How did you become a reader?

[delphipsmith]

Recently over on GoodReads, someone started a discussion on "How Did You Become a Reader?" and kicked it off with the following three questions, to which I have added a fourth:

1) Do you remember being read to as a child?
2) Do you remember when you first realized you love to read?
3) Have you always liked to read, or is it something you developed later?
4) What are some "firsts" in your life as a reader?

I had a lot of fun thinking about these questions and my own history as a reader, and since so many of us here on LJ are avid readers, I thought I'd share with y'all. I'd love to hear your answers as well (if you answer over on your own LJ, leave a comment here and let me know so I can find it!).

I don't remember ever not being a reader. Mom was an English teacher and librarian so there were always books at our house. We went to the library A LOT and I was always allowed to take as many books as I wanted. (Our first trip to a bookstore was quite traumatic, apparently, as I did not like being limited to only two!).

Mom read to me, and later to me and my brother, until I was in my teens -- he was five years younger than me so it was quite a challenge finding something that suited both of us! I remember The Hobbit, The Paleface Redskins, Half Magic, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle...

Sometimes Mom would insist that I go outside and get some fresh air...so of course I would go outside with a book. My favorite thing to do was take a bag of apples and two books and climb a tree. I would sit in the tree happily reading for easily a couple of hours.

My parents divorced when I was really young, like about two, so for years I would go spend two weeks with my dad every summer. My stepmom had three kids when they got married; I was a pretty shy kid and they didn't like me much, or I thought they didn't, though more likely it was just that we didn't have much in common because...THEY DIDN'T LIKE TO READ (gasp). So every summer I took two suitcases, one full of clothes and one full of books. One year I didn't bring enough and had to read some of them twice.

The only time I remember mom taking a book away from me was when I was ten or eleven and I got my hands on her copy of The Godfather. Probably a good idea, I think it's a bit much for a ten-year-old. Although the best thing about books is that, unlike movies, if a kid runs into something they aren't ready for, they probably simply won't understand it or be able to picture it, so it just goes right past them.

The first book I actually remember reading was Lloyd Alexander's The High King. The first book I remember getting as a gift is Bambi, when I was about seven. The first book I remember eagerly awaiting publication of is Silver On the Tree -- I'd recently discovered the series and had zoomed through them, and was horrified to discover I would have to actually wait for the last one. I think that was my first introduction to the idea that books weren't some kind of natural resource -- they didn't grow on shelves like apples grow on trees, but had to be made -- written by a real live human being and then printed and bound and shipped and so on. (The logical corollary, which I arrived at almost immediately, was People Write Books + I Am A People = Therefore I Could Write A Book. I haven't yet, but I haven't given up on it either.) The first nonfiction book I remember reading is Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man, about her research with chimpanzees in the wild. The first book that actually changed how I thought about life was Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Growing up, I never went anywhere without a book, even if we were just running to the grocery store or the gas station. This is still true today; just as some people won't leave the house without putting on their makeup, I feel undressed if I leave the house without a book. They have been and continue to be the best of teachers and friends.

Comments

[nocturnus33]

I don’t remember stuff from my childhood as much as I would like too. But I do know that reading was an important thing in my life. I attend in an awful “pink-Floyd-like” school, and whan I was little I thought that I was a slow reader. In parallel to my schooling experience, I was a good reader. Never a good student. I read to avoid the awful shadows of dictatorship, I read to avoid my parents crumbling marriage and my Darwinian school system. My dad used to be a journalist and he travelled a lot. He always brought a book for me after his travels. He use to invite me to Valparaiso, we went in a train. He and I, both bought a book or a magazine, and read all the way to the beach. We went to have ice-cream and, guess what?, we each read our book. The bonus point was that my little sister was left behind (Awful, but at age 7 it was lovely). My grandmother had 28 grandchildren. I was number 20 but very close to her. She always thought of me as the scholarly one….even if I was a very poor student. She told me stories, read books and took me to book buying trips. So reading meant two things for me: a safe place to escape the world and also affection. I soon learn to day dream about the characters, my very own fanfiction world  to scape shit.
I used to get a monthly allowance of $1000. Every month I went to buy a book form “Billiken” collection. It was a small, hard cover, red classics tittles for young people. The bus to the bookstore cost $100. Each book cost $800. So, I spent all my pocket money in just one trip to the bookstore. I love their hard cover, their pictures and the fact they had footnotes from the editor and the translator. It makes me feel so grown up!
Little women saga and most of Alcott’s novellas were my favourites. I re-read them several times. I think they also had a complex world, a war, and have family difficulties –their dad away from them. The promise of the world regaining their balance and the hope of a “happily ever after” was very comforting to me. My being a teacher is modelled after Jo March. My ideas of alternatives education were sow by Jo March’s Plumfield School. My wanting to be “knowledgably” was partly Alcott’s fault.