On Reading

Like most children my age, my first encounter with books came in the form of my parents reading to me at night. I loved it.

I remember one book in particular. It was one in a set of children's books. Each book in the set had a different color on the binding. This one was purple. It had some fantastic stories in. I remember the Teeny-Tiny Woman and a poem about a Crooked Man. Those are the only stories I can remember from it today, but I do remember that I only wanted to be read stories from the "Purple Book", as my sister and I called it. Thus began my love affair with books.

I remember my mother taking me to the library around the time I turned four or five, and getting my first library card. I would check out as many books as I could carry. When I got home, I would sit down and read every single one of them that very day. I would then reread them until it was time to return the books, and I would repeat the process all over again.

By the time I was in the first grade, I was a reading fool.

(I should mention here that I repeated the first grade because of my age. I started school a year early and my new school didn't like the age difference.)

At the second private school I attended we would have reading contests where we would list all the books we read on a piece of paper that our parents would sign. At the end of the grading period, whoever read the most books would get a coupon for a free pizza from Pizza Hut.

They would give the child a piece of paper that had three, maybe five, lines for you to list books that you read. Most kids looked at it and thought, "I only have to read enough books to fill this up." I, however, needed a piece of notebook paper to staple to it every week. Of course, most books a first grader would read probably didn't have more than twenty pages in them and had a lot of pictures too. In the end, I got a free personal pan pizza from the Hut every nine weeks.

I couldn't stop reading...until the day that I realized I was going to be required to read a specific book for school whether I wanted to or not. It was probably in the fifth grade when that kicked in. Suddenly, my love for reading was being stifled because I was being forced to read something whether it was interesting or not. It was no longer fun; it was work. I had to take an analytical approach to what the story meant, instead of just enjoying what the story was.

This completely destroyed my desire to read. I became rebellious about reading. Most of the stories we read in the private school had some sort of religious overtones to it. Those were pretty easy to interpret when you have four church services, and five Bible classes every week. I did actually get to read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe there, but that was the ONLY fantasy type story they allowed in a Baptist private school. Somewhere in the next few years, I was able to get my hands on the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia.

My eighth grade year we could no longer afford the private school, and I entered the realm of the public school system. I found that the public schools weren't as strict as a private school about what you read, but I was still being forced to read something just because it was on list of "Great Novels" that some snooty people put together fifty years ago, not because it was relevant to our generation.

I dealt with it; I read what I had to read, took my quizzes, and passed my classes. I did not, however, read for enjoyment anymore. No one told me I could still read what I wanted outside of class.

The ninth grade is where I met my first real battle with the required reading system. This teacher was hell bent on making us read books that seemed to be a hundred years old just because they were on the state approved list, and she liked them. Probably because it was published when she was still a teenager.

Jane Eyre was the first book. It was my nemesis. I couldn't get three pages into that drivel without wanting to shove an ice pick in my temple. I finally decided I had had enough. I refused to read that book. Every day, we'd come to class and have a multiple choice quiz on the section we were to have read the night before. Every day I guessed on every question. I don't think I ever scored above 40% on any of them.

The book was to have been read in about three weeks or so, and we had one final test on it. I failed miserably. At the three week mark, I had a grade of 32 in that class and was failing. At the end of the grading period, I had a 72 and passed. To this day, I don't know how I pulled that off, but I must have done a hell of a lot of extra work and read whatever the next book was. After that, I went back to dealing with it instead of narrowly passing.

Sometime between my freshman and junior years in high school was where my love for reading was rekindled. Not because my teacher made me read that piece of crap The Great Gatsby (her favorite book), but because I found some new stories that inspired me to read again.

One day, at my neighbor's house, I noticed some books that he had and showed an interest in them. He let me borrow them, and some of them he outright gave to me. I began reading Piers Anthony, Isaac Asimov, and Steven Donaldson. I couldn't get enough. Suddenly, I found myself caught up in the love of reading again.

I met a few people at school that also read books other than what was required by a teacher. It soon became clear to me that very few people did this. You were a nerd, geek, or dork if you read because you like to read. They introduced me to the likes of Douglas Adams, Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman.

At one point, my father asked me to live with him, but when he discovered what I was reading, he told me that I would have to quit. (Religious folk.) Although, it was not the reason I stayed with my mom, it certainly wasn't something I was going to give up.

I bought and borrowed books as fast as I could read them. Science Fiction and Fantasy became my favorite genre. I slowed down on books when I discovered comic books. Soon, comic books became too expensive (another story for another day), and I let that drop off.

The real world started encroaching on me at some point. I was reading Lord of the Rings when I met the woman of my dreams. I think it took me 5 years to finish those books. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing; I was just otherwise preoccupied.

Life happens, and things change. Sometimes we get caught up in those things, and we lose sight of what really makes us happy. Recently, I realized how happy I can be, and one of the many things that makes me happy is reading. I am again reading at a pace I haven't matched in almost ten years, about 300-400 pages a week. I recently began reading Stephen King for the first time. I am excited about where this will take me again.

In the end, my point is that reading doesn't have to be a chore. It's all about finding something that you or your children want to read. I feel that reading is an extremely important part of a child's life. Unfortunately, not enough parents encourage it. They don't have time to go the library, they take their kids to the video game store instead of the book store, they put them in front of the TV instead of putting a book in front of them, and they don't make time to read to their children at night.

We have to let people find their own passion when it comes to reading. I don't care if it is trashy romance novels, crime novels, history books, science books, comic books or even Jane Eyre. When your children tell you that they want to hear a story out of the "Purple Book", listen to them. Let your child and yourself find your "Purple Book" and start reading. You may light a spark that will burn for the rest of their (or your) lives.

-A.W.C.