Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, & Nazis

Recently, Josh and I watched The Reader (Oh the glories of Netflix), for which Kate Winslet won the Oscar for Best Actress in 2008. While I’m not sure she deserved the Oscar (Let’s face it: The Academy was still embarrassed for overlooking her performance in The Titanic. Idiots. Kate was the only redeeming aspect of that pathetically sappy movie.), I very much enjoyed the film. The first half of the movie is basically just Kate and David Kross naked, either sleeping together or reading aloud together. But in the latter half, it was refreshing to watch a film that portrayed an employee of the Nazi regime as complex - maybe evil, or maybe just naïve. But it was the reading together thing that caught our attention. We are both avid readers, but have never read out loud to each other or even read the same book simultaneously and discussed, like an uber-exclusive book club. Josh reads his books (i.e. theology, Asian history, the occasional Graham Greene novel) and I read mine (i.e. Russian lit, indie fiction, Harry Potter). Sure, there are recommendations made while riding the T, opinions offered at the dinner table. But overall, reading is a pretty autonomous activity in this relationship. However, The Reader got us to thinking (and not just about the ethics of Nazi camp guards who couldn’t get a job anywhere else). So this weekend, we started reading aloud to each other from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. We should probably be a tad humiliated that a) we’re reading such a short book and b) neither of us had read this classic before. But oh well. It’s been a fun read, despite already knowing the gist of the plot – so much so, in fact, that we read aloud three chapters this weekend while suffering sore throats. We’ll pick a longer book next time.