In the mix of everything I've been pondering recently my enjoyment of reading keeps barging in. Nearly every day I encounter yet something else I want to find out about, or discover a book that looks interesting. It is a peculiar phenomenon that as much as I was urged as a child to learn through books, unless it was for a specific educational project, sitting reading a book was seen as being lazy when I should have been carrying out some chore. That feeling of guilt haunts me still, although I am determined to battle it. I have to: there is really not enough time to read everything!
Frederick Warren Freer: Woman and Child Reading (image from here)
Reading has been important to me right from my earliest memories. I was most fortunate that my mother was learning to read and write English when I was a baby, and as she was earning a little by embroidery also I learned to read and to sew by the time I was three. My extended family believed books to be important, so gifts were often books - even if not always appropriate, such as my Scottish grandmother's annual birthday present from the age of two ! of a novel by Sir Walter Scott. But the Christmas present from my father when I was five was a set of Arthur Mee's Encyclopaedias which lit a passion in me for pursuing enquiry, and started a desire to pass on information. Indeed that instinct to teach could be seen the following year when I was found reading to my uncle's most attentive wire haired fox terrier!
James Charles: Reading (image from here)
I was not allowed comics at home, and so I do not have the conventional literary upbringing of a girl of my era (the 50s). However, while my mother was occupied with my baby brother I did play with neighbours, two boys who had the Eagle comic which they let me read. Mostly what I was interested in was the cutaway illustration in the middle. What a treasure that was!
Some of my parents' restrictions turned out to be most beneficial. All through school years I used to do my homework in my bedroom, and inevitably I would complete my tasks far too soon for my parents' belief. So I took to reading novels for my own pleasure and enlightenment: Georgette Heyer to begin with, but soon moving on to Iris Murdoch, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, JP Sartre, ... and then as I lived at home while at university the habit continued.
I studied literature as part of my degree: English, French, and German, so kept reading. Up in my bedroom the discipline of both having to be at home and 'obviously' studying gave me the time to complete A la recherche du temps perdu - something I would certainly not be able to do now, although I did get the complete translation on the kindle recently (foolishly) thinking I should try to read it again, but of course in English this time.
Then I taught English and Drama for a short while before eventually finding myself in publishing and having to read for a living! Promoted from fox terriers, I was producing non-fiction books for children - then teaching others to publish educational texts.
I am still insatiably curious, so keep absorbing non-fiction - there is a never-ending stream of subjects and opinions. The Internet and the wondrous Wikipedia have meant that we don't have need of so many reference books, but finding the answers to quick questions I find also throws up further paths to follow, needing more detailed explanation - and the purchase of delightful amuses-bouches such as the Oxford Short Introduction to ... series.
As readers we live in such fortunate times - we should never waste a moment when we could be reading. So much to read, and so little time, ... I must stop wittering on and get back to my books.
I see a bit of a mirror image in you, though not quite as extensive when it came to jobs and career of course. I was fortunate to have aunts in Finland send Finnish books for me to read in our early years as immigrants as I read my home language before learning to read in English. I recall in my youth the delight of a library on wheels coming about once a week almost across the street, which saved trips to the further bricks and mortar one. And of course I frequented school and university libraries, though in the U-years it was mostly academic materials and art books. I'm still a heavy user of our excellent library, including for DVDs.
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful that you learned the Finnish first, and therefore it became established before the language surrounding you. I always regret that my mother did not want me to 'waste my time' learning to read and write Greek properly. My Greek grandmother read to me as a child, and later when I had run out of the English language books I had brought with me on holidays I would read her collection of French classics.
DeleteI loved libraries for non-fiction as well as fiction. I am afraid that I have not been into a library for a long time now. The combination of inexpensive kindle books and my desire to hang onto art books are my worst vices!
What an inspiring post, and so appropriately illustrated. I too began 'adult' reading with Georgette Heyer and then moved on, shamefully perhaps to modern readers because of its anti- semitism, via the novels of John Buchan (I recently downloaded 'Thirty-nine Steps' and was shocked at what I was reading) to Iris Murdoch and George Orwell. As a young woman and on into middle age, I read fiction almost exclusively but now enjoy a much wider diet. What a joy and enrichment it all is!
ReplyDeleteAh John Buchan. I have re-read some of his short stories recently, and it is indeed interesting to see how much attitudes change. I also used to read Bulldog Drummond when I was in my early teens - and when watching the dissolving in acid scenes in Breaking Bad remembered that he had done that many decades before!
DeleteI do like to sprinkle some early 20th century work amongst the contemporary fiction I read so that I have different textures of language as well as social mores. It is indeed a continuous enrichment, as you say.
A kindred spirit when it comes to reading. I too struggled at one time with guilt when carving out time to read, but these days I'm getting over it! You are right that the internet has changed our reading and research habits - so much readily at fingertips, and the trips down rabbit holes happen much more quickly there. Before google I would often read a nonfiction book which might mention another author or book and that would then be the next book I would seek out. Repeat with that book, and the next and the next, on and on. Or there might be bibliographies with more than one book to search out for more information. These random explorations would often take me far from my original subject but always a fascinating journey I probably would not have taken otherwise. As you say, so much to read and so little time...
ReplyDeleteSheila, how fascinating, as you say, the journeys we take following book to book. Each volume showing us not only how little we know, but more important, how much we can find out. I find it so heartening that there are so many books out there that we shall never ever be able to read them all. It's rather like planting trees which one will never see grown tall - a kind of hope in a worthwhile future.
DeleteI was not allowed comic books either Olga, and like you, I used to borrow from the two boys who lived next door: my favourite was Superman. I had not thought of this until reading your post this morning.
ReplyDeleteI was 12 when I started reading French literature and continued doing so until I went to University. I also read some German as part of my school curriculum, but not much. And like you, I have not read any language other than English for a very long time - I don't even read much Greek these days. I do however regret having 'lost' my ability to read, write and speak French and German.
Superman, Spiderman, etc. all passed me by, I'm afraid. As an adult I read all of Anthea Bell's great translations of Asterix, but comics are still a large unknown in my reading. Too late now.
DeleteI keep up my German reading only in so far as I have a relative in Germany who replies to my English emails in German, but I could not even try to read a novel. Writing this post has certainly stirred up all sorts of reading memories which I am enjoying, and it is good to hear of those of others too.