I don't always like to think about it, but lots of us are heading back to school--elementary, middle, high school, college, and the school of life. It's all a never-ending adventure in learning when you are enamored with literature. But, this time of the year sets a tone, makes me remember that I need to pursue my course of reading and thinking (regardless of whether a teacher is standing over me).

But, oh, think of those days...

Do you remember all of those first days of school? Every year, I'd get that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Then, after a few days, the school routine would kick in... What are your memories of heading back to school? In An Old Man's Thought of School, Walt Whitman writes,

"An old man's thought of school,
An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.
Now only do I know you,
O fair auroral skies--O morning dew upon the grass!
And these I see, these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,
Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the soul's voyage."

Join our discussion: Back-to-School Memories. Then, take a look at how to succeed in literature. And, read How To Study.

What do you recall? What about your learning experience do you never want to forget? And, how do you continue learning? Do you consciously make an effort to read and learn every day?

Alex Haley was born on August 11, 1921. And, he was to go on in acclaim as the writer of scripts and novels. He's most famous for Roots, which was awarded the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize in 1977. Haley once said: "What Roots gets at in whatever form, is that it touches the pulse of how alike we human beings are when you get down to the bottom, beneath these man-imposed differences."

Some events, or books or people have a way of bringing us all together in ways the extent of which are difficult to pin down or define. We know that some books are just phenomenons. They touch us to the core with a universality, and they stand the test of time.

Everyone has a definition for a classic (and many "great books" become classics) but what is your definition of a "great book"? How do you differentiate "great" from "good"? Have you read many books you've considered great? Or, do you believe that every book partakes in the greatness that is literature? (Some readers refuse to say that they've ever read a truly horrible book). What's your take?

I love night! There's something about the play of light and shadows--the sometimes almost-perfect silence... until the crickets start their song. I love the spots of light: fireflies flashing back and forth in the gathering darkness, the lights off down the road (or on the hillside. Night is filled with mystery, and it's all about the unknown/unknowable--the unseen.

The coming of night, the sounds of night, and the dreamy quality of experiencing the darkness are all part of literature. Night is that period from sunset to sunrise. The darkness sometimes seems to engulf everything with gloom or despair (or perhaps just the reflective feel). Read on:

• Night - Percy Bysshe Shelley
• She Walks in Beauty - Lord Byron
• Meeting at Night - Robert Browning
• Voices of the Night - Henry Wadesworth Longfellow
• On the Beach at Night - Walt Whitman
• The Night Journey - Rupert Brooke
• At Night - George Edgar Montgomery

Discover the literature of night.

Orson Scott Card once wrote: "Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any."

Do you ever see something happen and say: "That would be a great story... or poem... or novel." Or, do you see something happen, and remember an episode in a novel." In everyday life, we see examples of universal experiences. We see the stuff that writers have used as fodder for the great novels in literary history. Do you ever compare your life to the universality of fiction and poetry?