NoveList May 2009 RA News: Here's teacher David Carr on the importance of reading books that are outside your comfort zone:
Throughout the term, I estimate that at least half of the class was reading in a genre they had not encountered before. The importance of this exposure in their experience was emphatic: the value of a class in RA or popular literature is not only about the books we read, and the tastes that require them - it's about the breaking-through (giving up snobbery, forgetting English Literature, remembering how to read like a child) that even enthusiastic readers may require in order to pick up something new and challenging to our assumptions.
Throughout the term, I estimate that at least half of the class was reading in a genre they had not encountered before. The importance of this exposure in their experience was emphatic: the value of a class in RA or popular literature is not only about the books we read, and the tastes that require them - it's about the breaking-through (giving up snobbery, forgetting English Literature, remembering how to read like a child) that even enthusiastic readers may require in order to pick up something new and challenging to our assumptions.
One of the novels his class read was The Buckskin Line by Elmer Kelton. That's a choice sure to be applauded by someone in my family who shall remain nameless but who is stuck in the western genre.
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