Comments Lounge
Thank you for writing this post. I cannot stand people who say they hate to read. I don't need to be bothered with them.
I simply do not understand those who don't realize the power of books. Who *doesn't* get lost in a good book? Hell, I accidentally stayed up util 4 AM reading recently. I had no idea what time it was until I looked at the clock.
Now, I know that some people have true difficulties getting through even the easiest read; my husband is one of them. Reading has always been hard for him. But he still does it. He still loves books, even though they don't always love him back.
People who admit their non-reading ways with pride, physically repulse me...and I admit THAT with pride.
I started reading when I was 3 (much to my bibliophile mothers delight)
and to this day I'm reading at least 3 things at once...
So good for you! I hate them too!
I'm glad you realized I wasn't talking about people with learning disabilities like dyslexia. I was kind of worried someone was going to say, "But some people *can't* read! You suck!" I limit my hatred to those who don't read because they think being stupid is cool. Ugh!
Good lord, flea, if people started reading think what would happen to the Republican Party.
You rock.
You are wonderful. This post is wonderful. Thank you. 
I'm like Dea, reading many things at once. In a any given week I'll be reading at least 1 book, 5-10 comic books, a magazine and 3 different online daily newspapers. My mother taught me early that if I got a book to read I've always got something to do and if someone is late there is always another chapter to explore.
I'm a gluttonous reader myself, and usually have 2-3 books working at once. I'll never understand people who take pride in not reading.
I peeked at the link to the book you were touting at the toy party. Am I the only one who was reminded of Tony the Tiger and Frosted Flakes?
Francis Spufford does a spiffy job on the nature of reading and readers in The Child That Books Built:
"[Books] freed us from the limitations of having just one life with one point of view; they let us see beyond the horizon of our own circumstances."
"[Books] help form the questions we think are worth asking; they shift around the boundaries of the sayable inside us, and the related borders of what's acceptable; their potent images, calling on more in us than the responses we will ourselves to have, dart new bridges into being between our conscious and unconscious minds, between what we know we know, and the knowledge we cannot examine by thinking."
shawn cassidy! lol
brings back memories of my first concert... yup, shawn cassidy!
I learned to hate to read in grad school. I didn't have time for personal reading, so all reading became such drudgery.
I'm learning to love reading again. one book at a time
And, while rich fools sneer at books, poor parents scramble to impart their kids with love of reading. All that the rest of us can do is hand-out books and extoll
their virtues to as many young people as we can.
I volunteer with the Greater Chicago Food Depository, specifically with its 29 Kids Cafes. Our mission: (1) bring NEW books (bookstore visits, where select books of their own; install reading rooms), and (2) promote pleasure reading (read-aloud, other projects.)
Last night, at the last occupied Ida Wells low-rise, I met a luminous 18 year old woman and her sixteen-month old child.
She said that she loved to read, and waved a thick treatise on understanding men. I traded her for a copy of Esme Codell's inspired, How to Get Your Child to Love Reading. One child, one horizon at a time.
Am I the only one who was reminded of Tony the Tiger and Frosted Flakes?
Orange, I'll never look at Tony the Tiger the same.
I've always been of the opinion that people who say they don't like to read just haven't found the right book yet. Of course, they aren't likely to ever find it if they're going to be wear it as a badge of pride.
I used to be a member of a bbs filled mostly with very very well read mommies (that wasn't what the bbs was for, just my observation on reading their threads) and one day one of the women popped up complaining about a PSA with Jamie Lee Curtis saying that showing your children you take time out for reading will teach them to love reading too and open the world to them. This woman thought that they PSA's telling people to put down their stupid books and spend time with their children would be much better. She was appalled that people would spend family togetherness time, each in their own book. She was also upset that reading would show up on "tell us your hobbies" lists but "socializing" didn't. Many of the women on the board said that reading helped them have more to "socialize" about than random gossip and made their conversations more interesting, but she didn't think that was worth reading for.
*sigh* There's just too many people like that out there. And sometimes it's not even that the family atmosphere doesn't promote reading: my younger sis probably hasn't read a book she wasn't been required to read in her whole life. She grew up surrounded by books, with a weekly trip to the library, but hates to read. She doesn't see the reason or the purpose.
