After looking at my 52 Books in 2011 progress page, I realized that, relatively speaking, I did a lot of reading in May. In fact, I read as many books this month (8) as I did during March and April combined I’m sure this has a lot to do with the fact that my semester ended in late-April, so I’ve had considerably more free time with which to indulge in reading for pleasure. Even taking that into account, I think all those years of summer reading programs at the library (and then later summer reading for English classes in High School) have programmed me to automatically associate warmer weather the need to devour literature at a rapidly accelerated rate. I’m not saying that’s bad thing in any way, I just think it’s pretty interesting that those programs do seem to have had somewhat of an impact on my reading habits.
Even though I haven’t always consistently read quite as much I would like to, I’ve always been a really big reader. Given the fact that my mom really pushed the “let’s go to the library” thing with me from the time I could keep my eyes open for more than 30 minutes at a time, it isn’t really surprising. Some of my most poignant memories from the ages of about seven to eleven involve walking around the library and gathering up as many books as my then-little arms could carry and then going home and wedging myself between the wall and my bed and reading them; that little nook was always my “reading spot.”
I was obsessed with the Babysitter’s Little Sister and Goosebumps series in elementary school and then in middle school, a teacher lent me The Rainmaker by John Grisham which led to me more or less reading everything Grisham had written up to that point. I was also pretty weird in the sense that I stole one of my mom’s old college psychology textbooks somewhere around the age of twelve and ended up reading it more or less cover to cover in the span of a few months. Actually, I did (unintentionally…for the most part) steal a lot of books as a kid. It wasn’t even that I didn’t have my own, I’d just read them and move onto the next book so quickly that I’d never remember to give the book I had just finished reading back. Oops.
The funny thing about my love of reading is that I really, really, really hated completing the assigned books for English classes and the like. In fact, I seriously didn’t read most of them. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the assigned material just didn’t appeal to me, or if it was me being a stubborn butthole and not wanting to read books out of obligation and then hyper-analyze the author’s meaning. For the most part, when I read, I don’t want it to turn into some crazy critical thinking exercise: I just want to absorb the reading material and allow it to impact me in whatever way in naturally does. That and I was way too busy indulging my desire to read and write poetry during senior year of high school to be bothered with novels and the like, but that is an entry in and of itself.
Hmm, this entry in combination with the one about roleplaying during middle school pretty much solidly emphasizes my nerdiness. But you know what? I’m okay with that. Now, I do believe I am going to start reading Alas, Babylon in earnest, so good day to you, gentle reader.