A reader must experience a true interest in reading through his or her own feelings and in his or her engagement in the story. Any reader can experience this. Gerald Graff believes that any good book should derive from a hobby or field of interest not something that is assigned in school because it brings more joy out of the reader. According to Graff, he “began to learn the rudiments of intellectual life: how to make an argument, weigh different kinds of evidence, move between particulars and generalizations, summarize the views of others, and enter a conversation about ideas.” Enjoying a book should help one create these certain thoughts and strike up a conversation. A few examples are when I read The Kite Runner and The Diary of Anne Frank.
The Kite Runner, was very captivating. I could not put the book down. I had to keep reading it until I was completely finished. This book illustrated the life in the slums of Afghanistan. It brought to life a true story as seen through the eyes of the writer. It dealt with the pain and struggles of a much oppressed people during the emergence of the Taliban. I was thrilled when my teacher decided to make this book a project due in the beginning of the year in high school. The project involved illustrating the thesis of a theme which was love, at times foreign to the reader, found within the story. The project allowed me to broaden my thoughts and leave my comfort zone to discover more creative ways to share both the author’s theme and my feeling about the book and its storyline.
Like Graff said, one must be interested in a subject to create a perfect argument in something you enjoy no matter the circumstance. He believed that it was better to be “street smart” than school smart. “Street smart” is when one is smart outside of academics in their field of interest. With that in mind, I realized my teacher in high school wanted her students to be reading things that were of interest to them. She chose a wide array of books that dealt with different subjects to allow for a diversity of interests. The books chosen came from an assortment of genre from science fiction to autobiographies and everything in between. I chose the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
The Kite Runner helped me bring my point across for the theme I chose because I was allowed to do a project about something I personally enjoyed reading the most in high school. The class was encouraged to ask questions at the end of the presentation regarding the book and its theme. I knew I would be able to project the essence of “my book” with great confidence. The author was successful at reeling the reader into the depth of the story. The reader “felt” the emotions felt by the main characters of the story. Thanks to my teacher who allowed our class to bring “street smart” into the class by reading a novel we enjoyed and presenting our interest to an audience of our peers, we were all able to share our admiration of our liking in books.
The Diary of Anne Frank is an autobiography about Anne Frank through her diaries. Her story is about how she lived her life hiding from the Nazis because she was Jewish. She had to hide in a closet behind a bookcase and was never found and captured. She knew her enjoyment of writing was the only thing that could keep her alive. This novel helped me grasp her feelings as a young child hiding herself from others with her family and friends in her town.
The novel about Anne Frank brought much interest to me due to the background and the compelling story about a young girl who was my age, at the time, going through struggles about her religion. I definitely could not put the book down because to these reasons. Due to the descriptiveness, it allowed me to understand Frank’s feelings and see how she felt during this period in her life, which contributed to my interest in this novel. My curiosity of this novel brought me to think more in depth about the history of that time. I researched many different stories that were written during the time of the Holocaust and the capture of the Jews by the Nazis. Soon after, I was told that I was to do a book report and I chose to do it about The Diary of Anne Frank. I made sure I brought a lot of history into the report because I was also learning about it in my history class. I knew I wanted to give it some more detail because I was very interested in this subject. I wanted to bring a point across that I enjoyed this book. I wanted to make sure that my teacher would let the class do more projects like this in the near future.
With the wise words of Graff and his opinions on finding interests, reading can be found outside of the classroom. Schools cannot force students to be fond of something through their teachings. Students must find what they enjoy through anything that strikes their eye. It can be found in many ways and forms through magazines, newspapers, and/or a small book. With that in mind, everyone has different interests in the way they read or the type of subject to read. The only way for someone to really enjoy what they are reading ties into how engaged one is through feelings and engagement of the book. This allows everyone to be educated to strike up a conversation and to make an argument. Without reading something one is interested in, no one will be able to bring up a discussion and there will not be many different types of interests.