Years ago, when I was house-hunting, I saw a very nice place - cathedral ceilings, enough room for the necessary art studio, great kitchen... yet something was terribly wrong with the place, something off-kilter.
It wasn't till later that I realised there weren't any books, much less bookcases, in the house, just a People magazine on the coffee table. Creepy! I don't think I'd ever seen a house with no books at all.
My son started to like going to the library when he was two or so - he'd get a blissed-out expression on his face and sigh "Books, mommy, books..."
I can still remember my first trip to the public library when I was 6, and getting a library card of my very own. I was only allowed to check out 15 books at a time (parents rules, not library).
As soon as we got to the car, I would eagerly open a book and start reading!
In second grade, we could earn a certificate for every 20 or 25 books that we read. I was earning them left and right at the beginning of the year and my teacher promised me that if I read 500 books, she would have my picture put in the paper. Well, my dad worked at the newspaper, so it wasn't really that big of a deal to me...but I did it anyway. I think I finished the year reading a total of 527 books. And I got my pic in the paper.
That teacher came to my wedding almost 13 years ago and the first thing she told my husband was, "Do you know that she read over 500 books when I had her in second grade?!?!" LOL
I still love to read and find myself lost if I don't have at least one or two books going at a time. I feel sorry for those who *hate* to read. They are missing out on so, so, so much! There's no program on TV or even any movie that could possibly compete with a good book.
Thanks for a great post! And Shaun Cassidy - my total reason for reading the Hardy Boys too! LMAO
(and sorry for the "book" that I've posted with this comment...)
Amen, I couldn't agree more. I've met many people like Craig, although I don't think I've ever met anybody who carries that assholery as far as your party lady.
I think that there are a lot of people out there who are afraid of having thoughts, and avoid any activities which may provoke them.
My sister didn't read when we were kids. She couldn't understand how a book could be more interesting than playing outside or why a person would want to do on their own time something they were going to be forced to do at school. I think that's a big part of the problem. So much of what kids are required to read is uninteresting to them that they think ALL books are boring.
Sis outgrew it. Now she's like me, the books are taking over the house and you don't dare pick one up if you have other things that need to be done.
I can't imagine not having a stack of books to read. Of course, if you visited my parents' house you'd not have realized I got this love from my dad: he doesn't buy books, but he'd go to the library every week or so and come back with a pile. (Still does that, too.) It was on one of those trips that I discovered Kurt Vonnegut when I was 12 ("God Bless You Mr. Rosewater").
Hmm, not sure if the book you were promoting is entirely defendable (looks like the type of sex book that encourages straight couples to, you know, um, maybe try "doing it" in another position, because, you know, it doesn't mean either of you are strange or gay or anything like that).
But, no flea, I give you more credit - if you stock it, it must have some redeeming qualities (because if you can't trust your dildo salesperson, who can you trust??!!).
So with you on the role of reading for the freedom-restricted - but let's not forget that we all are restricted in some way. I want to meet people who died centuries before I was born; their books are my only option.
I feel sorry for those who don't enjoy reading...how lame.
Every time I think you've written the greatest post ever, you outdo yourself! Readers Unite!
Brilliant. That's how I feel too. People who don't read are missing out on so much, especially if they are proud of the fact!
I adore books and words and learning. My major problem now is just getting the time to read, and read properly. Plus there are so many books I haven't read I sometimes wonder how I'll get through them all.
ah Shaun Cassidy. My first fantasy husband, at eight. I went to see him at Cobo Hall with my dad, and died of embarassment as he shook his ass at the crowd in baby blue satin pants.*
*I read that he would wear TWO pairs, in case the first pair split. Oh my god.
I don't post very often, but this one screamed out to me. I learned to read before the age of three. Was reading at a college level before the age of 8. And am about to embark on an educational trip to become a college english professor. Reading is the most important thing in life, in my not so humble opinion. Joy in reading promotes joy in life. Because how else would you realize what wonderful things are out there to learn and explore? Mass media such as TV and magazines are one dimensional compared to the emotional vastness that is a well written book. Books become our closest friends, our long-term companions. For people who refuse to read, they are to be pitied. For they really can't experience life at all if they don't know what can be experienced.
