Reading Anne Rice in New Orleans

I have almost finished The Witching Hour and was in New Orleans when I last spent time reading.  It was amazing to be able to put street names and sights to the books.  The Garden District is incredibly beautiful, and the cemeteries are so much more impressive than in photographs.  I can now better imagine the Mayfair tomb, as well as the one in which Petyr van Able was trapped!   If we had been there longer, I would have gone to see the Lafayette Cemetery and the Pontchartrain Hotel, but not seeing them this time is a good reason to go back.  

We spent a couple of hours in the New Orleans Museum of Art.  It has a wonderful selection from different time periods as well as incredibly good food in the cafe.  Neither have anything to do with what I'm reading, but they were too good to not mention. 

We drove to New Orleans from Pensacola, so we also got to walk on the white sand beaches described in the books.   We did not go into Destin, but I can at least picture the beautifully clear Gulf water and the beaches.  I-10 was a good drive from that direction, but I don't recommend I-10 east of New Orleans!  

Enjoying Anne Rice and noticing author's craft

I guess I'm still in teacher mode, or maybe it's because I've read this book so many times, because I'm noticing all of the foreshadowing that starts in the early chapters.  As a writer of poetry and short stories, I have never had to plan the way that Anne Rice clearly does.  It's only because I know this book so well that I notice the complexity of the details and the coherence of those details throughout the book.  Right now, I see writing a work of fiction like this as complex as playing chess with experts. This makes me admire my favorite authors so much more.

This also makes me question, once again, education's thoughts about classics and popular fiction.  Pride and Prejudice is a favorite of mine, but it does not have the complexity of The Witching Hour or The Stand, so why do so many English teachers talk about popular fiction with disdain?  (Not that I would teach The Witching Hour in a high school class.  But I see no problem with students reading popular fiction that doesn't describe more about sex than I would have wanted my daughters to read as teenagers.)

I also enjoy the natural incorporation of high-level vocabulary.  I didn't realize how rich my vocabulary is until an AP student asked me if anyone actually uses the words that were on one week's vocabulary quiz.  All 15 words that week appear frequently in novels that I read for fun.  This student is an avid reader, but it appears that she either doesn't look up unfamiliar words or does not select books that stretch her reading level.

Even though my brain is still in teacher mode, I am thoroughly enjoying reading for pleasure.  Even though I notice things like foreshadowing, I am not thinking about how to teach it! 

Back to Anne Rice and summer relaxation.

Now that I've started to think about work less, I am moving away from playing video games and back to reading.  As happens most summers, I'm starting out with an old favorite so that I can read leisurely and not rush through trying to find out what happens next!   I could probably recite all of the key events of The Witching Hour by now, but that doesn't change how much I love reading it.

I think this is one of the main differences between an avid reader and a reluctant reader.  It is difficult to convince some of my students to read even a short poem more than once.  They feel that they have extracted all that they can after one cursory skimming of the text.  I often stop in the middle of a really good book and read a sentence or a paragraph multiple times because it is so beautifully written.  Luckily I am married to a man who does not mind me demanding, "Read this sentence.  Isn't it good!"   Whether it's a sentence written by one of my favorite authors or a sentence in a student essays, I love a good sentence the way I love the first flowers of any kind each year.  (Right now, the gladiolas and daylilies are competing for my admiration.)

The one change, and one that I apparently made the last time I read this trilogy, is that I am having to read the book on my Kindle.  Even with my reading glasses, the print book looks like the fine print on a medicine bottle!   I guess it's a good thing that I didn't throw the appointment reminder from the optometrist away.  But back to reading.... and gardening... and enjoying life without a bell schedule.