How would you characterize your life as a reader?
I asked my students today what memories they had of reading or being read to as a child. Many of them had no specific memories of this. One said she remembered her mother singing to her but not reading to her.
I have lots of memories regarding books. When I was five, I was in the hospital, and my mother brought me a Little Golden Book. It was the story of the Largest Turnip. She read it to me, and when I was older, I read it many times over. Even today, I can still see the picture in my mind--all the village people lined up one behind the other, trying to pull the giant turnip from the ground.
A few years ago, I found a copy of this book at a garage sale. I've since passed it on to some little folks.
When I was nine or ten or thereabouts, I was in the "horse story" and "dog story" phase of my reading life. I can picture the low shelves in the children's section at the Fraser-Hickson Library on Grand Avenue in Montreal, where I spent many happy hours. Jim Kjelgaard's Big Red, Irish Red, and Outlaw Red were among my favourite dog stories. Those books were my friends.
From the same library a few years later, I remember a book with a bright pink cover: Put Your Best Foot Forward. It was a book about how to be a teenaged girl: how to put on lipstick, how to act around boys, how to kiss. I can see the line drawings that were sprinkled throughout the book. I guess I needed some help.
Then for a few years, there was a large Black Hole in my life as a reader. I stopped reading for a few years. Fiction anyway. I thought it didn't have anything to do with me. It was made up stuff that wasn't true.
That wasn't true. One day a friend recommended a book to me. It was by Robertson Davies. The title was Rebel Angels. I saw myself on every page. Every character was me. Every incident was my life. I came back to fiction.
Then in university, I kept putting books on my To Read list and kept telling myself as soon as I was finished reading everything I was supposed to read for my courses, I'd read the things I wanted to read. I think I'm still working on that list!
Now, I'm an eclectic reader. Something here, something there, and I'm talking about my house--there's a book here and a book there--by the bed, on the coffee table, in the kitchen, and yes, next to the throne.
Currently, I'm working on:
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (more on this anon)
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky - it's slow going
Les Dimanches de Julie by Sylvain Trudel (a French-language young adult novel)
Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper
The Christian Faith by Michael Horton
Easy Spanish Reader
PLUS a variety of other language learning books (Spanish, Latin, and French) from which I am working on numerous chapters, exercises, and translations.
What about you? What's your autobiography as a reader? What precious memories do you have about books?
I had completely forgotten "The Largest Turnip" but when you described it, it all came back - thanks for that! I loved that book. I have so many that I loved as a child, then teenager, etc. One of my most memorable, perhaps, was a book called "Megan" by Iris Noble, published in 1965 and I probably read it in the late 60s or early 70s. I loved it so much I decided that if I ever had a daughter I would call her Megan. So I did. Of course, by the time that occurred Megan was such a popular name, but it wasn't when I first read the book.
ReplyDeleteyes, "the largest turnip" ~ i too can vividly see the long line of townsfolk helping to pull up that giant vegetable!! as a pre-teen, i was captivated by the 'sue barton' series: she had adventures as "sue barton, student nurse", "sue barton, army nurse", etc. oh, they were thick books with faded blue-grey covers ... then a more modern series of 'cherry ames' nurse books gobbled up all my free time. i remember the first book that made me cry (at 12) - "the hunchback of notre dame" ...
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Grade 5 or 6, maybe 7 too, it was Nancy Drew. The bright yellow spine of the books, the very smart looking girl detective on the cover--we all wanted to be her! My friend, Brenda, had them all. I think I borrowed hers. At that time, they cost $1.29 each.
ReplyDeleteI remember Sue Barton and the blue-grey covers. I remember the first page of -- maybe it was Cherry Ames -- the scene was the nurses' graduation ceremony. Cherry or one of her classmates got up from her chair to go forward to get her nursing diploma (maybe the black stripe on her cap) and her nylon (stocking) snagged on the chair. I can't remember but someone -- Cherry or her classmate -- saved the day by stopping the run. It's a little fuzzy now but I have thought of that scenario many times over the years.
As a youngish adult, I cried when I read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.