My Life in Books
Books have been a necessary constant in my life. My mother talks about how when I was tiny, I would drag book after book for her to read. Sometimes she would fall asleep while reading the same books over and over, and I would poke her awake and demand, “Again!” She helped me choose my first chapter book, and she read the books I was reading and tolerated the imaginary games I designed around them.
My parents also took me to the library, and I read every kids’ biography of women they had, and most of the men. I read Shakespeare’s biography over and over, and Beatrix Potter’s. I was interested in the works these authors created, but I was also interested in who they were and the kinds of lives they lived. Even at a young age, I was searching for models in the writing life.
I saved my allowance to buy magazines, comic books, and books about the Baby-sitters’ Club and the Sweet Valley Twins. Our mall actually had two bookstores when I was a kid, and most malls had at least one. I could stand in the children’s section forever, reading through the rows of titles on the series shelves, running my fingers over unfamiliar authors’ names. I wanted to read and to own every good book in the world. I wanted to find them all.
I traded books with my friends, thereby growing my library, but I read more than almost anyone I knew. It’s lucky I married a man who was also an avid reader--but luck is of course the wrong word there. I am not sure I could have married anyone who felt differently on this issue.
I still read constantly. When friends ask how it’s possible that I read as much as I do, I want to demand how they can not. Reading is as necessary to me as breathing. I need to read some words in a book every day or I start to become nervous, unsettled, outrageously cranky. Books keep me grounded, lift my stress, and make my worries seem smaller. When I think about the ordinary treasures of a simple life, books top the list.
Every reader has a story along these lines, and readers generally love to tell their stories, because it lets us sift back through the memories and remember both the fabulous books and the ways they have saved our lives. I still remember an evening I was alone in the house with my kids when they were small. They were, miraculously, both asleep at the same time, and I was filled with anxiety about some inconsequential problem which has long since faded from memory. I sat on the sofa near our rows of bookshelves and picked up The Hunger Games, which I hadn’t even been sure I wanted to read; it seemed so far outside my normal genres. But as the thunder rolled and my kids slept and anxiety twisted my heart, I opened that book and read like my life depended on it, and when I was finished, my heart had calmed, and I was a fan of a new genre. Readers have these stories, hidden within the pages of ordinary life.
When my kids were born, I read to them the way my mother read to me, encouraging them to bring over piles of books and work our way through each one. I love finding my kids reading now, hiding under the covers with their favorite books, or working through chapters before bed with their father. We are a family that loves words. We may not always know the right ones, but in the pages of our favorite books, we can find them.