What I'm Planning, more or less...

English is not my first language, but it has become my only language; and from my earliest memories, it was books that made me feel that I was not a complete outsider in the world I inhabited.  I might not wear the right kind of bobby-sox, I might not have a ponytail that would swing when I walked, but in books I found others – even American-born others! – who, like me, didn't quite fit in. The strong little girl in A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN would have liked me; I was sure of it!

I was always a slow reader, which is a big handicap for someone who became an English Lit major!  I remember that in fourth grade, we were tested to see in which reading group we would be placed the following year. The reading teacher sat at a table in the hallway outside of the classroom; one by one, we were called and given a passage to read.

When it was my turn, I read beautifully, really beautifully. When I proudly finished and looked up, much to my surprise, the teacher asked me questions about what I had read.  "You mean you wanted me to read it for meaning," I asked?  "I can do that; please give me something else to read."  But she wouldn't. "It's all right," she said.  "I know where you belong."  But she did NOT know; she put me in the “lowest” reading group, and I knew that I did not belong there....

When she'd asked me to read, I was intent on not reading with a "foreign" accent, so I concentrated only on enunciating every word in perfect "American."  For me, reading aloud and reading silently were two completely different activities:  one was for sound, and one was for understanding.  But I couldn't explain it to her, no matter how hard I tried. Happily, my family moved to another part of town that summer, and when at my new school they asked what "Reader" I'd been using, I said without a backward glance, SINGING WHEELS – the book I knew the “highest” reading group had been using!  And I've been in the "highest" reading group ever since!

But I remain a very slow reader. I read silently in the same way as I read aloud: enunciating in my head every single syllable, every "and" "or" and "but"...!  While this careful reading can be an asset when reading complicated or technical works, it's really a burden when it comes to "light" reading, as they take me too long, and I notice things that are, perhaps, not meant to be noticed.  My children are often frustrated with me when I read a thriller they'd loved and I say, "The character could not possibly have done this because on page 193 she said such-and-such..." They hadn't – and probably shouldn’t have! – noticed, and now I'd "spoiled it" for them.

All this is by way of saying that I don't know how many books I'll be reading or writing about.  I don't know the authors or the titles or the subjects I'll choose.  I love fiction, but I also love to read biographies and histories.  I like to picture myself in the skin of someone very "other."  I'll read and post about books that I've read many times before – “old friends" who have something new to tell me each time I return to them – as well as books that I've never read, but have been recommended, or happen to catch my eye, or are just around:  books with spines I know well, but with "insides" I know nothing about!

And I'll also write about films and plays, old and new, which to me, are "books" that are read aloud, with that special quality that each story-teller inevitably adds when reading.  It's why I love to see new versions of plays and movies I know well; to see them performed by a variety of players; to see if something new can be gleaned through this different performer or director, this different "reader."

So:  let me begin and see what happens...