Flea,
Thanks so much for clarifying about dyslexia. My husband has a severe case and the only reading he does is for work.
Instead of reading for himself he asks me about what I'm reading and then we discuss it do death.
Hey, when is your book coming out???
I, too, am mystified when I hear someone say they don't like to read. Being a voracious reader makes one much more witty at parties. And, hell yes, I was all about Shaun Cassidy! For my 12th birthday party my dad made a "Pin the Lips on Shaun" game for us to play!
I cannot seem to get my mind around the whole "I don't read" thing. I mean, really, I just don't get it at all. Don't read?
One of my best friends doesn't read books anymore. She used to, but she just won't anymore. And I just - I feel like there is this huge gap between us anymore when we talk. No kidding.
My mom came to pick up my brother and me at summer school. We were both reading and couldn't be bothered to come when she called so she had to walk over to get our attention. Another mom stopped her.
"How do you get them to *read* like that?"
My mom rolled her eyes. "I can't get them to *stop*!"
Family vacations across the country:
"Look kids, Mt. Rushmore!"
"mmmmffhhphph."
"Look kids, migrating geese!"
"Ummmm hmmmmm"
"Look kids, an alien abduction!"
"DAD, I'm RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of a GOOD PART!"
We'd go to the bookstore before every car trip and we'd only be allowed to buy eight books. And then Mom would have to hide them until the car trip, because I had been known to finish them all before we got the car packed.
I know my sister reads your comments, so she can back me up on this.
Ahh...Books. [sigh]
I, too, began reading very young. The first book I remember claiming as my favorite was "The Poky Little Puppy".
I plowed through all the Dr. Seuss books and probably owned most of the Scholastic and Weekly Reader books (which are currently filling my children's bookshelves.)
Yes, I was forbidden to check out more than 20 books at a time from the library as a child.
I get in trouble all the time for falling into a good book, losing all track of time, and not getting anything else accomplished,including all my to-do lists.
I remember the "Rats of Nimh" (sorry, don't know how to do the underline in the comments), and "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle, and all the Ruth Chew books with the wonderful magic in Central Park. Does anyone remember Ruth Christopher Carlsen's books? "Monty and the Treehouse" was one. "Hildy and the Cuckoo Clock" was another.
When I win the lotto (which means I need to buy a ticket someday) I will have a house with a HUGE library, like Dr. Doolittle had, with shelves going all the way up the walls to the ceiling...so high there were ladders to reach the top.
When I travel, I rarely buy souviners. I buy books. Then I have to mail them home because the airlines frown at heavy suitcases.
My husband, a non-reader, just rolls his eyes. I just don't understand that man, or anyone who *Hates* to read.
How sad their lives must be.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the comments.
I can't remember not being able to read, apparantly I was allowed to get my library card when I was only 4yrs (the rules said 5yrs) because I'd borrow so many books on my mothers card.
I did go through a period when I stopped reading fiction. It was towards the end of my uni degree - I was studying all the time, trying to work enough to feed myself etc. I think reading just got too associated with work. It took quite a while to get over that. Funny thing is, I never stopped reading the newspaper, websites, and often had a bunch of non-fiction books that I was slowly progressing through. Maybe, at some subconscious level I couldn't let myself read fiction because it was just too much "fun", I couldn't justify it, when I should be working/socialising/improving myself (ala news sources/non-fiction).
Over the last couple of years I've really started to read, just for the sheer pleasure of it. Not because I should "learn about x", but because I want to immerse myself in a world. Immerse yourself in a world in a way that can't be replicated with tv or movies (even with the added assistance of pot or alcohol, although that can be fun).
I learned to read at 4, and I've never stopped. I think it's an addiction -- I can't _not_ read things, from books to the backs of cartons to street signs -- and my mother being a librarian only served to enable my "habit." (And it probably saved me from getting more scoldings than I did for being completely oblivious to spoken comments while immersed in a book.)
