an imploration for summer reading lists

"Writing is being murdered.  But the solution isn’t [writing] blogs, the solution is more reading. We don’t pay taxes so kids can talk about themselves and their home lives."  

--William H. Fitzhugh, on college students' increasing inability to write long term papers

S U M M E R E A D I N G :

Give yourself permission to read,
to be "unproductive" for a minute,
or two,
or many,
and read exactly what you want to read without worrying about yet-to-be-done "to-do"s.

Give yourself permission to write,
to spend hours alone with a pen or a keyboard.
Let your thoughts carry your words,
and for heaven's sake don't worry about who will read it or if your spelling is correkt.

The world (and your task-oriented self) would say reading is unproductive:
you aren't making money reading,
you aren't creating a product,
you aren't cleaning.

THIS is the grand lie.
The grand lie of our generation specifically.

These things: money, products, cleaning:
they're all mirages anyways.
Perhaps mirages for happiness,
but most especially mirages for fulfillment.
When you begin this endeavor, you will find this.

You will find that reading, writing, aren't unproductive at all.
You will find, actually, that you do not have enough time to think about all the things you want to think about,
to write about all the things you want to write about,
to read about all there is to know.

Your mind will be filled with interesting problems,
interesting words, richer words,
new ways for looking at old things,
and deep deep channels of thought.

Become a person of more substance.
I'd say that's pretty productive.

What are you reading this summer?