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A Beginner’s Guide to Reading Poetry

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February 20, 2019
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When was the last time you read any poetry? Let me guess, years ago, and it was for some sort of assignment, am I right?

Poetry is as rich and diverse a genre as any other, so if you’re not reading it, you’re missing out. And, just like with other genres, while not every author (or poet, in this case) is for everyone, for everyone there is a poet.

But poetry, as a whole, can be…intimidating. Or at the very least, elusive. How do you even go about reading it? Where do you start? (If there aren’t any chapters, where do you stop?) When your experience with poetry is reading the odd, singular poem every once in a while so you could write an essay about it, the transition to reading a whole book of them for fun can be hard to navigate.

Luckily for you, I’ve broke it down into five simple steps:

  • Step 1. Read what you like.

This is always my number one rule for reading anything: Read what appeals to you, what interests you. If you’re into the classics—Yeats, Whitman, Wordsworth, Frost, Dickinson, Keats—then read the classics. But don’t pick up Shakespeare’s sonnets because you think you should. (Or because it’s the only name you know.)

Instagram is a great place to find more modern poetry and current authors (check out #poetry, #poet, #poetryofinstagram, and #poetrycommunity), or just go to your local library or favorite bookstore’s poetry section and start pulling books off the shelf. You’ll be able to tell at a glance (one of the benefits of short form) if it suits you.

  • Step 2. Skip the massive volumes.

If the poet you want to read has more than one published collection, you’ve got a decision to make: which one? It might seem like the easiest, most sensible answer is to go with their entire collected works—or, if they’re still living and writing, their collected works from a certain decade or their most popular volumes all-in-one—but don’t do it.

It’s exciting at first maybe, but eventually, it’ll become overwhelming. Endless. Time consuming and tedious in a way that sucks all the enjoyment out of it. Besides, if nothing else, it’s just way too much book to carry around.

Choose a single collection. Want to know what their early work was like? Pick up their first book; read from the beginning. Google your poet. Which book is their most popular, most revered? Many books of poetry are broken into parts; check out the section headings, get an idea of the collection’s themes. Is there one volume that fits your mood better than the others? Start anywhere, but start small.

  • Step 3. Remember: It’s not school.

You open the book, read a poem—and then what?

You keep reading. It’s that simple.

You don’t need to pick it apart, map out its rhyme scheme, or analyze its use of literary devices on a word, sound, and sentence level. Just read it. If it really strikes a chord with you, read it again; otherwise, onto the next.

  • Step 4. Relax. It’s not a novel; so what?

Don’t worry about reading too many poems in one sitting. You don’t need to commit them to memory, to remember each individual poem when you’re done. And it’s easy to feel like you should. I mean, if you can recall the plot after you read a book, shouldn’t you be able to recall the poems?

Well, no. Because poems are not plot, and poetry is not a novel. It’s a completely different form. What you take away from it will be different, too. The things it made you think about; the new insights into yourself, people you know, people you don’t know; the way it made you feel—those things will stick with you even when the specific words don’t.

So just read it. Let it wash over you. Enjoy it. And then—

  • Step 5. Go read some more.
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Let’s Get Loud*

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January 13, 2019
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A few months ago, I wrote a review for the true crime novel Born to Lose (check it out here), but what I didn’t mention was that I read the entire novel out loud. All four hundred pages of it.

And I don’t mean I read it out loud to myself. I had an audience (of one)—my mother.

She was with me when I picked the book up from the library. Since she loves true crime even more than I do, and it was a book neither of us had previously heard of, I read the summary on the back of the book to her. It apparently was enough to pique her interest because when I opened the book to start reading it—silently, to myself, as one would do normally—she said, “You can read it out loud if you want.”

We read the first five chapters that day.

By the time you’ve read five chapters out loud, you’ve committed.

After that first day, we read about twenty pages per day (I was on a time table to finish it by my Battle of the Books tournament). Sometimes while my mom was cooking or crocheting; sometimes while we just sat in the living room together, doing nothing but reading and listening. The last book my mom and I had read out loud together was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone while I was still in elementary school, but we enjoyed reading Born to Lose together so much, we did it again, a few months later. (That time with Killers of the Flower Moon, another true crime novel I highly recommend.)