I remember well my horror at learning that my first boyfriend's house had no reading material in it beyond an encyclopedia and a couple of magazines. He had books of his own, but the notion that you could grow up in a house where the walls were not all covered with bookshelves stacked two deep was completely bizarre and outside all of my experiences up to that point.
Over half of the physical space taken up by my possessions is books, from pulpy sci-fi and fantasy to dictionaries and academic tomes. Books are essential to my life!
It cracks me up how many of you also lose all touch with what's going on around you when you're reading. It used to drive Mom nuts that she could call my name from 5 feet away and I didn't even hear her.
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."
---Erasmus
There's a lovely little place called 'Readerville.com' - where readers and writers and food people and blog people and movie people...talk about everything that might possibly be in/around/related to a book. Come visit. Move in. (I 'met' a friend who brought me to One Good Thing there, so I'm returning the favor.)
Thanks Szarka!
I've been reading your blog for ages now & often think about posting but this is the one that I couldn't resist.
I too have spent my life 'unable' to hear others speaking to me, even though I have at times responded! I read anything & everything that gets put in front of me or anywhere near me.
Reading is doorway to somewhere else that I either can't get to now or may never get to unless I read about it. How sad to live a life that doesn't include those opportunities. I can't imagine being one of those people nor do I want to.
Since my attempt at trackbacking didn't seem to work, I'd just like to say: thanks Flea - you summed up my feelings *exactly*! See: http://spaces.msn.com/members/gc...rwGoA!
946.entry
I can't stop laughing at this one!
Beautifully, vividly written! If I wasn't a READER, though, I would never have known you wrote this! These are among my favorite of your statements, flea:
If you don't have a library, no matter how small, or a book splayed face down on your coffee table, how will I be able to see your brain?
. . . . . Reading is travel for the freedom-restricted . . . books are what get you out in the world, show you around, take you to all the good party spots that haven't been overrun with tourists. Good books envelop you totally, not letting you up for air until they're certain you've heard everything they have to say. When they leave you, they close up some of your heart and mind in their pages and you have no choice but to keep them safe on your shelf.
I feel the same way as you do about reading and don't think for a moment that you should "give it up." Reading matters, and anyone who doesn't read--and especially anyone who proudly announced they do not read--is not someone with whom I want to spend time. In an online dating service I use, one of my first questions is always, "How many books did you read in the last year?"
I know and love a handful of nonreaders, and have known and hated a passel.
For me, it's like dealing with speakers of another language. It can be quite difficult to feel completely connected while communicating, and what the other person's nonreading experience is like is mostly a foreign and disorienting concept to me.
Despite the difficulties, I find it educational and stimulating to be around people who think and work primarily in images and/or sound...as long as they're not the equivalent of ugly American English-only activists.
Unfortunately, the latter describes most of the nonreaders I've ever met...the people who, as you say, flea, think it's cool not to read...and make it clear that being a reader makes you uppity and/or duplicitous. HATE that.
I loathe the "I hate to read" crowd almost as much as I hate people who say, in a bragging tone of voice, "I can't cook." Why be smug about the fact that you cannot perform one of life's basic skills: feeding yourself and your loved ones? Especially when if you can read, you can cook by following a recipe. And if you're proud of the fact that you neither read nor cook, than why should anyone listen to what you have to say or spend any time with you, ever?
Two things. Thing one: I learned to read upside down because my mom would sit across from me and read out loud while running her finger under the words. When I got to kindergarten and insisted on turning all my books upside down I got sent to innumerable doctors, therapists, eye doctors, etc. before someone figured out the obvious. Still do it sometimes, just to keep in practice.
Thing two: My DH doesn't read and I almost dumped him in the first couple of months of dating when I found that out. One evening I went to his apartment and found him hunched over an automotive repair manual (he's a mechanic), sweating and clutching his head. Turns out he's very dyslexic and he'd never been diagnosed so all reading was an absolute torture for him. Now I read him the manuals (which is like reading another language for me sometimes) aloud and he has no problem understanding them. Once I saw how hard and stressful it was for him, my heart just melted (even though he won't let me read aloud anything other than car manuals).
