It occurred to me today that, sometimes, you have to persevere.

I have been, for about the past ten years, an avid reader. Of course, as an English teacher with nineteen years under his belt, you would’ve thought that I would’ve been an avid reader for much longer than that. For me, it was always a question of enjoyment.

Then, about ten years ago, I set it as my goal to read all of the works of Stephen King. At the time, King was among a half-dozen authors that I’d read whose works I’d ever actually enjoyed. That journey took me about eight years. I enjoyed every minute of reading all of those books.

During that time, the path was simple. What books have I still not read? Get a copy. Read it. What books have I still not read? Get a copy. Read it.

And then, one day, I was out of books.

And while King is still writing books, he certainly doesn’t write them as fast as I read them and I needed something else.

So, I tried some Pinterest lists like, “What To Read If You Love Stephen King”, or “Stephen King Recommends…” (whether or not he actually ever did), or “If You Love ‘Carrie’, You’ll Also Love…”.

That worked for a little while. But I wasn’t on a clear path. It was piecemeal work, and I often didn’t like what I was reading (even though someone on Pinterest swore that I would).

You see, I work with a guy, a fellow teacher in the English Department, who is a voracious reader. He’s read more books in the last two years than I’ve read in my life. He and I often talk about what we’re reading with each other, and I swear that he finishes a book every two or three days. I can’t keep up with that! I’m jealous of that kind of speed, since I happen to be very particular about my reading –> I will often read passages over two or three times just to fully understand them (no, I’m not a dunce) and I enjoy making sure that I’ve gotten everything off of the page before I turn that page.

The other thing about this fellow of mine that makes me jealous is that he can read anything and seem to enjoy it. He could seriously read about the lifetime development of a character’s skill in basket-weaving and find that to be ‘just riveting’. I’ve taken some of his reading recommendations before, and it’s a crapshoot for me, reading what he recommends.

For me, if it’s not enjoyable, it’s drudgery.

As any good English teacher knows, you do a student a terrible injustice by forcing them to read something that they don’t want to read –> especially when the student is supposedly to have the choice of their book. English teachers should encourage their students to abandon a book, twenty pages in, if it feels like a ‘no-go’, because it’s more important for students to establish a love of reading than it is for them to establish a commitment to the drudgery of finishing something that you’ve started.

Anyway, back to me (if you haven’t read many of my blog posts, it’s all about me).

At some point, probably during my childhood when I didn’t have the rights to keep it from being done to me, I was indoctrinated into this philosophy of ‘if you start a book, you must finish it’. It’s probably the primary reason why I spent so long –as an adult, when no one was forcing me to– not reading.

And, it’s the reason that, still to this day, I have to finish a book once I’ve started it.

It drives my wife nuts, when I start a book that is awful and I complain about it and she tells me to quit the book and get something else, but I don’t.

For, you see, I am on another path and I have to walk this road that I’m on.

About a year ago, I decided to commit to reading all of the Hugo Award winning books. In case you’re not familiar, the Hugo Award is given every year to the year’s best science fiction novel. There are seventy-some of these books, with a new one added every year, to make the task seem more Sisyphean.

Now, the way that this particular reading path is different than the one I was previously on should be obvious. With only a few exceptions, I am reading a different author every time. Heinlein is on there multiple times, and certain other authors have appeared multiple times, but most of these authors are only on the list once.

Right now, I’m stuck in the middle of a four-hundred-page novel that has not been very enjoyable at all. But, I’m on this path, and in my way it lies.

And I guess, here’s what I’m getting at.

Sometimes, life is a drudgery, a struggle, an amount of toil for which we hardly seemed equipped and through which we would never volunteer to go. But, we are –each of us– on a path. The path for me, through the glorious meadows of Stephen King township, was lovely and wonderful and I look back on it with a fondness. The path for me now, as I continue to try to make myself be interested in an interstellar war brewing between two different trading companies, is hard.

Such is life. We must persevere.