Reading Influences: My Emerging High School Self as a Reader
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As promised a few months back, I stated I would expose some of my reading influencers along my lifespan. This is my second installment regarding the books that influenced my thinking. I attended a progressive public high school that had some of the brightest, free-thinking instructors in the state. They were
open-minded and encouraged their students in the individuation and cognitive development processes to think for themselves. A few years later, I attended the community college located in my home city and found a few instructors with that same ethos of self-exploration, lifelong learning and thinking-for-yourself. Now that you are aware of my learning environment, you will better understand these titles that landed on my desk and stuck with me through the years.
The resolve and strong ethical nature of the character Atticus Finch from To Kill 
a Mockingbird taught me to take the emotion out of the law while heightening my awareness of social injustice in our society. After reading the book To Kill a Mockingbird, I now had a definitive model for how an individual can take mere words on a page and thoughtfully and consistently enact them in one’s life daily. How the daughter in the story, Scout, witnessed and was confounded by the hypocrisy of the adults around her, so, too, did I struggle with these same hypocritical behaviors I observed from the adults I encountered outside of my own home.
The Greening of America gave me a very different perspective of how someone could ultimately live their life outside of corporate America. It was about this time that I started to move away from wanting to be a business major and started gravitating more toward education and being a teacher. The idea fully formed for me when I defined for myself the definition of the word educate as meaning “to search for and develop my own potential, my own individuality, my own uniqueness. Around this time the idea formed in my head that educating young minds did not mean indoctrination, but, rather, the expansion of each individual toward greater “consciousness,” something that I interpret now as becoming a lifelong learner– a process continuing throughout life; in a word, education became a synonym for “developing consciousness.” The author in the book The Greening of America expressed a different concept that differed 
greatly from pre-1970 mindset of a professional life (work) in that the work you do “is nonalienated, is the free choice of each person, is integrated into a full and satisfying life, and expresses and affirms each individual being.” The idea that I did not have to commit myself to one profession, one corporation, or one job for my entire life—that I could perhaps remain in the same field (education), but not remain a classroom teacher all my life. Become, for example, a curriculum developer in multimedia or a trainer for a non-profit organization. I remember stating in my sociology class (Thank you for all the eye-opening conversations we had in sociology class, s4s Ms. Ramsey!) that I did not see myself being in solely one profession all my life; that there were other fields I wanted to explore and other things I wanted to do. And, that I did!
Another odd influencer in my reading life is the book Siddhartha. I don’t know if Siddhartha stuck with me because the first time I read it, I had to translate it 
from German, or if the story of self-exploration/discovery is just so intriguing because of the path the character takes through various religious and philosophical belief systems, and that through each new path, the character re-invents himself. Then, of course, finding myself in nature has always appealed to me. Taking walks or long hikes out in nature, photographing landscapes, lying on my housetop roof to watch the stars late at night—these come with a sense of unity of life, and one’s own personal sense of enlightenment. Turn off your cell phone sometime and try it. As did Siddhartha, I also identify with the interconnectedness of nature and the life cycle inherent in the river.
The book, Siddhartha, took me a number of weeks to read in my German class during my last semester of high school, but, I believe, it made the story that much more powerful for me.
Ethan Frome is another one of those quirky picks. The characters are so clearly defined and described. The love/longing between the two main characters is 
so palpable. I could visualize their slightest gestures; their eyes stealing glimpses of each other. I could feel the warmth that emanated from the light touch of a hand. I agonized alongside the characters their dilemma of what to do in a relationship when love has failed and finances make parting difficult. From this cautionary tale emerged my own relationship philosophy that one should not start a new love relationship until one has ended one’s current relationship. It is a mentally and emotionally healthier way to live life.
A writing class introduced me to memoir and one of the memoirs we were assigned to read was Pentimento. From the opening 
statement defining and describing the one-word title through each individual character portrait, the author’s detail and description truly does provide a vivid portrait of not just what each individual looked like, but how they walked, how each distinctively spoke, and how each had specific telling mannerisms. The author’s sparseness in dialog allows the reader to make her own sense of the conversation without the writer having to explain what it all means. Whether or not the book is a totally honest autobiographical work, does not take away from the themes addressed through the portraits.
So, these were the ideas that rattled around in my developing brain during high school. There were many more books that were read and had an impact in some small way, but these books listed here really spoke to me at this particular stage of my life and continue to speak to me even now. In relating these to you, I have already decided that I will re-visit the Greening book over my next reading break.
And, what am I reading now?
Nothing.
I have just completed my research for the sequel to my novel Along the River Road
Cue product plug here with graphic and statement: available on Amazon.
After finishing for my research, Scott McCloud’s book Understanding Comics: 
The Invisible Art, I worked my way through Learning Malware Analysis by Monnappa K A.
So, with research completed, it is now time to get back to writing.
btw, the sequel to my novel Along the River Road has yet to be titled.
I might have to ask for some assistance on that soon!
The sequel will be out in the spring, 2019.
Until l8. . . .
Read-Think-Enjoy the mystery,
SC