Going to the library was always the highlight of my week as a kid. Then as bedtime approached I'd get caught, reading books by flashlight under the covers. I can still hear it,"Stop reading! Go to sleep!"
Not-readinbg and not-cooking are SO not the same thing.
DH doesn't read, and sometimes it surprises me that I could love a man who doesn't. However, his writing skills are terrific, and his spelling and grammar on par with mine at the top of my game. So I guess I've given him a bye on the reading.
Especially since he allows me to indulge my book whorishness, and is even a bit admiring of my reading.
Fabulous post, Ms. Flea!
Hmm. I learned to read when I was 2 1/2 according to my parents. I am an avid reader, and read all the time. The 'I can't read' people do drive me mad. I feel sorry for them.
"Why should anyone listen to what you have to say or spend any time with you ever?" Wow. Fighting words.
I'm smug about "I can't cook," because at the ripe old age of 12 I decided as a good old feminist that I didn't need to know how to cook cause I wasn't going to cook for any man. I sort of forgot that I was going to grow and need to know how to cook for myself. This was also exacerbated by a mom who was very impatient in the kitchen and never took the time to teach me how to cook.
So my smug response is basically a way to hide my insecurities over the fact that I *can't* perform a really necessary and needed skill that some people perform so wonderfully and effortlessly. Maybe it is that way with people and the reading thing, after all.
One more thing: I once got busted by my dad reading in bed too late because he "heard me turning a page."
Like all of y'all I'm a voracious reader too. When I was little I used to take a book with me to the bathroom--sometimes it was the dictionary. A couple sessions with the Comparative Alphabets chart taught me the Greek alphabet, which I still remember. I LOVE the part in "Cheaper by the Dozen" where Galbraith put up all sorts of educational materials in the kids' bathroom.
See, I love to cook. This might have to be another post.
I thank feminism for my love of cooking. My mother absolutely hated cooking, no small thanks to the fact that, as a woman, she felt forced to do it three times a day, every day, for 40 years. And then do all the dishes, too. Because nobody demands that I do it, I feel free to enjoy experimenting in the kitchen. Plus, Steve does dishes and sweeps the floor.
No, I totally understand where you're coming from, LA. The woman is a neanderthal. And I have to say that personally, you've really struck a chord here.
My ex only ever read two books that I know of, and only ever read magazines. Now, he has severe dyslexia, so I understood it, though there's something that I call a reader's mentality and personality, and often they go hand in hand with Wanting To Know What's Next, and also the delight in a certain amount of solitude.
I remember a few times him complaining that I was "ignoring" him because I was reading. Give me a flippin' break, if I want to read I'm going to read, and it's not like I spent my entire life reading (though I do confess, I played hookey from work to finish reading Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear." Anyone else play hookey from work to finish a book? I know I'm not alone.
The man I'm in a relationship with now fulfills so many of the items on a list I never wrote down, but kept in my head informally -- such as he's an artist, too (though he'd say he's not), and we sometimes draw together. And importantly, he's a reader.
We cannot live together yet, but I sometimes have these fantasies of us in the den of wherever we live, our two reading chairs side by side, with a large footstool that we share, so we can casually play footises as each of us reads our books -- stopping occasionally to share the things we're excited about, or interested in, that we've just read.
Heaven.
Las night I found out something that entertained me to no end I had to share:
My sister was never an avid reader growing up, she read what she had to and that was all. When she got a little older she enjoyed reading "beach reads" and all that.
We were talking on the phone last night when she said "oop, M's here, it's his night to read!" turns out, she reads books aloud with her boyfriend. One night she'll get in a bubble bath and he'll read to her, or another night he'll cook dinner and she'll read to him.
I loved that idea so much I told my fiancee about it...
next week we're starting "The Portrait of Dorian Gray"!
reading probably saved my life. i've struggled with depression all my life. when coupled with a horrid childhood, it made me want to kill myself on a near-daily basis. i just couldn't do it, though - i had to finish the next two books in my stack. i still read voraciously.
it baffles my husband: "don't you want to play halo or watch tv with me? don't you want a break from all that reading? honey, you're burning the eggs, put down the book." i would read in the shower if i could. alas, he's not much of a reader, but i love him anyways.
