During the summers when I was growing up in south central Illinois we would visit the library at least once a week. The closest decent library was about a half-hour drive from where we lived and it would usually be accompanied by a grocery store trip or Wal-Mart trip. My siblings and I (all four of us) would check out a stack of books each to take home for the long, lazy Sunday afternoons when nothing was on TV (we didn't have cable) and a Cardinal game wasn't on the radio (I still miss you, Jack Buck).
Being the youngest of four I was an impressionable girl and wanted to read what my brother Andrew read. Andrew read Steven King. A lot of Steven King. (I think he's read just about every Steven King book out there.) But, being 8 years younger than Andrew, my mother wouldn't let me read Steven King as an 8- to 10-year-old. I ended up reading a lot of Little House on the Prairie ("Farmer Boy" rocks!) and the Love Comes Softly series because that was what my sister read and she's much closer in age to me.
It wasn't until I started high school and started watching Star Trek that I developed an affinity for Sci-Fi and Fantasy writing. I would also try to read more Literature than my high school classmates because I didn't want to give the 3rd book report on John Steinbeck's "The Pearl" during same English class. I read some Ayn Rand -- and didn't understand it -- and I read some George Orwell -- that I love to this day -- and I read these things to be set apart from my peers.
While in college I always said I was a big reader. I even stayed in undergrad an extra year to earn a BA in English. But I found that after getting done reading my assignments for school, all I wanted to do was veg out in front of the TV and let my brain rest, not read something for enjoyment. This proved to be an error on my part because then I stopped reading as much. I would turn to the television for my entertainment instead of making my mind work to imagine the situations described by authors in text. Let's face it, I got lazy.
Don't get me wrong. I still read stuff. After undergrad, and watching the second Lord of the Rings movie, I decided I would read the LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit and I finished all four books in about three months. Not shabby for Tolkien. But then I went back to school and had to read a lot of intense historiography (read: boring nonsense) and primary documents that really took the wind out of my sails for enjoying what I read.
Then I had the opportunity to work in a library and talk about books with patrons all day long. It rekindled my love of reading and made me want to explore new stuff and new Literature. When I got to Library School I promised myself I would try to read one book for pleasure in the midst of all the other reading I had to accomplish and I didn't do too shabbily at it.
Now I honestly enjoy reading and am reading different stuff to what I've tried before. I read Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" in over the course of about two weeks and even recommended it during a job interview. I'm reading a biography of John Adams that's taking a long time but that's mostly because it's 600 pages long and I'm reading a fiction book, too (Raymond Chandler, you're my detective author crush).
All in all I've learned that, while you can't force reading, you should really try to engage in something you enjoy even when you're stuck reading something that turns your brain to mush (I'm looking at you Peter Novick).
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