What’s the opposite of teaching to the test?

Almost every week after bagel breakfast with friends, I head to the thrift store to scour the book section for anything interesting. They have a deal that is buy four books, get the fifth one free that serves as both a challenge and a good stopping point. I get five books for about the price of one at my local bookshop. Honestly, it feels like theft when I find something really good. Once I picked up a copy of The Timetables of History for a few bucks and I felt like I had won the lottery. All of history organized into tidy charts? My heart! I typically search for any books that I think a Nazi might like to burn, and classics that I should have read in high school but didn’t. Occasionally, those criteria overlap. That’s when you know you’ve got a good one.

Recently in an attempt to lighten my self-imposed workload, I pulled my copy of Pride and Prejudice off the shelf, and cracked the spine for the very first time. I’ve been a little overzealous with my plans to single-handedly save the world from itself, and I’m feeling burnt out from consuming nonfiction assessments of just exactly what’s wrong with everything. I thought I’d take a break from current events by reading a classic. Truthfully, I still allow anthropological thoughts about it. When a novel maintains popularity over centuries, certainly there is something to be gleaned about humanity. I’m doing my best to stay focused on the story, but I’m finding it difficult to follow. I don’t think that’s the fault of Ms. Austen.

I’ve never been a strong reader despite my desire to become one. I lose focus easily and paragraphs go by while I’m thinking about anything but the words on the page. Once I realize I’ve become distracted, I have to decide to either press on and figure out what’s happening through context clues or double back and search for the point my mind abandoned my eyeballs for shinier thoughts. It’s discouraging and makes me feel stupid which is a feeling I hate more than any other. Last night I read a chapter in bed and Elizabeth blew me away when she shared with Mr. Wickham that she found Mr. Darcy very disagreeable and too prideful. I’m sorry, what did I miss? I’m 100 pages in. I mean I knew they weren’t best friends, but I thought she was intrigued. No? Should I start over? I’m not sure what I was paying attention to. Then I wonder how much of my misunderstanding is the fault of the zeitgeist?

I already understand the arc that carries Miss Bennet and Mr. Darcy because I watched the one with Kiera Knightly and Whatshisface before I read the book. I should have heeded the spoiler alert that is interacting with media. Although, I really feel like unless I live in a one room cabin in Montana, it’s impossible not to be spoiled in some way. What I’m trying to say is I already know the story. I started the book expecting the characters to move toward the ending I know is coming. I’m reading all the wrong signals, I think, because I want to figure out how everybody else knows what’s happening in the subtext. I can’t seem to do that when I’m reading the written word. It feels like my brain is too focused on all the letters. And somehow not focused on them at all.

I think it’ll get better. It’s been a while since I’ve lost myself in a good paperback. I’m out of practice. And as much as I rail against it, I’ve been spending too much time distracted by my phone and it’s destroyed my attention. I pick it up while I’m reading to look up a word like approbation, and before I know it, I’m watching a parrot singing ABBA. I’ve grown so accustomed to podcasts and videos jazzing up my information intake, reading a book feels a little like dying. Even one that reads like candy. I tell myself it’s not important, that I’m just reading it for fun, but the lack of retention is concerning.

I’m still enjoying it. I enjoy the not so subtle ways Jane shows off her vocabulary, and I’m learning a lot about the time period. Like how everyone freaked out when Elizabeth walked a couple miles on her own when she went to care for her sick sister. (Who was staying at a neighbors house because she caught a cold?) And you can’t just walk up to someone at a party and introduce yourself, you have to be introduced by a mutual acquaintance, or your dad has to meet them first. There are rules of etiquette.

The reading half of my book habit is slow going. At a rate of 5 books purchased and zero books read each week, I’m going to need to pick up a few more shelves. I think it’s necessary for someone who writes as much as I do to have exemplary reading comprehension as well. So I keep trying. Some days are more successful than others, but every day I try.