The Giver lives in Our Town

In Mrs. Vavra's sophomore American Lit. class, we gathered into small groups and read certain plays from the past century during our "20th Century Theater Month." My group read Thornton Wilder's obscure play "The Skin of our Teeth," in which Sabina and a host of other colorful characters crash historical events on the stage. Many people don't know this wonderful play, because many have only heard of Wilder's more widely known play "Our Town," which semi-inspired "Dogville" (the movie by Lars Von Trier, starring Nicole Kidman). Anyways, so right before I left L.A. I found a copy of "Our Town" for a quarter (oh I how I love thrift stores in L.A.---I miss them already) and decided I'd add it to my summer reading list (a list I have laughably yet to really even officially start).

So now I'm reading "Our Town," and it is simple but lovely. It may seem strange that I'm reading a play before I go to bed, as it's not your typical Mary Higgins Clark or Dan Brown summer fiction reading type-of-a-book, but for me---honestly---I love that I'm finally getting to read it and so many other classics like it because I feel like I robbed myself back in high school by sliding through and hardly reading a thing! If it weren't for Miss Smith, my senior year A.P. English teacher, I might have even escaped high school having not read "Hamlet!"

But back to books I'm reading or have been reading: "The Giver" by Lois Lowry...I skipped it in 5th grade but came across it recently and said "I need to read this Newberry medal award winner!" and so I did, and again it made me so happy. I don't know if I would've appreciated this book or many others for that matter, had I read them when I was "supposed to." So perhaps now is my time---as the writer of Ecclesiastes would probably agree---and today is the day when I will see the beauty in so much literature that I blindly and foolishly scoffed at during my early childhood years.

So here's to a summer reading list sprinkled with bits and pieces of the classics! And by the way, don't be surprsied if I start quoting famous dead literary geniuses and turn into a high school english teacher by the end of July. As you all know, I tend to get caught up in whatever it is I'm currently reading and someeeetimmmes take my happiness a little too far.