I grew up with my nose in book. Every year when we were packing for our summer holidays my mum would take my brother and I down to the tiny village library and pick out which books we wanted to take with us. We were only allowed to take out 6 at a time (library laws) so we examined the shelves long and carefully before choosing, and had read them all by the time the plane left sunny Spain two weeks later. Thinking back now they must have had a huge baggage allowance in the old days because we did not choose small paperbacks (and I can barely fit my toothbrush in my bag now without doing the shuffle of shame in the airport, trying to wear all my clothes so I don't have to pay extra for my overweight bag). We must have read every book in that library, then we advanced to the one in our nearest town which was very exciting because THAT'S WHERE DAD GOT HIS BOOKS FROM! (This was it, I'd made it).
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a recluse. I still spent the majority of my day playing outside with my friends. Growing up in the countryside we would spend ages down at the park, wading through the river trying to catch crayfish, be-friending people who had trampolines in their gardens and waste hours and hours up a tree trying to make a tree-house (we only managed to tie sticks to the branches to sit on). But every night I would be tucked up with my book and when mum told me to turn my lights out I'd sneakily carry on reading, fumbling for the light and jamming the book under my pillow whenever I heard either of my parents walking past my room. Books are so important to a child's development and mine will be drowned in them. The language, punctuation and grammar is obvious, but also filling a child's head with so many different stories, character and ways of life must help them in the long run.
At nearly 25 it is still the same. I still don't even get to stay up reading as long as I like with Grandpa Tom next to me. "Turn that light off, some of us are trying to sleep". I always have a book on the go, I just don't get through them as quickly as my younger self. I also prefer to buy books now rather than borrow them from the library. Mainly because I can't be bothered to get a library card, but also my mum's not here to take me every Friday after school.
Tom on the other hand, has never really been a big fiction book fan. I think he read a bit when he was younger, but he just doesn't understand why you would read something that isn't real. He says he likes to learn from his books and for ages he literally just read auto-biographies and sports/fitness books. Dull. I did buy him some war books and he loves those, only if they're real life though.
When we moved out of our flat into our first house we went and bought a bookcase so I could finally have my books at ours as they had been left in my old room at my mum and dad's until we had the space. Tom has been given the bottom shelf for his 'books'. Most of mine are old friends now who I read again and again, but some are brand new and as such unread. I will still never have enough. I want MORE! I am a book monster and I want to devour them all and cram them inside my head. I do also hate kindles, I want to hold the story in my hands and smell the pages.
Sometimes I wonder how I'd think and act if I hadn't read so much. I imagine I would be very different, that many stories and words must influence you. I probably wouldn't have a constant running narrative in my head if I hadn't anyway, or maybe I'm just mad and this is a side-effect.
If you don't read, START! You are missing out on so much! Make time for it, even if it's just 15 minutes on your lunch break or getting into bed half an hour earlier. Your shower-time imaginings will be wilder and dreams more vivid for it. Who wants to think about dinner and the washing when you can replay Darcy's letter in your mind or pretend your Clare waiting for Henry to reappear?
Tell me I'm not alone in my hunger for books? (I can't be - someone invented libraries after all?!)
Gemma
xXx
Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?
As if something were left between the pages every time you read it.
Feelings, thoughts, smells, and then when you look at the book again many years later,
you find yourself there too, a slightly younger self, slightly different,
as if the book has preserved you like a pressed flower, both strange and familiar.
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