That’s My Secret, Cap, I Didn’t Read the Book

In talking about school books on TikTok, someone mentioned in a comment that one of the current strategies around teaching books is returning to a previously read novel years later and reevaluating it from an older perspective. That might be why some summer reading I was discussing for local high schoolers looked more like middle-grade fiction.
This is fascinating to me because that would have driven me absolutely insane if it happened with any frequency back when I was in school. Because this did happen to me a number of times with a few different required reading books. Some because of switching school districts or reading programs, some because my own hubris and precocity had me picking out books well ahead of my current grade pretty regularly, and they simply came back around. And the way I handled it was by, basically, just not reading the book the second time (most of the time).
The first time this happened was Island of the Blue Dolphins. It was one of the advanced reading pull-out books for third grade. When it came back around for fifth grade as a class book I experienced my first episode of Academic Laziness. When I had so many other books I wanted to read, why waste time re-reading a book I was neutral on the first time? Why not allow myself, such a hard worker, to have a break when presented it?
I skimmed the book, at most, to make sure I remembered everything, but I didn’t touch it beyond that. Luckily it wasn’t a popcorn reading book, so it was easy to hide my lack of participation. And, yeah, I couldn’t squeak higher than a ninety on chapter quizzes (my recall’s good but not perfect), but that was still a top five grade in the class, though. So, ultimately, no eyebrows raised my way.
So I got away with slacking, and I got away with it easily. This made me cocky. Should have been my downfall. But as I’ve said previously, I’m extremely good at English class.
Then in sixth grade A Wrinkle in Time appeared as required reading. I had read that book two or three years previous, and I had promptly fallen in love with it. This time I was more than happy to read it again, reliving my favorite moments at breakneck speed.
Not so stoked on my classmate’s reactions to it. They didn’t get it the way I did. They didn’t grok the themes and narrative and characterization at an existential level the way I did. Their analysis? Off-base, unsupported by textual evidence. Their observations? Uninspired.
I had just enough sense to not be a monster to my classmates because I actually genuinely liked my small little group of Gifted and Talented kids, but this was one of those really dumb experiences that nonetheless permanently altered me, my perception of literary analysis, and other people in the reading space.
So when something similar happened again with Metamorphosis and Ender’s Game (both books I read on my own first, just for them to show up a year or two later) I was ready for my classmates to just be the stupidest people on the planet, temporarily. And they did not disappoint.
And the year that I had to read Romeo and Juliet in class twice because I switched schools? I wanted to die a little bit, and I absolutely didn’t read that play a second time. Just rewatched the Baz Luhrman film for the tenth time (the way I love that movie), and got an A on every test.
But as much as I could boast about my laziness it was a few of the books I reread post grade school that actually had a real effect on me.
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman is a collection of philosophical short stories. We read one of them (in which everyone only lives for twenty-four hours, if I recall) for one of my upper level English classes. I was fascinated, but it was presented without context as a handout. I never had a lot of details on it. When it reemerged in my college Philosophy class I went “oh…wait…I know I this one.” My college class didn’t require the entire book, either, but that didn’t stop me from reading the whole thing during some down time during spring break. If I was going to spend money on it, I was going to get every penny’s worth. I still have my copy because I genuinely really enjoyed it. I still do. I think about doing another re-read ever so often, but I haven’t had the time. What I found reading it the second time is that while the isolated story was interesting, its context within the rest of the stories adds a completely new layer of meaning and construction. The second time I also had the benefit of other philosophical literature to compare it to, things that didn’t exist the first time.
This also happened with Grendel by John Gardner. It’s a re-imagining of Beowulf from Grendel’s perspective that we read in English IV as part of the Beowulf unit. It’s a very esoteric kind of book. A slippy, stream of conscious extended monologue that’s part magical realism, part psychadelica. Even at newly eighteen, I was clever enough to comprehend the book. To understand plot and themes. But I didn’t have the ability to grok the book, yet. I needed to go through a few more existential crises, a bit more adult-level despair. I needed a few more truly weird books under my belt to stretch the brain into a more malleable state. I think I mostly just needed to read it in a setting where I could take my time savoring it and without the stress of schoolwork on my back. Because when I randomly read it again just a few years ago, holy shit? This book is amazing?! More than that, I actually understood the character of Grendel in a way I hadn’t quite been able to as a teen. And removed from some of my own first-person angst by a decade, the turmoil of Grendel’s existence hit more like a hard nostalgia than a direct competition with my own depression.
A few more revisits occurred over the years, as well. Mostly different translations or modified renditions of ancient texts that gave me a new view or appreciation of them. And when I meet people who haven’t read a book since high school I wonder, but what if you reread? And while, as curriculum, I stand by my assertion I would be bored if this happened while still in school, I can’t help but wonder the benefit for the adult reader, post secondary school.