The days of reading aloud seem to disappear as we get older, which makes sense—we become confident individual readers; we develop varied interests. It’s also a consequence of the reality of adult life. Our schedules are busier, harder to coordinate; we have more responsibilities. It’s harder to carve out time to read at all.

But if you can swing it, it’s worth making it happen. Reading a book out loud with another person is another way to share a story—every plot twist, every reveal, every reaction—that doesn’t involve a screen. It’s your monthly book club, in real time. It’s different than listening to a podcast and less polished than listening to an audiobook. (Laughing at butchered mispronunciations is half the fun.) It takes a solitary activity and turns it into an experience you share. It makes you the storyteller.

As the weather gets colder and we head into the dreary dead of winter, it’s the perfect time to curl up with a good book, but you don’t have to do it alone. Grab your roommate, your best friend, your partner, your parents or your kids, and dive right in.

*If this song is now stuck in your head, I’m not sorry.

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Your New Year’s Reading Resolution

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December 30, 2018
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I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They’ve always felt like goals that set us up for failure rather than success. That run away from us and get way too ambitious. Admirable, but not practical.

But last year, I made one anyway, a New Year’s resolution to read a certain number of books by the end of 2018.

With one day left on the calendar, I’m not going to make it. By more than one book. More than a couple of books. I realized this over a month ago, that given how slowly I read and how busy the end of the year always is (no matter how much I try to get done ahead of time) that there was no way I was going to reach my goal.

I’ve talked before on this blog about how reading should be fun and absolutely NOT a chore, and I know—the idea of setting a goal to read x number of books in y amount of time sounds completely antithesis to that. I mean, doesn’t it take the joy out of reading to make it something you can fail at?

But here’s the thing about a reading goal: Even if you don’t read the number of books you set out to, you’ll still have read however many books you did read. My goal wasn’t there to stress me out, it was there to keep me reading. It encouraged me to pick up a book instead of turning on the TV or scrolling through social media. And with that goal in mind, I probably read more in the last year than I would have otherwise.

I’m not saying we should only set goals we know we can achieve or that we should avoid challenging ourselves just so we don’t fail, but too often, New Year’s resolutions can become twisted ways to be mean to ourselves, to pick apart all the things we don’t like and set about trying to fix them, all in one swoop.

This year, do yourself a kindness. Set a reading goal. You deserve something that will be good for you, no matter what the outcome.

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You Can Leave That Book Behind

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August 9, 2018
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Consider this the permission you’ve been waiting for: You can stop reading that book you hate.

Maybe you’ve been reading it the last few weeks—or months—but you’re having trouble finishing it because every time you pick it up it puts you to sleep after three paragraphs. Maybe the writing is too dense—or too simple. Maybe you find the main character obnoxious or the point of view is all wrong. Maybe it’s not a genre that interests you.

Maybe you just don’t like it.

At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. The “why” is irrelevant. You don’t like it. Stop reading it.

And I get it. It can be hard enough admitting that we don’t like a book, let alone putting it down and walking away. Could be a leftover habit from high school, when we didn’t really get a say in what we read or whether we liked it, when we had to finish books. (Although, let’s be honest, anyone who says they never took advantage of SparkNotes or CliffsNotes is obviously lying.) Could be that we feel guilty for not liking it, for so clearly not enjoying someone’s work that we don’t even want to finish it. But we don’t seem to have the same problem turning off a movie or changing the channel to a different TV show.

So what is it about books?

For one thing, books require more of a time commitment than a two-hour movie or a 45-minute TV show, so there’s the mentality that if we don’t finish a book, all the time we already spent reading it was wasted. (The solution to this one, though, is actually a no-brainer. If you already feel like you’re wasting time, don’t waste any more.) And because books are more of a commitment, our reluctance to step away from them could be as easy to explain as the age-old adage: Nobody likes a quitter.

But here’s the thing—books shouldn’t be a commitment. Outside of reading for work or for school, reading shouldn’t be an accomplishment or a task or a chore. It sounds lame and cliché, but reading should be fun.

Should your opinion really change and you find yourself regretting the decision to move on from a book, you can always go back to it. But until then, leave books unfinished—guilt free—and read whatever the hell you want. Whatever genre, whatever style, whatever author you like, so long as it’s just that: something you like.

