I frequently read a paragraph two or three times before moving on to the next one. The thought that I might have missed a word or not fully envisioned a description will nag at me until I go back and reread.

Well, while it's a great way to be immersed in YA or thrillers or trashy romances I read, it was NOT good for studying chemistry in college (can't gulp paragraphs of that, had a hard time figuring out how to read SLOWLY), or anything that's all about the literary/writing/words....needless to say, I rarely read fancy books. :) Or as Javachik said while I was talking to her the other day "So, for you reading 'The Help' is practically literary?" It's true.

it was NOT good for studying chemistry in college (can't gulp paragraphs of that, had a hard time figuring out how to read SLOWLY), or anything that's all about the literary/writing/words....needless to say, I rarely read fancy books. :)

I can read the other way, and perhaps even take joy in it, because I was a literature major. However being a literature major made me realize that "liking stories" was actually not a good reason to be a literature major. I would have been much happier as a history major, I think, given how much I liked my history classes, and the parts in the english classes where we learned about history.

I can catch the literary words, as meara says and all that reading immersively, but I DO slow down a bit if I am researching.

And manuals and physics and such, I have to study -- I read quickly, but not immersively.

My non-fiction reading style is vastly different from my fiction style. In fiction I'm after an experience, entertainment, some kind of thrill--literary, visceral, whatever. With non-fiction, I'm after information that I can integrate into my personal databank, so I'm looking for a different interaction with the words. Wit and style are necessary in fiction, but too much of those can get in the way with non-fiction.

All right, I have finally joined Goodreads! Be my friend if that is a thing that should happen.

I'm glad to see my not-so-secret plan to get everyone to join Goodreads is working.

So, I have an assignment for class. I must choose and read a book (fiction or non-fiction) related to grief and bereavement.

Her suggestions: Making Rounds With Oscar, Winter Garden, The Help, Watering the Elephants, Any Jody Picoult Book, The Notebook, Bed Number 10

I will admit to being skeptical of this list. Anyone have any ideas?

Isn't The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion supposed to be very good?

It was quite good. Her newest book, Blue Nights, I believe, is supposed to marvelous dealing more with her grief over her daughter's death.

C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed is excellent (and a much deeper howl of grief than the rather remote title would suggest--he was simply absolutely determined to clearly see and name his own grief while he experienced it, because language was how he coped with absolutely everything) and also a pretty fast read.

If children's/YA is acceptable, there's always Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia.

Gloria Naylor's Mama Day doesn't dig into the grief until the last quarter of the novel, but it's wrenching and gorgeous.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, most definitely not for everyone (it was emphatically a big harrowing yes for me, but I'm a freak), but oh is it filled with sorrow and bereavement.

And Maxine Chernoff's 1991 novel Plain Grief (reviewed here by Hilma Wolitzer) is excellent (I recall liking it more than Wolitzer did, but she did like it quite a bit, and her review does a great job of quickly running through the complex narrative and all its varieties of grief).