READING, READING, READING

From the time I learned to read at five years of age, I have been an avid bookworm. My love for all types of reading material has not diminished over the years; if anything, it has increased. Many times, especially because I taught literature, I have been asked what types of books I read. The answer is somewhat complicated because I go through different stages of reading.

When I was in grade school, I went through every Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton books as well as those orange colored biographies that were in our school library. (Does anyone else remember those?) I also loved all of the Little House on the Prairie series and Anne of Green Gables. When I was in the seventh grade, my favorite all time teacher Mrs. Evelyn Knight introduced me to Jane Eyre and other classics. She was really an inspiration to me and helped me to move to a different level in my reading.

(When I returned from the Christmas holiday, she had moved to Arkansas and I never saw her again. That was a very traumatic time for me, and my stress over the situation was demonstrated by my awful behavior to the teacher who took her place. I was ultimately to learn the lesson of “what goes around, comes around” when this same replacement teacher became the head of our children’s private school years later.)

I must have had somewhat of a lapse during my high school years because I don’t remember reading as much as I had before. I recall that I read of lots of periodicals like The Reader’s Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, and Life. I do remember reading a book entitled The Wall about the plight of Jews in Poland during WWII that really changed my religious views (I began to have serious doubts about the existence of God, etc.). And then there was all that good traditional literature that I studied during that period and didn’t appreciate.

In college I was the same as in high school --- more interested in my social life than I was in reading, but that was all to change when I married. That’s when my love affair with books was renewed.