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Adaptation Meloncholia

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July 14, 2018
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As an avid consumer of all things movies, books, TV, and music, I tend to keep myself fairly up-to-date on entertainment news—which of my shows are canceled or renewed or brought back from the dead; when a favorite author or artist is dropping a new book or album; which summer blockbuster hits the big screen when—so imagine my surprise when I click over to YouTube last week and I see Netflix’s new trailer for its small-screen adaptation of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

Not a press release announcing Netflix had optioned the movie rights, not a casting announcement or even a filming notice—the two-minute-long official trailer, complete with release date. And this was the first I was hearing about it.

Even more to my surprise, I didn’t feel excited. It wasn’t just concern about the quality of the adaptation; I felt disappointed, maybe even a little bit sad. (Maybe more than a little bit sad.)

I read To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the first in a trilogy, last summer. At the center of the book is 16-year-old Lara Jean, who’s loved exactly five boys in her life. Every time she fell out of love with one of them, she wrote them a letter, expressing her love and why she’d moved on. She sealed it, addressed it, and tucked it away for no one to find—until someone does and mistakenly sends all five out with the mail, delivering her private letters to the very people who were never supposed to read them. What follows is a sweetly romantic, wonderfully heartfelt comedy of errors that would only ever take place within the pages of fiction but is all the more magical because of it.

I liked it enough to run out and buy the sequel as soon as I finished it. It was sugar-spun YA fun, a perfect summer read, and Lara Jean—so patently human, endearingly genuine, and almost painfully earnest—was a narrator I loved spending time with.

So why wasn’t I thrilled to see her brought to life? As much as I loved reading about Lara Jean and her romantic mishaps, I wasn’t anywhere near as attached to her story as I was to, say, Harry Potter or the Hunger Games, and I was over the moon about the announcements of those adaptations.

But a book doesn’t have to be a favorite for us to feel connected to it, and unlike the Hunger Games and Harry Potter, no one in my immediate social circle had read To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I experienced it entirely alone, and Lara Jean’s journey—a very personal one—became personal to me as I read it.

Seeing that trailer on YouTube, a promo for the movie’s wide release, robbed me a little of that feeling.

Reading is, after all, an individual activity, even when we talk about it with our friends and family. What we imagine when we read—the way we imagine it, the way we react to it—all belongs solely to us, in that moment and after we close the book. Sometimes that experience runs so deep, so true, that we want it to stay that way—between us and the page—forever.

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Get Ready to Battle

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June 1, 2018
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Growing up with a librarian for a mom means attending 90 percent of the library programming for your age group (not that I’m complaining). Growing up with a best friend whose mom is also a librarian means spending a lot of time at those programs together.

So when that friend becomes a librarian herself and finds out the main city library is hosting one of your favorite programs from when you were kids but for adults, she signs you up without even asking.

Which is how, last summer, I came to participate in the first ever adult Battle of the Books in my area.

Not familiar with Battle of the Books? Take your basic bar trivia night and add a reading list.

Teams of 3-5 sign up to read a list of 6-10 books, then meet a few months later for the main event. The battle is usually three themed rounds—people, places, and events—during which you’re asked multiple questions about each of the books. The team with the most points at the end of all three rounds—and usually a bonus round—wins.

(Pro tip: No one is ever able to read the whole list and keep all of the books straight, so don’t even try. How you split up the books is up to you, but it’s a smart move to double up on readers for each of the titles.)

My team competed in another battle this spring, and we’re getting ready to sign up for a third in a couple of weeks. Between the two tournaments, I was responsible for reading five books I wouldn’t have otherwise read—two on my to-read list I had never gotten around to, and three I never would have picked up on my own. I’ve made three new friends (aside from my BFF, I didn’t know the other members of my team before we became teammates) and even taken home a third-place prize. (Humble brag.)

It’s not really about the points or the prizes, of course, so much as it’s about reading new books and—as corny as it sounds—having fun. It’s another way to interact with books that’s different from your average book club.

If you’re looking to challenge yourself to read more this summer—or you just can’t decide what to read—check out your local library and see what they have to offer.

After all, we may be done with grade school and book reports, but we’re never too old for summer reading.

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Books Were Made to Be Broken

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May 21, 2018
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When I was younger, I worried a lot about keeping my books in pristine condition. No bent spines, no wrinkled pages, no folded corners, and no torn dust jackets. I wanted my books to look nice, as if how nice they looked was a direct reflection of how well I took care of them, and in turn, how much I cared about them.

