Teaching English 1001 for LSU-Alexandria requires that I read many of the essays in our text. Of course, I have to read the essays assigned for the course, but I do occasionally read other essays simply because I need to absorb written words.
Tonight I spent a couple of hours reading the assigned text. While doing so, I wrote notes in the margins analyzing the essays and highlighted passages that I want to discuss with students. Imagine my surprise when I read Anne Fadiman's essay, "Never Do That to a Book." It's an interesting essay in which Fadiman divides readers into two distinct groups: courtly lovers, who treat books with overzealous respect, and carnal lovers, who make books their own by writing notes, underlining, etc.
Have you figured me out yet? I'm a carnal book lover but only when I'm reading one of my own personal books and only when the book is a text book (or my personal Bible) and I need to be able to see my notes and the text together. It's so helpful to me to have the note RIGHT THERE, where the literary device is. I love big white space--all that room to take notes is wonderful.
I've said many times that I'm a wolf reader, meaning that I wolf down words, all words, as though my appetite can't be satisfied. Gobbling them up as though someone else will eat the words before I do. Others may be able to relish books, tasting every word, reading slowly and methodically, but I could never do that. If I have an hour or a day or even two or three days to read, I want to read as much and as many books as I can wolf down. After all, there is always another book waiting, another by a favorite author, another part of the series, another author yet undiscovered. How anyone can read as though time will never end, I can not fathom.
I suspect that heaven carries every manner of books, that we'll be able to read as part of our adoration of God, but I also suspect that Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Wharton, Eliot, and the rest are also still writing. Thus, while I can read for eternity, how can I ever read it all?
In the end I've discovered that I'm a carnal book lover with a wolfish appetite! How would you describe your bookish self?
I mentioned on Pin It Weekly that one of my friends has a small shop offering letter shirts for college students. The majority of her business comes from Greek organizations, mostly from Phi Mu. 
Except I sewed the letters on the first two shirts in the wrong order! TWO letters! backwards! Arghuhhh. Rip, rip, rip half the night--knit does not play nice. Resew the correct way and work on the other items. The delivery person had to pick the order up at my house to make her appointment; it was that close!
So yesterday I went to check on my broken friend and encourage her before seeing the surgeon. More shirts. And a couple of jackets. And a couple of blankets. Hmmm, I have such a tough time saying "no," especially after I've already said "yes."
College classes in our area either just started or are starting this week--that is, provided that they are not in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. While we're hearing a great deal about the flooding in Houston (and well we should) there's not much being said about the surrounding areas, some quite a distance away. 
I've said many times that I'm a wolf reader, meaning that I wolf down words, all words, as though my appetite can't be satisfied. Gobbling them up as though someone else will eat the words before I do. Others may be able to relish books, tasting every word, reading slowly and methodically, but I could never do that. If I have an hour or a day or even two or three days to read, I want to read as much and as many books as I can wolf down. After all, there is always another book waiting, another by a favorite author, another part of the series, another author yet undiscovered. How anyone can read as though time will never end, I can not fathom.