What no one's mentioning here is the evil that is blogging. I know I'm not the only one who has gotten drawn in by the communication and community aspects of blogging, spending way more time reading, writing, and otherwise interacting with the blog world instead of reading books. I would absolutely buy a hardcover copy of Flea's memoirs, but it would probably sit unread until she quits blogging!
I should have known it wouldn't work out with my ex when she gave me a lecture on how reading is a waste of time (I am never not reading a book or 4). Sometimes I'm just not very smart.
...But before the internet came to be, boy, did I read a lot. Couldn't get through breakfast without reading the cereal and OJ containers. In seventh grade, I had my own bully and hardly any friends, and I loved to read. I actually read books while walking down the halls between classes! How I managed not to bump into people or trip and fall (given my klutziness at that age) remains a mystery.
Orange, yes. Blogs are like crack.
All these words! Tasty tasty words! In my computer! For free!
When my SO discovered that I'd never read The Little Prince (which was a major part of his childhood), he rushed out to buy it and then read it to me as I went to sleep for several nights. Lovely.
It is still a sore point with my mother that I ignored Yosemite National Park in favor of the novel I was reading. I was completely absorbed.
To this day, I can remember my father's social security number, because that was my ticket to checking out books from the university library in our town. (He was on the faculty, so I could take as many as I liked--bliss!)
Our 2-year-old daughter loves books--they're all over the house. We read with her, of course, but also separately. She'll often pull something off the shelf and bring it over for me to read it to her. (The day she picked Ginsberg's "The Fall of America", I had a time finding a page suitable for my audience.
)
We're about to move, and this is the only time I bemoan our book fetish--packing/moving books is a pain.
Good post! The only time I ever skipped school in my life was when I was 12 years old, in 7th grade, and I didn't want to put down "The World According to Garp". I went to homeroom and slipped out of the gym instead of going to class. I went out to the woods behind the school, found a comfy place to sit, and didn't put the book down until I was done.
Thank you so much for this one. I've printed it so I can give it to lp tonight. You are singlehandedly providing high-quality ammunition as she forays into Tweendom, and though she's encountered the Not Readers already, I want her to be able to spot the attack that I know will come.
I wasn't smart enough to do this; I went through a couple of boyfriends in high school who'd laugh at me or get offended that I knew a word they didn't. And I'm pretty sure I've told the story about the "k" in now that led me to namlet. So yeah: Reading. Big, big, big deal.
Oh! Thank you, Portia!
Another lifelong reader here. I'm like Rana, I'm addicted, and can't go more than a few hours without reading *something*.
The summer I turned 15, I would walk the 3 miles to the library every day and check out a handful of books. Then I'd stay up half the night reading them all, and go back for more the next day. That summer my mom had signed me up for driver's ed, but I had no interest in going, and skipped so many sessions I got dropped from the class. She came up with the worst punishment ever - I was forbidden from going to the library for the rest of the summer. I believe I was able to honor that for about 10 days, but those 10 days were excruciating. I finally had to go back, and I did feel really bad to be sneaking around behind my parents' back, but they just didn't understand! My sister covered for me a few times, but one day I lost all track of time and was gone for hours and hours and she finally had to tell them where I was. There was hell to pay when I got home, but I think they did finally understand that reading (and thinking) were like breathing to me, iow, not optional. They rescinded the punishment, and came up with something else, I don't remember what.
My in-laws are proud anti-intellectual non-readers. I've never seen *any* books in their house, although I'm sure they've got a Bible or two somewhere. Somehow they spawned two extremely intelligent sons who read. Family get-togethers, though, are excruciatingly boring because us younger guys aren't allowed to talk about books or ideas or travel or hobbies. All my father-in-law wants to talk about is how great life was in the Good Old Days when he was a kid (and none of the rest of us were alive). Yippee.