The first book I properly trashed as an adult was my hardcover copy of The Hunger Games. I bought it for myself on a weekend shopping trip a few weeks into my freshman year of college. It was a story I could read over and over again without losing interest, which is how I ended up carrying it in my backpack every day for the entire fall semester a year later. Because you know what couldn’t hold my interest? Anthropology. The Hunger Games was my cure for perpetual narcolepsy during the six hours I spent in two anthropology classes each week—in a class of thirty students in a lecture hall with seats for a hundred, there’s nowhere you can fall sleep where the professor won’t see you.

A semester spent at the bottom of my backpack wasn’t enough to ruin it, but it took the shine off. Scuffed the edges, dirtied the pages, ripped the jacket. And I was upset about it. This book I loved—that helped me survive the consequences of my misguided thinking that anthropology was the major for me—and I wrecked it.

I ended up carting that copy of The Hunger Games to and from school all four years of undergrad. And somewhere along the way, I stopped lamenting its sorry state. It wasn’t a wreck; it was a reminder. Not of a crappy semester when I took a couple of classes I hated, but of a semester when that book went everywhere with me. Because it saved me.

Use isn’t destruction. It’s a memory: The greasy sunblock stains in my copy of Persuasion a testament to the week I spent reading it at the beach; the chocolate smudge in my copy of The Fault in Our Stars evidence of the days I spent reading it on my lunch break. The broken binding in my favorite Eloisa James novel proof of the number of times my sister and I traded it back and forth to reread it.

My books hold a lot of value, but they aren’t valuables. They aren’t precious because they look pretty on a shelf and wearing them out doesn’t mean that I don’t love them.

It just means that I do.

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To Reread or Not to Reread?

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April 5, 2018
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That’s my question.

Because last weekend I found myself picking up a book I hadn’t read in ages—I got my copy at Borders, to give you an idea of just how long we’re talking—but that I must have read at least two or three times in the first couple of years after I bought it. It was on my mind because my best friend and I had just been talking about how much we loved it way back when—and still do.

There’s something about picking up an old book. It’s like putting on your favorite sweater. It’s cozy and comfortable; familiar. It’s worn in all the right places, and you know exactly how it’s going to fit.

But I—like many of you, I’m sure—have a reading list about 8,000 miles long, and there have been days when I’ve looked around at all the unread books on my shelves (my mother, sister, and best friend are all librarians; are we surprised I have a sizable collection?) and thought, “There is no way I’m going to be able to read all of these in my lifetime.”

That’s not even counting all the books I want to read that I don’t own. Or all the new books coming out every year!

Too many books, too little time.

So I can’t help but think: Should I feel guilty about rereading a book I’ve already read more than once? Granted, it’s been so long that reading it feels new, or at the very least, like a series of “Oh yeah!” moments, and as my mother says, reading is never a waste. But am I doing myself a disservice by choosing an old book over a new one? By leaving those unread books waiting even longer?

Hard to say.

All I know is, when I was curled up with that creased paperback Friday night (hot weekend plans, I know), reading the end of chapter one—a cliffhanger I already knew was coming—grinning like a fool and practically giddy with excitement, I just couldn’t bring myself to regret it.

Because what more can you ask for from reading a book?

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Exploring the World of Self-Help Books

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February 22, 2018
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Truth be told, even though I’m a librarian and read pretty widely, I haven’t really ever truly explored the world of self-help books. To me, they always seemed a little hokey, and also, who are these people that write these books? I mean, really. Lately, though, I’ve spent time gleaning tidbits from a few of the self-helpers, and though I haven’t become an evangelist of any one person or methodology, I’ve taken something away from each that makes the books worth mentioning.

My journey down this rabbit hole began when two friends invited me to join their self-care book club. As a mom, this concept meant something to me, so I decided to participate. Our first book was Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. I’m sure you’ve heard of Brown before. She’s given some pretty internet-famous TED talks, has written a slew of books, and has some sound advice to share. I dig her. What’s most interesting about this book is Brown’s ability to frame her advice so warmly and with acceptance. This book is for: people who struggle with perfectionism and people pleasing.

