We have been told time and time again that reading is good for you. That it’s important. That it will help your learning as a child. Thinking back on it now, many of my teacher’s paramount mission statement was to encourage us to read. I even grew up with an elementary school teacher as a mom who was also telling me at home that I should be reading. And she tried. Maybe, not well enough. But she tried to get me to read. There were many forces in my childhood life that were trying to get me to understand the love the reading. And yet, I never read. This is not even an exaggeration. I NEVER read.
In elementary school, each class would visit the library once a week. Each week we had to borrow at least three books to take home and read. And without fail, each week I would return all three books without having cracked one of them open, pick out three new ones, rinse and repeat.
I missed out on all the classic childhood/teenage series like Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games. When I was seven-years-old, my dad read the first two chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to me and it didn’t catch my attention. My dad was pretty upset because, like the rest of the world, he loved the Harry Potter series and he just wanted his kid to love it too. But I didn’t and I never got into any of those popular series. I did kind of feel left out when everyone at school was talking about the characters and plot lines of these novels. That did kind of suck and I wondered why I didn’t enjoy reading. My friends would recommend to me their favourite novels at the moment and it never stuck with me.
I remember in Grade 5, we were assigned a novel to read. The day after everyone was sent home with a copy of the book, one student in class shared that she had stayed up until 4am to finish the entire novel. And once again, this was Grade 5 so staying up until 4am on a school night was a big deal. I couldn’t comprehend the idea of being so enthralled in a novel that you had to stay awake until 4am to finish it. She was warning us that once we started the novel that we wouldn’t be able to stop. She didn’t have to worry about me doing that.
And then we arrive at high school, the land of book reports and projects. Little old me continued to skim through novels and never actually read through the entire novel from front to back. Me and sparknotes were best friends. That means I missed out on all of the high school curriculum staples like “Lord of the Flies”, “The Great Gatsby” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I do remember a lot of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” so maybe I did read a lot of that one. The point is, I continued to move through school without even reading the assigned reading novels. And at this point, my elementary school teacher mother had written me off as a lost cause.
As I reached adulthood, I could count with my fingers the number of books I read and completely got lost in. I would pick up a title, read two chapters, put it down, revisit it three days later, read two more chapters and the pattern continued until I reached half way through the novel and gave up. Maybe I wasn’t choosing the right titles to suit my taste or maybe I didn’t try enough variety of books to find something that I thoroughly enjoyed. Up until this point, I still didn’t understand the idea of getting completely lost in a novel and enjoying every second of it. Almost to the point of me not believing them (and by “them” I mean everyone).
Fastfoward to 2020 and we find ourselves in the midst of the pandemic and lots of time on our hands. I tried a couple books here and there, but nothing stuck until I picked up Jeanette McCurdy’s memoir titled “I’m Glad My Mom Died”. The pacing of the memoir is just quick enough that you never get bored and the sentences are so short and succinct that it feels like you’re in her brain and sitting with her personal thoughts. I sped through the book in two days, which was a first for me. And there it was what everyone was talking about: getting thoroughly swept up in a book. As a pop culture connoisseur myself, a celebrity’s memoir was incredibly easy to sink my teeth into as there were so many early 2000’s touchpoints that I could grasp on to. Maybe I should have started with memoirs from the beginning.
Late 2020 into early 2021, I read many novels. Albeit, novels that were popularized on #booktok, but novels nonetheless. And I was really enjoying it. I finally understood what it felt like to not want to put a book down.
It seems like the most common reading experience is that people loved reading when they were a kid and then slowly stopped reading through adolescence into adulthood. But, for me it was the opposite.
Finally a jump to today, I am an avid reader. A dedicated frequenter of the public library and have a rhythmic holds list of the books I’m looking forward to reading. It feels honestly really strange to think about my entire adolescence growing up and not enjoying reading. When today it’s one of my favourite hobbies and pastimes. I get excited to start a new book and read through an author’s oeuvre.
Current day, I also listen to a lot of audiobooks. A crisp fall day, coffee in hand and a stroll down a tree-lined street sounds like the ultimate afternoon in my book (no pun intended). I have such an appreciation for audiobook voice actors, they bring so much emotion to the story and to the dialogue. At times, I do feel like the voice actors set the tone of the novel and the dialogue and can convey a very specific emotion. I feel as though the sentiment they are conveying in their voice is different than the sentiment I would interprett from the book if I were reading the paperback. But it’s so convenient to listen to an audiobook while multitasking.
My present favourite genre of novels is contemporary fiction. A contemporary fiction author that I really enjoy and have read all of their new releases is Emily Henry. Her novels are very popular on #BookTok and I have read through all of them. In my next post, I will be ranking the five most current novels she has published since 2020: Beach Read (2020), People We Meet On Vacation (2021), Book Lovers (2022), Happy Place (2023) and Funny Story (2024). Be sure to come back to our page to check it out.
It’s hard for me to believe that I didn’t read at all when I was a child, considering I enjoy reading so much now. Ultimately, I feel that it’s a good reminder that’s it’s never too late to pick up a new hobby or activity.