The Pirate’s Musing on…

Required Reading

The school is -finally- over. This term felt a little longer than the ones that preceded it. The Spring term was brutal for me because all of the reading I was required to do was overwhelming. Normally having too much to read is a problem that I can normally handle pretty well. The problem this last term was that the books that I spent my time reading were not for leisure. They were books I was forced to read.

Ever since High School I had issues being forced to read a particular book. My Sophomore year I drudgingly read A Separate Peace, which is a classic according to Mr. Holmberg. Mr. Libby, my Senior year English teacher, introduced the class to Brave New World which I found not to be very brave or new or interesting for that matter. Don’t even get me started on Shakespeare.

I didn’t discover my love of books until after I graduated high school. My disdain for the books I was forced to read probably came from my rebellious teenage attitude. I figured that in college things would be different and the books that I would be forced to read would be interesting.

I was wrong.

This past term I took three English heavy classes: Fiction Writing, Non-Fiction Writing, and Canadian Literature. There were a total of nine books that I had to read in the short nine week period for those three classes. Of those nine, I only read, from front to back, two of them. Canadian Literature was the most neglected class and I finished none of those books. Fun fact: Canadian literature is really, really boring and depressing.

So I confess, I never finished these books like I should have. I only half (well, half-ish) finished reading these books.

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup by Susan Orlean

Now let’s never mention these books again.

Next year I get into even more English heavy classes. There will be things I will have to get over like my disliking of classic literature. Until then, I have my entire summer of leisure reading ahead of me.

Blurb for the back cover:
"This book should not be read before bed."

It’s been almost four years since I read How I Paid For College . I was a little lost when I started reading Attack of the Theater People . I remember more or less what happened and bits and pieces of the characters that were involved. Luckily, readers and new comers are quickly brought up to date on what happened previously that you could easily read AOTTP without having read HIPFC . The cast of characters is large but each one is distinctive enough to where you wont get them confused.

The second chapter of the Edward Zanni Saga picks up him being kicked out of Julliard for being “too jazz hands.” I found it funny that the very first thing AOTTP does is basically tell us that everything he worked so hard for in HIPFC was all for nothing. But it serves as a great start for his new adventure. Being desperate, Edward tries to find some way to survive in New York and lands a gig as a “party motivator” which leads to insider trading and being wanted by the FBI, naturally.

Marc Acito is hilarious. Two years ago I was lucky enough to see him give a talk to a woman’s romance writing group where he told the ladies there that he makes sure that every sentence is important to the story (again, it was two years ago and I wasn’t taking notes, he said something along these lines). It shows as every sentence adds something to the story. There are also phrases that get repeated over the course of the story that are funny and often lead up to some plot point that is the equivalent of a punchline (Edward’s worse nightmare for example).

Also, every chapter seems to end with a cliff hanger which is probably the reason this book should not be read before bed. You’ll never get to sleep.