I think it is the smug anti-reading sentiment that is most abhorrent (akin to the Ugly American syndrome...and come to think of it, there is an 'ignorant pragmatism' at the base of Ugly Americanism, so maybe that's part of my knee-jerk anger at such sentiment...).
As someone above said (sorry, lazy), I find nonreaders to be a bit 'foreign,' but I have been friends with a few and we make it work. There is ultimately a distance we can't cross, however. Thus, I can't see dating a non-reader (now that I'm interested in 'healthy' relationships). Anti-readers have no place in my life, period.
Finally, to share a bit of my bibliophile nature: A couple of years ago I visited the library at Trinity College (note: this was the model used for the Jedi library). I don't know if any of you have been there before, but it's stories high, books on every wall, OLD OLD books, and...I think I experienced true religious ecstasy. (As an atheist, this came as quite a surprise.) I spent the next couple of hours feeling very fragile and humbled and blessed after being in such a sacred, sacred place. I guess reading is my religion, books my sanctuary...
It is so funny that I come to your blog while I am writing a post about my love of reading and find this. And reading the comments and seeing myself reflected in everyone's words.
Orange, my mom wouldn't let me read at the table and would end up yelling at me because I was reading the cereal boxes out of desperation. I also would walk down the halls in school reading. But I did bump into the occasional wall and/or person!
The one thing that bothers me more than the smug non-readers are the smug readers who make fun of what you read. I had an ex who treated me as if I was stupid because I liked to read romance novels. I have always figured that it shouldn't matter what you're reading, as long as you're reading. I like a vast variety of authors and genres but he only noticed the romance novels. I so wanted to tell him that maybe if he was a bit more romantic, I wouldn't need them!
The Hardy Boys were cool but I also loved Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and the Alfred Hitchcock series with The Three Investigators. Plus Agatha Christie was a big favorite!
Your blog is addicting. This is one of the many reasons why.
1.The only time I ever stole anything was money from my mom's purse, to purchase more books during Book Fair Week at my school. (I got caught and acted very sorry, but deep down, was unrepentant).
2. I stopped being friends with a girl after I loaned her a paperback and saw her reading it with the cover bent all the way around backwards. It had never occurred to me that you would do something like that to a book, and I was horrified. I could never respect her again.
3. I always suspect non-readers, and some anti-readers, have reading difficulties and have never found ways around them (like audio books). Because not wanting to enjoy good stories just seems impossible. When someone starts hating on reading and readers, I just look at them pityingly--it's like people who say they don't know what all the fuss is about sex; obviously, they've never had the good kind.
Lives are so small and limited without books.
Great post! I'll be back on a regular basis.
"When someone starts hating on reading and readers, I just look at them pityingly--it's like people who say they don't know what all the fuss is about sex; obviously, they've never had the good kind."
I like this.
Even though I'm a text addict, I can still sort of understand how someone can prefer other ways of gathering information--visual, aural, tactile--and have few books but indulge their curiosity through audiobooks, radio/CDs, movies/television/theatre, or direct study of concrete objects. I just don't understand people who aren't curious and are proud of it.
I loved this post, thanks! I was a real bookworm as a kid too, and still am :o)
The most romantic thing Mr. K ever said to me was, "You're the best thing that's happened to me since I learned to read."
Yep, like everybody else here, I started reading really young, took huge stacks of books home from the library.
Reading is like breathing for me. One of the great joys of having graduated grad school recently is that I can read for pleasure again! I didn't let myself read fiction during the semester because I wouldn't do my homework otherwise.
I currently have three valid library cards: one in my hometown, one where I went to school, and one from the town in Wisconsin where I just finished a job.
I'm also a re-reader. I often go back and read books again, which my mom doesn't understand. But you find different things every time.
Love this thread!
1. On bright SO's who don't read: I once had to explain that cocktail inquiries of what one was reading were not snarks, but merely a reader-head-sniff.
2. Remember Three Days of the Condor? Evil military goons commiserate over failure to kill Robert Redford, a lowly researcher, given his unexpected strategies to elude capture. Goon One notes that one explanation might be that Redford's job was to read all day. When the others blink, Goon One is forced to add: "The problem is that we don't know what he knows." Don't all readers love being secret heads?
