shh, don't tell my students

It all started with a comment on Facebook.

A friend of mine from my student teaching days made a comment about how she would rather read "Heart of Darkness" than do x, y, or z. I retorted with, Is that as bad as reading Old Man and the Sea. Which brought on her next comment that started it all. She said: "English Teacher Confession: I've never read OM&TS!"

So we started a list of books we had never read, but as English Teacher probably should have read. It's a big embarrassing, really. Here are a list of classics that my friend and I (and, a few of our teacher friends, including my Department Chair!!!) had never read. [I was most shocked that my Department Chair had never read The Crucible and it's part of the 11th grade curriculum! In her defense, she's never taught 11th grade, but still, somehow in my mind she should have read it. Oh, and in case you're wondering, no, I've never read The Crucible.]

Today I started thinking of a list of books that I would be embarrassed if my kids knew I had read. Valley of the Dolls would be number one. The long list of Mary Higgins Clark books I've read, the entire summer I devoted to reading each and every John Grisham book printed up to that very moment, the winter I read, one right after another of Janet Evanovich books, the seasons when I devour like a fine meal Jodi Picoult books. Shameful.

But then in my mind, I began to defend these books (except for Valley of the Dolls, I don't think I could ever do that).

I was a terrible reader growing up. My third grade teacher ridiculed me for not being able to smoothly and effortlessly read aloud. I hated reading. All until I met Mary Higgins Clark.

My first Mary Higgins was Let Me Call You Sweetheart. I adored that book. So did my sister. We begged our mom to take us to the library to check more out and one by one we finished them all. Mary Higgins taught me how to love reading. Not Charles Dickens (whom I have never read), not Judy Blume, not a Bronte, but Mary Higgins Clark.

Certinaly there is nothing wrong with authors like Clark, Grisham, Evanovich, and Picoult. They tell a compelling story. My beef is, they've found that compelling story, latched on to it, and refuse to let go.

I learned quickly that each Mary Higgins Clark book would end the same. The killer was nearly always someone you met in the first 20 pages, and the female protagonist would live happily ever after with her young daughter. Picoult has written the same book at least 3 times, but I read each one of them. These authors have found something the public wants, and they ride that wave. Can you blame them?? I'm sure they see the dollar signs just as well as I do when I pick up their hardback latest bestseller for $30.

But somehow these authors seem like literary sell-outs to me. Which makes me think, in their time were Hemingway, Dickens and the Brontes sell outs? Did their audience feel the same way?

With that in mind, I'm off to finish Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, which I picked up for $30 yesterday.

Damn them.