 

I may be betraying a bit too much of my own personal struggles with this next one, but hell, if I learned anything from Brown’s book it’s that being honest and vulnerable is a strength, not a weakness. In Food: The Good Girl’s Drug: How to Stop Using Food to Control Your Feelings, Sunny Sea Gold talks openly about the complexities of food issues that range on a scale from an unhealthy relationship with food to a full-blown eating disorder. Gold focuses mainly on binge eating disorder which has received a lot less media attention than either anorexia or bulimia and yet affects millions. This book is for: anyone who believes they’re using food to cope or who has body image issues. Bonus points for tangible suggestions for change and for posing thoughtful questions meant to encourage journaling and reflection.

 

Natalie gave me this one, and I’m so glad she did! It’s The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do by Sarah Knight. I’m sure you’re familiar with Marie Kondo’s tidying up book, and Knight’s take is a parody of that one. We’re talking mental clutter in this book instead of physical clutter, and Knight’s love of the word “fuck” is pretty perfect (and pretty Grammatical-Art-aligned). This book is for: anyone who has no fucks left to give and wants to laugh out loud while reading about how to be okay with giving zero fucks.

 

The books I’m exploring next: Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristen Neff, The Food Therapist: Break Bad Habits, Eat with Intention, and Indulge Without Worry by Shira Lenchewski, and You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero. Ever read any good self-help books? Do tell!

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Life’s Too Short to Read a Bad Book and Other Advice for Reading with Kids

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February 13, 2018
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It’s no secret that at Grammatical Art, we’re huge book lovers. Look no further than our “I Heart Books” totes, tees, and prints for evidence. Our book-obsessed leader Natalie has blogged about her massive reading list from 2017 (read her posts here, here, and here for some awesome recommendations), and she has lofty goals for 2018.

As a former (and still passionate) children’s librarian, I’m an advocate for putting books in the hands of kids. The thing is, not just any old book will do, and that’s a misunderstanding that a lot of people have about little kids and reading. I’m not implying that the only acceptable literature for children has a gold seal on it; award-winners are great, but not necessarily for everyone. So I’ve put together some guiding principles for choosing books for the children in your lives.

Here goes:

  • Make reading fun and loving. Try not to ever force a child to sit down and read, especially one under the age of five. Choose snuggly moments and good moods to introduce books rather than mid-tantrum (I’m exaggerating, but you get my point). If they resist you, try another book or try another time. It’s totally okay.
  • Follow the child’s lead. Are they currently mermaid obsessed? In an all-dinosaurs-all-the-time phase? Find books that relate to their interests, and they’ll be more inclined to enjoy them. The same is true of adults, right?
  • Try to flip through a book yourself first before you hand it to a kid (or read reviews of it online if it’s lengthy). This has absolutely nothing to do with censorship (another post for another time) and everything to do with making sure the reading level and material is on par with the child. The artwork might be too scary, the book too wordy, or the content way over the child’s head. You get to be the gatekeeper as the adult. After all, don’t we do this for ourselves when making book selections?
  • It’s perfectly acceptable to start a book and not finish it. It’s also perfectly acceptable for your child to be more interested in holding and playing with the book than reading it, or in the case of older children, flipping through to look at specific pictures or read only certain passages. For kids (especially little ones) the majority of their experiences are new. They’re getting to know what a book is and how it works. All of this is building literacy and it has nothing to do with reading a book cover to cover. Embrace the play!
  • Graphic novels, comic books, ebooks, and audiobooks all count as real books (yes! really!), and they absolutely enhance and develop literacy skills just as “traditional” books do. I can send you research if you’re curious, but I just want to say it once and for all. Adults: they all count. Now let’s move on.
  • Model reading for children. Kids want to be like the important grown-ups in their lives. They want to do things just like you (it’s true!). If they see you reading and enjoying books, they’re more inclined to want to read, too.
  • My cardinal rule for every person in the world: LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO READ A BAD BOOK. You, too, grown-ups! If a kid is disinterested in the book, who cares? Chances are they may come around later (hours, days, weeks, months, years, whenever!), but if they never do, who cares? There’s always another book. Let go of your completion attitude, and let the book go. Forcing children to read something (in a non-school setting, of course), that they hate is only going to make them hate reading and books. Let the book go. Life is just too short. Some books just aren’t that interesting, aren’t that well-written, aren’t that colorful, or aren’t right for some odd reason, and that’s perfectly okay.

We’d love to know what your favorite books were as children. Maybe they’re still your favorites today? How do you go about choosing books for the children in your life or for yourself? Are you guilty of having a completion attitude about books?