3. What is everyone's best other-body-experience book? John Banville's Kepler, particularly the initial 20 pages, was a complete transport. When I reread to examine Banville's mechanics, he had written not in sentences, but in brush-strokes of words and phrases. Yet the reader perceived only the lush continuity of an unbroken, full-described dream. And how did Shirley Jackson drape the gore in The Haunting of Hill House, and yet not use the word 'blood'. Magic.
All these reading stories, and now I have to share :P
I remember when I was little, and my local library used to have a competition every summer. You kept a log of all the books you read (and your parent/guardian had to sign off that you'd read them) and at the end of the summer, the five kids who'd read the most books got certificates in this little ceremony. I was more about the pizza and lousy reconstituted punch, but I was one of those kids a couple of years in a row.
Then they decided that it wasn't really right to have us fast readers burning through books ahead of everyone else. So the contest became, read 100 books over the course of the summer. Then they started lowering the bar.
The last I heard, the thing was to read three books (three! in three months!) over the summer, in order to 'win'. And people wonder why I hearken back to the golden days of my youth...
Krup, that is seriously the best compliment I've ever heard.
Holy cats! I've found my native people!
My story is the same as most of these--reading prior to kindergarten, nose in a book ever since. My mom spent a couple of months teaching me to read, and the rest of my childhood regretting it.
And considered a freak by many for my bookworm ways. I read through vacations, camping trips, classes, my paper route (read the paper front-to-back every night while walking the route), pep rallys, ball games, girl scout camp, and, at least once, all of Christmas Day.
I was unsure about this one guy I was dating...until I realized he was an honest-to-god reader, and I should snap him up. 20 years later, we're still recommending books to one another.
Ah books. Books are like air, I can no more not read than I can not breathe.
One summer my local library closed for remodling. My dad and I made weekly (or more if I begged hard enough) trips to the next town over to get my stacks of books. My parents learned quickly that limiting the number of books I could check out just made the library trips (or nagging for a library trip) more frequent.
From smutty romance novels to the 9/11 report and blogs, bring it on, I love it all.
This is my first trip to your blog flea, I have a feeling I'll be back frequently.
I didn't really read Seuss books as a little kid - IIRC, my mother didn't approve of the grammar so she never read/bought them for us. I got *a lot* of Richard Scarry, various nursery rhymes, and Beatrix Potter however.
I read almost compulsively from the age of about 5 or 6: I read everything and anything I could find, and did so constantly. This was the mid-70s and we had a lot of books which had belonged to my mother & her brothers growing up, so I read all this old "boy's own" adventure-type stuff from the 1940s & 1950s, as well as Little Women.
I read the Hardy Boys as well, but not because of the series - if anything, it was the reverse. We didn't get a TV until I was 9, so I used to go to a neighbour's house to watch the Hardy Boys series occasionally, because I knew the characters from the books.
Most excellent post - I think bloggers read more than the average person and we all seem to adore books (at least the bloggers who write literate, readable blogs).
I work at a bookstore (one of the large, evil, national chains) and you would be surprised at the number of people who turn down our "membership" card by saying "Oh, I don't read."
Really? and what exactly is it that you are planning on buying today? Or is the book in your hand just supposed to look pretty on your coffee table?
I'd be much less bothered by this excuse if I thought these people were simply annoyed at being asked to pay money to get a discount, but I think most of them are telling the truth. 
I worked at B&N about ten years ago and had to quit because I kept spending my paycheck on books.
Oh My Goodness. I know I'm late reading this (stuck in hospital with the kid for 2+ weeks will do that to you...you get behind on your favorite blogs that way), but Wow.
You have such a way with words, Flea. I totally agree with you about people who choose not to read and are proud of it.
*lexi goes to show this post to some of her bibliophile friends....
Brilliant! Sums up so much of how I feel about reading. I LOVE TO READ.
Like you, I don't remember a time that I didn't read.
And why the Hardy Boys for me (although I adored Nancy):
Parker Stevenson.
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