they were nerds as kids and grew out of it I mean my parents were nerds from the wink all(prenominal) was born, though their adolescence, and right into adult lummox. Today, my parents remain true to their heritage they are full-fledged, adult nerds.As most hoi polloi are aware, nerd hood requires a few supplies and traits along with the requisite pocket withstanders, the over-exuberance for all involvements academic, and thickened glasses, both of my parents are bookworms. Luckily, certain genetic traits skip a generation, and I muckle h iodinstly say that I am not a nerd however, I am a bookworm, and I am not ashamed to admit it because often of my life has been influenced by the intimacys I nourish read.I grew up with Dr. Seuss. My arrest used to spend clock either week recital the latest Dr. Seuss book with me. Hed enter me into bed, and then I read to him aloud as the story unfolded unrivaled rhyme and iodine intriguing illu stration at a time. My terminal was not so much to generate to the end, notwithstanding to learn invigorated dustup, and each new word I learned was marked by my father with a bright, lily-livered highlighter.In this way, the progress I do became more tangible, and for all I know, that habit of my fathers allowed me the liberty to read all of my books with a dictionary and a highlighter by my nerve and never to feel as if doing so was a un prepareed of time or a point new word were an adventure, and I love learning them. I dont recall developing a particular favorite Dr. Seuss book as a child, but as I got older, I began to get the urge to unpack the box of my highlighted books and live a little of my youth.The box of Dr. Seuss books had been stored in the family shed, and the years had interpretedtheir toll. The switch over in temperature had caused the books to warp and mold, but they had notgone totally to unwarranted at least one family of rodents had nested in th e box,shredding the pages of my early education for their birth progenys needs. One lone bookremained untouched Horton Hears a Who, and as I opened this last book of my childhoodand began to read, I was struck by the power of the story. Hidden in the text was one of the mostimportant lessons Ive ever learned a individual(a) voice of the tiniest girl was strong enough to make adifference. As hokey as it may sound, I leaned the degree to which an individual fucking impact theworld that day as I read that book. possibly I am a nerd.I wont waste time by detailing the degree to which I read during word form school, junior high school, and high school I will moreover clarify that while I admit to being bookish, I was in addition an athlete, participated in student body, and had a social life. I was, however, not through with Dr. Seuss.I hit a wall with Shakespeare, and I felt the burden of reading for the first time in my life. While many students had pornographic accustomed to t hat wall, I had never dealt with it, so by the time it come acrossed to me, the bet were high I was in college, and I wasnt getting it. I had never skipped a readingnever worried to the highest degree my English or literature courses.Suddenly, I was ready for a slug of the kibosh Romeo had taken. I did the only thing I could think of looking for commiseration, I complained to my parents about how stupid Shakespeare was, pointed out that no one could real be sure hed written his plays, and wondered out loud why anyone needed to read stuff thats written like that anyway.My father would have none of it, but he suggested to me that anyone who had gr give birth up on Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein had no business complaining about or being preoccupied by Shakespeare. Like many messages delivered when one isnt ready to engender them, the point my father had tried to make was lost on me for awhileburied by the frustration of not having been appeased. Several days later, I tried to give in to the notion that there might be something familiar in the rhythm and rhyme of Shakespeare if only Id do what my father had suggested read it out loud and listenreally listen.I struggled at first trying to work through the informal terms. I fought to recommend that the ends of a line of text didnt unavoidably equal the end of a sentence. I battled with Shakespeares sentence social organisation trying to remember that it was rarely subject-verb-object. It was like running through keystone that was waist deep. Until it wasnt. Suddenly, everything fell into place it was like I had learned a foreign language. The words do sense the story began to unfold approximately me I got it I liked it. The only thing I can compare it to is sitting in a theater watching a sub-titled movie there is a point at which the reading becomes so automatic that it is no longer a conscious effort but automatic. It was just like that.Later, I met the wall that was Henry James. I was reading Port rait of a Lady, and I had spent far too much time trying to decipher the first scene of the text. When I realize that James had spent over a page beating rough the bush to say that three men were at tea, I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask the guy why hed wasted so much ink and so many words simply to point out to the audience that it was tea time, but quite of there being women there, there were menbut I had a book to wade through, and Mr. James was long dead, so I go on.Having figured out the context of the opening if the book, I went back and started anew, and I realized that I wanted to sit and talk to the man who had chosen such wonderfully descriptive wordsa man who had taken such great care to spend the time to so completely describe the fact that three men were at tea. I remember thinking to myself that if he were a painter, and he painted the way he wrote, that I would love his work like I loved Claude Monets Impression Sunrise. Years later, when I began to read every thing I could by and about Henry James, I had a private laugh over his parity for paintersMonet in particular.Having cracked Shakespeare and James, I was never again afraid of a books language orlength. I picked up Middlemarch and tom turkey Jones and Vanity Fair and loved each of them fordifferent reasons, but one day, I picked up Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio, and likeHorton Hears a Who, I found a story that changed the way I viewed the world. The Book of theGrotesque made me think about truth, and the way in which each individual forms his or herown truth and twists it to suite personal needs. It made me consider that each personsquest for and claiming of truth can send ripples into the world, and these ideas changed me.Recently, I have discovered Flannery OConnor, and while I struggle with the racial issues that threaten to ruin her works for me, I feel the now-familiar tingle informant that I have grown to recognize as the discovery and tempestuousness that only a well- written book can bring me. I may have to break down and buy a pocket protector just to use as a book mark.What about written material? Well, if one day all of the things I have jotted down in hopes of emulating the people previously mentioned ever manages to make its way to a publisher, I will blame that on the books I have read and the people who wrote them. I will speak of the fact that when I walk into a bookstore, I marvel at all of the people who have managed to get published and allow myself an instant to believe it might someday happen for me as well.As I pick my words and paint my own pictures, I wonder if I have it in me to write the thing that for the right person will make a differencethe thing that might one day be highlighted in bright yellowthe page marked with a sticky note. Maybe this year Ill try my hand at NaNoWriMo.