How I Became a Reader

Over on the Book View Cafe blog, Sherwood Smith describes her journey as a "passionate reader" (her phrase). She writes how a babysitter brought over a book that ignited that passion:

The story was everything I wanted: kids with no parents, girls getting to adventure as much as boys, no drippy patriotic or moral message in that inimical fifties way of “do what I say, but if you do what I do you’ll be in trouble,” funny stuff as well as action.

I suppose every one of us who loves books has a story. Here are some tidbits from mine. I'd love to hear yours, as well.

I am of an age when kids were expected to learn to read at school, usually in 2nd grade or so. Also, for some reason, I never went to kindergarten (and no one I knew went to preschool, not that my family could have afforded it). I got dumped into first grade with no prior school experience and spent the next couple of years absolutely confused. Reading was opaque to me. I remember struggling with the word "laugh." I just could not translate those letters into anything like a familiar word.

Then in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grades, I was given a discarded reader (3rd grade, I think). I remember the brightly colored pictures and stories I wanted to gobble up. The fairy tale about the hill of glass, and excerpts from books like Understood Betsy (the chapter where she and Molly get left behind at the fair and have to make their way home). These memories are mixed with the rocking chair in which I sat and the sun streaming through my bedroom window. I learned to read that summer because reading gave me entry into wonderful worlds, places I wanted to be, and people I wanted to know more about. I dove into the books on my own shelves. I think that by the time I entered 3rd grade, I was reading and a 5th or 6th grade level.

So what did I read in 5th and 6th grade?

Anything I could get my hands on!

By this time, I was checking out library books and snatching books from the shelves of the classrooms. I read Black Beauty and Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island  and Stuart Little and Dr. Seuss. And anything with horses or dogs in it: The Black Stallion and the Albert Payson Terhune books featuring collies (Lassie -- the original version with Roddy MacDowell -- was very popular). It wasn't until high school that I tackled Crime and Punishment and then discovered Andre Norton, my gateway drug into fantasy and science fiction.

I don't remember how I came by that reader, but I am so grateful to whoever it was.

How and when did you fall in love with books?

End Of The Year Reading

The winter holiday season has always seemed to me to be a good time to strike out beyond my usual

reading preferences. Maybe that’s a relic from the childhood years when adult relatives would give me the books they thought I ought to enjoy, whether these were ones I would have ever thought of selecting for myself. And many were treasures indeed. So here are a few, genre and not.

Top of the list is the book I’m currently immersed in, An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. It appeared on our To Be Read Bookshelf. I have no idea where it came from, perhaps a box of books from one friend or another, left with me when they departed for another continent, to be read and passed on to the library book sale. I suspect I delayed so long in cracking its cover because it looked pretentiously “litrary” and is written primarily in present tense. I’m only reluctantly willing to tackle present tense, although given sufficient motivation, I settle into it nicely. To talk about the richness of characterization or the layers of story is really to say nothing at all about the book. What captured me and held me firmly was the wonderfully inventive, detailed description of how professional musicians – in this case, the protagonist being second violin in a world-caliber string quartet – experience classical music. After eight years of piano lessons, I have a glimmering from my own experience of what it’s like, but the book takes me right into the heart of chamber music, of the intense love and hate affair between a highly skilled musician and his instrument, and of the relationships between people who play together. Into this, Seth weaves stories of love won and lost, of rivalries and misunderstandings and sheer bloody-mindedness (the characters are British, don’t you know). The music is the real star, the living heart of the book.

WWW Wednesday 4-10-2013

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently reading: Charles de Lint’s Muse and Reverie: A Newford Collection. I love de Lint’s work. A couple of paragraphs into each story, some undefined tension in me sighs happily and lets go. I suspect it’s the effortlessness of his craft, or maybe just that I read his prose with a different part of my mind than I write my own. I’ve long given up trying to analyze why this is so.
I’ve been overworking these past few months, so I crave refreshment of the spirit. At bedtime I’m slowly savoring my way through The Book of Words: Talking Spiritual Life, Living Spiritual Talk by Lawrence Kushner. Kushner (there are two – the other is Harold) was my introduction to Jewish mysticism. I re-read Honey From the Rock every few years and get even more out of it. I find I sleep better and am kinder and yet stronger during the day if I enrich the gentle transition to sleep. I read a little in Hebrew to signal to my brain that this is now a time of rest, a sacred time. Then I switch to English because although I can sound out the words in Hebrew, I’m very, very far from fluent in it. I read:


Blessings give reverent and routine voice to our conviction that life is good, one blessing after another. Even, and especially when life is cold and dark. Indeed to offer blessings at such times may be our only deliverance.

… and my spirit gives that sigh of relief, just the way my writer’s mind does when I read de Lint. No matter what sorrows the day has brought, in this moment they are over. I can rest easy. Tomorrow I will begin the struggle anew.

Recently finished reading: For fun and delight: Sherwood Smith’s Blood Spirits; Kage Baker’s In the Garden of Iden (which I think is the first Company novel), a novel-in-beta-form by Juliette Wade, a rising star in science fiction, For Love, For Power. And at night, Ethics for a New Millennium by the Dalai Lama. It took me a long time to read the latter, as I wanted to let each thought sink in; small bites, small moves.

What I’ll likely read next: I’m up for more Molly Gloss, who is a terrific writer; maybe The Jump-Off Creek or rereading The Hearts of Horses. I’ve been saving Carol Berg’s The Soul Mirror and now’s a great time. I have the next Dobrenica book, also several Caitlin Brennan/Judith Tarr novels. And if life gets too crazy, I can always dive into the next Sookie Stackhouse. For bedtime, maybe rereading Jonathan Sacks To Heal A Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility or Elyse Goldstein ReVisions: Seeing Torah Through A Feminist Lens. Or Mary Oliver’s poetry, which always speaks to me.