The upside of a crappy task

Selecting passages on which to base reading comprehension questions for a standardized test is a truly demoralizing job. You have to pick the blandest, most innocuous stuff that is least likely to offend the broadest range of people. The reasoning-- which is reasonable--is that young students might not be equipped to interpret texts in the most generous light possible without the benefit of guidance from a more experienced reader-- namely, a teacher. I could really go on and on and on about the other hang-ups I have about this portion of my job, but, really, I'm trying very hard not to badmouth my job on this blog any more. That's a bad idea for karmic reasons.

But, really, the best part of it is that I've been pouring through my own bookshelves in search of stuff that's not about sex, racial identity, moral ambiguity, queerness, blood, guts, dicks, the eating of pork (literal, not metaphorical--I'm a little obsessed with writers who talk about Southern food) or social class issues. Yeah, there ain't a whole hell of a lot in my own personal library that doesn't touch on one, many, or all of these topics. However, I have been reminding myself about how much I still love some of the books I read years ago. So, here's an impromptu nostalgic list composed of readerly jaunts from yesteryear:

1. The Complete Poems of Hart Crane, by Hart Crane
2. What the Living Do and The Good Thief, by Marie Howe
3. An American Childhood and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
4. For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, by Nathan Englander
5. The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, by Elizabeth Bishop
6. M.A.C.N.O.L.I.A., by A. Van Jordan
7.Complete Poems, by Marianne Moore
8. The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean
9. The Lone Ranger and Tonto: Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie
10. China Men, by Maxine Hong Kingston
11. Ariel, by Sylvia Plath (the new original-order one is better than Ted Hughes' version)
12. Fever: Stories, by John Edgar Wideman

Now, mind you, virtually nothing from any of these will ever appear on a test. But, damn, they're good books.



And by the way, this happens to be my 100th post this year! Cheers!