Can you remember the first book that made you cry? Perhaps one that caused you to laugh uproariously when you were alone (Confederacy of Dunces, a book one really should read aloud with a friend or spouse)? Or one that really incited your anger (To Kill a Mockingbird)? I don’t know that I can pinpoint the first book that rankled me, but I’m always a fan of a book that can spark strong emotions in me. And, for the record, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway was one of the first books that pierced my heart and caused me to borderline sob over the death of a character. Those are the good kind of emotional responses to a book or story for the most part, the ones that invite you in and then wreak havoc with your feelings.
This is one of the reasons I absolutely love reading aloud with my teenagers (I wrote another post about this habit we have continued from when they were young). Reading aloud with people in your life is a shared experience that knits hearts and souls together in a special way. My husband and I still reminisce about a road trip to visit family when we read Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris and laughed to the point of tears again and again. And again.
Reading together invites an intimacy you can be hard pressed to find in other ways. Not only do you get to share in the story’s journey with its highs and lows and the characters’ emotions, but you get to discuss the plot, the writing, the conflicts, the characters. For me, there is nothing quite like the sharing of a story together; not only do you get to delight in the tale, but you have the opportunity to learn about yourself and the person(s) with whom you are reading the story because you get their immediate reactions to the action and characters.
As part of our unschooling days here, we are currently making our way through Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell and we are loving it. Well, mostly. Or we were until this afternoon when Rundell had the audacity to kill off a favorite character. Mind you, I admire a writer who is willing to make that kind of choice. My two teenagers, not so much, at least not with this particular writer and this particular story. As the chapter led to the obvious demise of this beloved character, the emotional outbursts became more frequent and a bit louder; my younger teenager announced she would quit the book if the character died, admitting she was mostly kidding.
With this particular tale we have agreed to continue and have lauded the writer for the growing intensity with each turn of the page. There have been times in the past when the emotional impact of a book was too great and we have had to take a collective breath and I’ve opted to put a book aside. It’s one of the perks of unschooling my teenagers; they don’t have to read a book that hits too hard and they are not ready to process through. Fortunately, these pauses have been few so far. Typically I have a pretty good read on what I think they can handle (pun intended, by the way).
We have been to Mars (A Rover’s Story) and we have been to a family summer camp to uncover hidden treasure (The Firefly Summer), visited a hotel and met a mysterious countess (The Hotel Balzaar), and taken many other adventures together. Always, I keep my finger on their emotional pulse because while good books should challenge us and spark an emotional response from us, even a good book shouldn’t upset a reader to the point of pain or shutdown. And we get to make that decision together because we get to have a conversation around what caused their response and gauge whether continuing is possible or detrimental.
Again, that’s one of the gifts of reading together. We truly get to see parts of those we love in a different and sometimes deeper way. We get to confront hard topics or ideas together. We get to consider a perspective outside of our own. We get to acknowledge and process emotions that rise up in the face of fictional challenges that can feel pretty real in the moment. When my husband and I read together, we have conversations that fall into categories outside what we might typically talk about. Likewise, I get to experience those things with my teenagers and there is nothing more heartwarming to me than living out a story together, both our real-life one and the fictional one unfolding before us. Because in both we are just that—together.