It might not seem like it, but I like Gertrude Stein's books. I have Frederick looking somewhat ridiculous a lot of the time too, but he's still one of the four great heroes in my life. Stein once said that she wrote things "by ear" rather than by sight, and that makes for some unique moments that you can open yourself to. Find a copy of Ida somewhere and just read it to yourself for a bit...

Now, what is inevitably going to happen is that you'll remember some past high school English teacher reading Faulkner aloud with that sense of enunciation and emphasis that exists nowhere outside of a high school English classroom (mercifully). But push on through that, and let it do its thing, and it's really quite neat. Here, I'll just flip to a random paragraph and you can give it a shot!

She really did not get up in the morning. She wished that she could and they wished that she could but it was not at all necessary.

Oh, and by the by, thinking about English class, if you never saw this Fry/Laurie sketch, it's pretty wonderful. As a teacher, I'm always just a couple of steps away from it, really.

- Count Dolby von Luckner