My love affair with books began before I could read and certainly before I could write.
I grew up in a household of readers. It seemed to me that everyone always had their noses in books. My grandma, who lived with us, often had her big Bible open on her ample lap and other reading materials (magazines and books) open nearby. My grandma was a wonderful storyteller, and she did professional “readings.” She memorized things like “The Gift of the Magi” and performed them at churches and grange halls and many other places. (Somewhere in the house, I have some of her old books with the pencil markings of what to memorize.) My greatest regret is that she died before the ease of recording arrived on the scene. I remember sitting near her chair, listening to her stories with rapt attention. I just don’t remember the stories themselves.
Anyway, since I was surrounded by readers, I wanted to learn to read too. On that momentous first day of school, I had one goal in mind: to learn to read that day. But something awful happened. They didn’t teach me to read on that very first day. I went home and told my mom I wasn’t going back. Why bother if they wouldn’t teach me to read?
Fortunately for me, quitting school at the age of six was not an option. I did go back and I did learn to read. See Spot Run.
Learning to read was the best thing that could happen to this girl’s wild imagination. (Click to tweet!) Yes, I was great at making up stories on my own, but oh my. The places books could take me.
I still own some of the paperbacks of my youth. I’m surprised these things don’t just crumble in my hands when I pick them up. I lost my complete set of Trixie Belden books many years ago (I loved those books!!), but here are the ones that have managed to safely travel with me from childhood to teen years to married life to motherhood to career woman to grandmotherhood and a total of 12 moves.
Irish Red by Jim Kjelgaard
National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
Hobby Horse Hill by Lavinia R. Davis
Old Bones, The Wonder Horse by Mildred Mastin Pace
Golden Cloud, Palomino of Sunset Hill by Leland Silliman
Champion Dog Prince Tom by Jean Fritz and Tom Clute
I also have some very old copies of Pride and Prejudice and Gone with the Wind and Count of Monte Cristo and The Red Badge of Courage, and a few others.
Books are a part of the fabric of my life. I have given away hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of books and yet I still have hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds on my bookshelves, shelves in every room of the house, of course.
I am so very grateful for the advent of digital publishing; as of 4/5/2013, I owned 996 Kindle books, and they take up no shelf space at all. Fabulous! (The graphic at right is all too true of me.)
The designation “drama queen” wasn’t around in the ’50’s and ’60’s, but it would have been a good description of me as a kid. I had a vivid imagination in my childhood, and I loved to perform.
I was ten, in the fifth grade, when the storyteller in me discovered the fun of entertaining others with words. I spun a tale about how my mom was born in a covered wagon while coming west. Even in grade school I loved studying history, and here in southern Idaho a person can still see the ruts from the wagon wheels in the Oregon Trail. That made it easy to slip into that place in my imagination to weave my tale. I had no idea that down the road I would write many stories set in the Old West. All I knew was that my friends loved to hear my stories.
I became what I call a compulsive writer. I can’t recall ever thinking, “I want to be a writer when I grow up.” I just wrote. Wrote and wrote and wrote. On scraps of paper and on binder covers and in tiny diaries with those itsy-bitsy sized keys. When I wasn’t reading a book or pretending to be a horse or entertaining in one form or another or fantasizing in my head, I usually was writing something. It was part of my every day world.
What about you? When did your love affair with books begin? How have the stories you’ve read influenced the person you are today? Are you a compulsive writer too?
~robin
Your grandma sounds like she was quite a lady and it sounds as if her legacy has lived on in you, Robin.
I started reading in Kindergarten and remember Clifford the Big Red Dog being among some of the first books I read. My mother was the reading influence in my life as I don’t ever remember my grandparents or my dad reading very much other than a newspaper. I do remember that my mom, even in lean times, would try to get Weekly Reader books to grow our home library – and I think she may have a few of those books still around somewhere.
I guess one way that the books of my past influenced who I am today would be that when I was young I would sit at the top of our staircase next to a bookcase full of encyclopedias and read for hours. Although the internet has pretty much been the demise of the printed encyclopedias of my childhood, I still love to learn new things and am always using the internet to satisfy my curiosity on any number of subjects.
Another thing I would account to that childhood influence would be my love of mysteries. I remember going to our old Carnegie Library when I was in elementary school and hiding away in a little nook…the small hallway by the bathrooms…with a stack of Nancy Drew books. (Libraries weren’t as kid friendly back in those days.) A good portion of the books I read have that element of mystery/suspense in them.
I never was much of a writer. It was about all I could do to write the journal entries required of my HS freshman English teacher and the papers for my college English Comp classes. I don’t balk as much as I used to with writing and have actually written a few things in my adulthood.
Oh, you brought up another memory, Jenny. Sitting in a shadowed part of the library and reading my new finds.
