Another day, another class

So my summer class started today. I like my children’s lit teacher. Or, at least, the woman who is teaching the first two sections of the class. She seems to really like kids, and the class is going to be fun, I think. But of course she was an English major and an academic, so she sniped about the romance genre, saying that it wasn’t real literature because naturally you only need two brain cells to read it. She made up for it by reading aloud from one of my favorite children’s books ever, (”Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day, if you’re counting.) but still… I wanted to sic some of y’all on her, or give her a book recommendation. (I defy anyone to read a Janice Kay johnson superromance and tell me that isn’t some damn fine writing and serious lit-ra-ture.) Or, you know, there are always Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen, who are nowhere near “trashy Harlequin” status. Then she said something like, “Children’s books usually have hope at the end. Too many adult books have depressing endings.” I know I smirked meanly and thought, ‘Not the ones I read.’

Oh, and there was an interesting side conversation in my class in which I probably upset a few of the elementary ed majors in attendance. A bunch of them were saying that they used to be readers but, and someone actually did say, “Who has time to read?” Someone else pointed out that she had friends who made time, but she stated that she didn’t know how they could. So naturally I piped up and said I was one of those, because university student or not, I really need something to read at some point in the day. It makes me feel like I’ve done something productive, even if I haven’t, and even if what I’m reading isn’t 700 pages of weighty prose with a depressing ending, I figure I’m still learning something, even if it’s just what not to do if I ever get off my ass and write a book.

Speaking of books, I managed to walk out the door without my primary book-reading gadget. I was so upset! I couldn’t read my current book, because it wasn’t on my emergency backup reading gadget, so I settled for reading the first Charlaine Harris book. I don’t know if Sookie Stackhouse and I are all that compatible. It started when she told the readers she had a disability. Uh, snookems, yes, not being the world’s smartest individual is certainly nothing to be proud of, but reading minds? Not a real disability, darlin’.

I feel compelled to finish the book, and at the moment it’s cruising somewhere in the C range, and I also know that Charlaine Harris fangirls are probably going to be shocked–shocked I say!–that I don’t understand the brilliance that is Sookie Stackhouse. I’m sure that Charlaine and I will get over it with no hard feelings.