My Reading Life

I have always loved words. When I was younger, I enjoyed discovering new words and using them voraciously. I used to get a kick out of learning the obscure meanings to words. In first grade, I would get high marks for handwriting. Not because I practiced endlessly but because I enjoyed seeing the words I “created”. It was exciting. And when these magical little words combined in a great story, I was hooked! I used to love reading both books and song lyrics.

Then there was Ms. Cooley, my second grade teacher. We had an awesome classroom library that was always at our disposal. She encouraged us to choose books we enjoyed reading and taught us which books were best for our level. I loved sitting in the comfy chairs and reading from these little gems.

As an only child, books were often my best friend. I learned all the “girl stuff” about growing up from a book that I read until the pages came loose from the binding. I could relate to the characters lives and imagined life in their world. As a kid, I loved going to the library and can clearly remember my first library card.

Like a great song, I can connect great books I have read at certain points in my life. For example, reading “ The Autobiography of Malcolm X” in summer camp after starting to formulate an awareness of the civil rights era and the black consciousness movement. I remember reading “ I Know This Much Is True” by Wally Lamb during a period of extreme anxiety and indecisiveness about my future after grad school. I remember reading “The Great Gatsby” for the first time on vacation in Houston. And reading “The Good House” by Tanavarie Due while visiting my grandfather in Florida.

In college, I was a Anthropology major and I read articles, books, and essays laden with theoretical discourse. And I rarely read much fiction. I began to think that fiction was not comparable to the type of information you could learn from informational text. I thought it was basically a waste of time.

But somewhere in grad school I turned to fiction as a “mental” escape. I was bored with the nonfiction format. It was predictable and felt static. It was the text format not the text that bored me to tears! I loved learning and felt I was intellectually expanding but I needed something more. It was then I began really “reading” literature. I was searching for the same excitement, thrill, and connection to stories I felt when I was a child. And I found what I was looking for. I became an avid reader of literature and have been hooked ever since. As a reader I believe I have evolved. It took different experiences, personal and educational, to become a reader who can, at most times, balance any type of text. Reading online has become an extension of that. I can google as fast as my mind skips subjects and skim read for any purpose. I can find fast answers to propel my thinking forward or I can linger on a page and dig as deep as I want. I guess I am still evolving…(Thank goodness.)