My first assignment for my (very promising) Reading and Reading Practices class is to write my “Reading Autobiography.” It’s a fairly informal assignment, so I thought it might be beneficial to tackle it in a non-academic context. I find that I write very stodgily for papers, so blogging it out might be beneficial, and if not, I’ll at least have a decent base that I can rewrite later.
Anyway, off we go.
Though not quite readers themselves, my parents are both the sort of people inclined to like the idea of a child with a book. As the first girl born into a large extended family, I was inundated at birth with all the basic toys and amusements, of which books held no more or less than their fair share. Based on later conversations, I don’t believe that either of my parents had closed conceptions of child-rearing at the time of my birth; both were open, ready, and willing to spend time with their firstborn in whatever manner I chose. It was my mother, a former physiotherapist, who I spent most of my earliest days with, and while her romantic notions of family life would have lead her to approve of reading to a baby, she would have equally approved playing with toys or dolls or any other activities an infant might enjoy. We had all the time in the world, and it was used quite variously until one interest seemed to surpass the rest and dominate our regular playtime. As it happened, that interest was books.
Countless photographs, baby books, and my mother’s copious notes trace my love of reading back to a time before I could possibly have been conscious of the words or their meanings. Perusing my mother’s comments, I was shocked that her first observation that I loved “books more than anything” was recorded before I was six months old. I said that my parents are not readers exactly; to clarify, my dad was a student, reading texts for necessity or information, but neither read for pleasure, and aside from a battered Chronicles of Narnia set and my mother’s old Shakespeare compendium from college (both of which I would discover later in life), the only books in the house were mine. Luckily, however, it doesn’t take an enthusiastic reader to be an enthusiastic parent. Having thus identified such a joy in their daughter’s life, both my parents saw to it that this interest was nurtured. Relatives loved to buy me books, and I was read to every night before bedtime (and most likely at multiple intervals during the day). My mother would point to each word on the page, emphasizing a connection between the printed book and the spoken story. When left to play on my own, I would “read” the books to myself, flipping the pages while talking along in the untranslatables of infancy.
Having emphasized so far the amount of attention I received as a child, due equally to my parents’ good natures and my then-status as an only child, you may be surprised to know that when I did learn to read, neither of my parents noticed! Though I never lacked for reading material, we were not so wealthy that every book in the house had not been read hundreds of times. Before I was three years old, it was common practice for me to read the bedtime book aloud to my mom or dad, reversing our former arrangement. Since by that time, I had memorized a large number of stories and songs, both parents assumed that I knew the books by heart as well. It wasn’t until a few months after my third birthday that my parents bought me a brand new book: Elephant on Skates. The book itself was fairly unremarkable; I belive it’s out of print now, and the only thing I remember about it is the first line: “Edmund was an elephant on skates.” They gave it to me to look at on the ride home, intending to read it that night; however, both were shocked when I immediately read the entire book by myself.
Learning to read at such a young age was not so advantageous as it could have been. Aside from my parents and grandparents, people persisted in giving me “age-appropriate” books. So, while I was immersed in Ramona, and The Boxcar Children, others gave me picture books with the objects in them labelled. Early classrooms lacked any books I found interesting, and on more than one occasion, teachers barred me from reading the books I wanted, because they were assumed to be out of my league.
Additionally, my parents’ lack of reading material became a more noticeable hindrance as I grew older. Though I discovered and devoured their Chronicles of Narnia set at a young age, I had nowhere to turn for guidance in what to read. My parents remembered sporadic classics from their own childhoods: Mom gave me Charlotte’s Web, while Dad found his old copy of The Hobbit. However, despite these efforts, series fiction dominated most of my childhood. I raced from Ramona to Nancy Drew to Enid Blyton, and all the way through Gordon Korman and Paula Danziger. These are some very fine series, many of which I have reread as an adult and still enjoyed very much. However, when I tried to continue into popular young adult series like Sweet Valley High and The Babysitter’s Club, my reading stalled. In elementary school, I had been able to find books that were funny and adventurous and fantastical and true, but entering Junior High, it was hard to find books that weren’t vapid, repetitive depictions of early teen life. I needed something more, but nobody knew what to tell me.
For one reason only, I’ll always remember Christmas when I was twelve. That year, I received a book from my Grandma, bigger and thicker with smaller words than I’d ever seen before. It was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and I loved it immediately. Since Elephant on Skates, I had read and reread many books, but none of them affected my life the way Jane Eyre did. Reading Jane Eyre was like learning to read a second time over, because it opened up the world of literature in a way I hadn’t thought existed. Not only were the characters interesting and thought-provoking, but I’d never read anything with such mature poetic language before. My mother read it too, and together we started to read through the classics. From Jane Eyre we went on to Great Expectations (which we didn’t like), Wuthering Heights (I liked it, she didn’t), Les Miserables (we both liked it, but I was bored by the war and skimmed those sections) and our beloved Jane Austen. Both at two and at twelve, encouraging me to read essentially meant sharing in the experience, whether by reading to me, providing me with materials, or giving me someone to talk to about my favourite subject–books.
Once Jane Eyre opened the door for me, it never closed again. Finding one book meant going down a rabbit hole of books by the same author, similar books, books influenced by and from that book. By the time high school came, I knew a bit about what the literary world had to offer, and I was actively seeking out more of it. Nowadays, I choose books almost instinctually; I have constant queues of books or authors I’ve read about or heard about. Occasionally, I’ll read something that I’ve been drawn to for no reason that I can pinpoint. I’m not interested in specific genres or forms, so long as it contains interesting ideas cleverly expressed. I generally know, if not by the cover blurb, within the first few pages if a text has anything to say that I would enjoy hearing. If you asked me why I read, I wouldn’t know the answer. I know that it’s not because it’s fun, though it is; and it’s not because I’m learning, though I am. I believe five-month-old Amy, who loved her books more than anything, might have had her reasons, deep down in some intangible place.
But of course, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you.
