Literary Dragons

My earliest memory of reading is lying on the floor near my best friends in a dimly lit fifth grade classroom. Nearby was the pillow and snacks I brought from home for a reading day. Of the students in the class, my friends and I were the only ones with a piece of paper and pencil to go along with our reading. The paper and pencil tracked our inventory, statistics and abilities in the Lone Wolf novels.

My friends and I loved these “Choose Your Own Adventure” type novels. We would each purchase one or two and pass them around to each other. Not only did they allow us to write book reports for books consisting of a few hundred pages (when in reality we read under one-hundred pages), we also “got out” of reading by playing a game. I remember thinking to myself how smart we were to pull one over on the teacher.

Another of my “clever” moments was writing a book report for a book I never read. I based the entire report on the cover which had a picture of what I thought was dragon-jousting. My imagination ran wild with the idea. To be thorough I extracted character names by scanning the pages. Years later I read the book and chuckled when I recalled my invented plot.

I recall sixth grade English. In a lab with Apple computers, I pecked away with my two index fingers to complete a short-story in Word Perfect. There was more story to tell, and the assignment had to be completed by the end of the day. I had written two pages; it was the end of the week; and there was less than 15 minutes left of class. My fingers made a mad dash to tie up multiple threads in a single paragraph. “A dragon is slain.”

A few years later, in eighth grade English, a true novel opened up the world of reading to me. I’m still not certain how, but I lucked out and ended up with the teacher who taught using Frank Herbert’s Dune rather than Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Now, this was a book I could sink my teeth into – science fiction, giant worms, and fascinating political intrigue.

With my literary fuse lit, I began branching outside of my game-books and started reading fantasy novels. At this point in my life, I was choosing books based on their cover and title. Again, fortune smiled on me when I stumbled upon Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The fast-paced high-fantasy kept me coming back for more, and thankfully the authors had written five other books in the same setting.

I discovered a love of reading and began sharing my books with friends. My friends and I would often dog-ear pages and mark next to paragraph to save our page. (Apparently the idea of a bookmark was a bit too high-brow for us.) It wasn’t long before each of us was introducing new books to share, resulting in our own unofficial book club.

My sophomore year of high school stands out as the worst English class. For some unknown reason, I still couldn’t say why, I decided to take the advanced class. Per quarter, the curriculum consisted of 500 pages of reading classic books selected by the teacher, 500 pages of reading classic books selected on our own, in addition to other work like essays, tests, and poetry.

A couple weeks into the class I realized how slow of a reader I was. Many students finished the reading assignment in class, while I still had half a chapter or more left to read when the bell rang. I struggled to keep up with the required reading. It got to the point where I read as much as I could -- enough to get three of five questions right on a quiz the following day – and the teacher filled in what I missed when she recapped the chapter.

I failed to keep up with the in-class assignments, and I still hadn’t started on the 500 pages of self-selected reading. I picked terribly boring “classics” like Jules Verne’s 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The requirements felt like a chore and stifled my passion for reading. By the end of the year I was happy to make it through the class with Cs across the board.

My partial-reading strategy not only caused my grades to suffer, I also missed out on the full experience of many books including Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I vaguely knew the plot and didn’t understand how the title related to the novel. It wasn’t until years later, typing rapidly at a data entry job while listening to the audio book that I finally appreciated how wonderful this book is. Scout, one of my favorite literary characters, brought to mind my own childhood. (I think it has to do with Scout and me sharing a talent for getting into trouble.)

My enjoyment of audio books prompted me to look up an old friend, Dune. By reading Dune a second time, I remembered why I loved reading in the first place. Having rekindled my passion for reading I proceeded to read the entire series. Eager for more good books I turned to the internet for recommendations. Even after ten years, I have yet to put a dent in an ever-increasing, recommended book-list.

From my joy of reading and perhaps a little in celebration (and imitation) of the authors I loved, I dabbled in writing my own short stories. I find it exhilarating to impact people with my words - to say something meaningful while entertaining. Or, at times, I have fun being whimsical and silly. It is important to have stories that can lift the weight, even for a short time, from one’s shoulders. Writing was a forgotten joy.

Throughout my literary adventures, I have come across many dragons. There were dragons preventing me from attaining great treasure. I rode other dragons to new lands. The worst dragons were the ones I created and imposed on myself. As I venture forward, sword in hand, I hope to confront new dragons head-on.