I don’t remember not being able to read. I do remember my mom reading to me and my dad reading the Bible and teaching us Scripture as a young child. I was also blessed with an aunt that loved to read and had all her childhood books to lend me. I read Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden, The Hollister Kids, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Cherry Ames. Loved them all. I was also fortunate to live close to a public library during my grade school years. It wasn’t uncommon for me to go at least once a week and bring home as many books as I could fit in the wire basket of my bike. I would read them all & repeat! I discovered romances and sci-fi/fantasy in my teen years and still love to read both genres! I still love to read out loud to my kids =)
Stephanie, I wonder what it is that attracted so many of us as young readers to the mysteries. I loved them!
First of all I want to congratulate you on your website. I love it and it’s very easy for me to read, thank you so much. I’m very near sighted and have “baby” cataracts and some of the web pages I want to check out I can’t because of the dark background and the text that makes reading it an impossibility for me. I love your books.
I loved your blog post. I don’t remember my grandmother reading as she ran a boarding house and always seemed to be busy cooking and cleaning. The book that turned me on to reading, though I did move away from reading for a time, was Charlotte’s Web. I was in third grade when the teacher read it to us in class and I was enthralled listening to it. Not too long after that while participating in a Bingo game somewhere with my parents and sister I got a Bingo. There was a table with wrapped gifts, everyone attending had brought something to give away, I saw what was obviously a book so I picked it as my prize. I was absolutely stunned and thrilled when I took off the wrapping to find a copy of Charlotte’s Web. I don’t know how many times I read it but I still love it to this day. My next experience was probably when I was in junior high, though I don’t remember for sure, when my mother handed me a copy of Tom Sawyer and told me to read it and give her a book report on it. I’m guessing I needed to bring up my school grade or something, I went from it to Huckleberry Finn and Life On The Mississippi. In later years, once I was grown, while living in Birmingham, AL, back in the mid 1970’s I actually read through an earthquake. I was sitting on my bed reading when my mother interrupted to ask if I heard the loud boom and felt the house shake. I answered in the negative and was surprised when she told me what it was. I was somewhat doubtful until I remembered that she had live in San Francisco in the late ’40’s so she knew when an earthquake hit. The next morning the newspaper had a huge bold headline of just one word EARTHQUAKE!
If I win I’d love the newest book about Mail Order Brides, sorry I don’t remember the exact name and I’m afraid to go back a page in case it wipes out my comment. LOL Please forgive me.
Oh yes, Robin I forgot that I wanted to tell you I’ve got 599 books on my Kindle. I’ll never read some of them because I’ve gotten them for my granddaughters and others I’ve started and didn’t really like. I do have some of yours that I will read eventually. One thing I like most about the Kindle for PC app that I have, along with my Kindle Fire, is that the great majority of books I have I obtained for free and I continue to add to the list just about ever day, sometimes more than one book a day.
Ah, Charlotte’s Web. Another wonderful book from childhood! Thanks for commenting, Molly.
I adore the smell of books! I adore turning the pages of a new book! In my home, my husband had a library built just for me in the quiet part of our house. Reading has always been medicine to my heart, I love to get lost, to travel, to love, to cry and become the character of the book, I have traveled many places, slept only for an hour at night finding myself unable to stop reading, I found you by accident in our church library, which I am so thankful for. You are an awesome writer and you make your characters become so real through your words, you amaze me! Oh, to own all your books either on a kindle or in my quiet world ! What more could someone ask for? You ask what book would I choose, that is an unfair question for to own any book of yours is an honor and a joy to get lost in, I am just so thankful that God gave you the gift of writing!!! Lookiing forward to enjoying you on the blog and soon in your new books! Love to you my dear Sister in Christ!!
My love affair with Nancy Drew prompted me to try my hand at writing my own series of mystery stories way back in elementary school. At that young age, I really didn’t have a clue about the writing process…had no outline or “road map” to get me from Point “A” to Point “B.” I never got past the first chapter, but my longing to write never died. When I was in my late 20’s, I wrote a 783-page Civil War-era novel. I soon discovered that the writing was the easy part—the getting published was the real killer. On the day I received my 12th rejection letter in the mail, I discovered I was pregnant with my first child, and I happily put my writing desire on the back burner and focused on motherhood instead. Reading aloud to my kids from the time they were babies, as well as creating stories about Norman Rockwell (and other) paintings, was something I always enjoyed doing.
Now, my kids are raised and I have time to pursue my own interests. My passion for writing remains…it is one of the few constants in my life, though I’ve gone from seeing myself as a fiction writer, to a non-fiction one. I currently am a member of the Classic Movie Blog Association and author a blog devoted to those great films from Hollywood’s golden era. I also have 2 other blogs (private) where I am recording family history stories, in the hopes of publishing a family narrative.
In short, I can’t remember a time in which the written word was not a part of my life.