Reading Across Genres II

I always enjoyed reading for school and tended to get in trouble for reading ahead of where we were in class. In high school, I only remember not liking one assignment: Romeo and Juliet. I just thought, "These kids are really stupid." I was actually disappointed, because R&J is hyped as this uber-romantic story, and I didn't get it. (I've studied it several times since and can honestly say I understand and appreciate it better now than I did in the 9th grade, but I still don't like it. I really enjoyed the visual style and contemporary reworking of R&J in the Leonardo DiCaprio film version, but still didn't care for the basic story itself. I had a similar reaction to Wuthering Heights in graduate school; I thought Heathcliff and what's-her-name were both awful and deserved each other, but the story just wasn't romantic.)

I didn't read for fun AT ALL in college. In fact, I added a second major in English since I was so busy I figured I'd never get to read otherwise. I took all kinds of classes and really liked everything. In graduate school, my classes included SF, African-American Lit, Muslim Women's Writing, and Shakespeare. I really liked them all and didn't want to pick one era over another for my thesis; fortunately, a great topic jumped out at me, and I was able to write about two very different novels with a common theme.