The Reading Adventures Begin
Today’s post is going to be a bit of a walk down memory lane for me. Some early reading influences (both people and books), and how I came to love fantasy and science fiction. It’s just time for a little more about me than I have before included in my “about me” page.
I’m from a fairly typical (I think?) American family. I’m the oldest of what ended up being 6 kids with a working class (generally) background. As a kid learning to read, we lived with grandparents for a bit and that was fabulous for me. Not only does my mom love to read and graduated with a degree in English teaching (when I was 3), but my Grandma was a huge reader. She always had a book to read and a quilt or knitting project (or both!) to work on. Dad also has a soft spot for all thrillers, picking up over the years boxes of mass market paperbacks. Note also, that this was… late 80’s and early 90’s. With only 4 tv channels and no VCR (much less dvd or streaming) for a good portion of my early years, there was a lot of time for reading in the evenings.
In this environment, it wasn’t too difficult to find reading material. At the grown up age (I thought at the time) of 6 or maybe 7 I felt like I needed to read chapter books too, and my mom found somewhere a set of CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. I remember her sitting with me as we took turns reading through the series before bed for what seems like a long time though I’m not sure how long that actually took. And then I took the books and read them all again by myself. I for sure didn’t get the symbolism and themes behind the books, but I loved the stories of kids doing big things, with unicorns, fauns, and other magical creatures. The idea of other worlds where there is magic for real was awesome, and it stuck with me.
After that, I kept reading. I loved the Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites series, which is fantasy based on stories from the Book of Mormon. I read a lot of books by Lois Lowry, Laura Ingles Wilder, LM Montgomery, Beverly Cleary, and other typical kid books. And then I found Zilpha Keatly Snyder’s books in the library. The Egypt Game, Below the Root (and sequels), and a few others that were full of magic and hidden worlds that had wonderful secrets to discover as I read. I haven’t read (or seen) her books in years (hmmm, maybe I should search some up…) but they were inspiring for me. And it was hard to find anything as awesome as that, even with help from the librarians. Really, the fantasy genre for middle grade has come a LONG way since then (thank you Harry Potter and others).
Finally when I was 12 or 13, for sure in 7th grade at Orem Jr High, I found… so many books. I started with Eddings, when my mom found “Pawn of Prophecy” for me at the library. After reading all of his books, I went looking for more. The librarian at school was great; she had been collecting books that kids wanted to read. So I went on to Weiss and Hickman, Katherine Kurtz, and a few others. I noticed that my favorite books all had one of two symbols on the spine: DelRey or Tor; I didn’t really know what different publishers meant though. With that in mind, I went through the Orem Public Library in search of more and I found Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. Getting all the books from the library took forever, since there were SIX of them, but they were the best thing I’d ever read. I got a bunch of friends to read them too, and we had endless discussions over lunch about boys named Rand, Mat, and Perrin. Totally normal for junior high girls, right? We were dying for the next book, and had no idea how long the series would be. But I do remember the talk of Jordan’s age; would he be able to finish the series before he died because he looked old. Super ironic looking back, since he did pass away before finishing his story. But not for another decade or more. Around this time, I also discovered that you could go to the right store and just buy books off the shelf. And having some money from babysitting, off to Borders (RIP) or Barnes and Noble I went. Over a few years I was able to buy all my favorites, including those mentioned above plus Ender’s Saga by Card, Tad Williams’ Memory Sorrow and Thorn (oh those Whelan covers grabbed me even before I know what they were!), and some Anne McCaffrey as well. And those mass market paperbacks were (and are still in some cases) really well loved.
And that’s really it. I was totally hooked. I didn’t have tons of fun reading time in High School, but would reread favorite books/chapters and also picked up these new books my sister loved called Harry Potter once the fourth book came out and it looked long enough to be interesting. In another post sometime I’ll talk about how I got back into reading as an adult, but this was the story of how I became a reader in general, with a deep love of Fantasy.
So, where does your love of reading start? As a young kid, or was it later?
Me at Easter, 1988 4 years old
Just at the beginning of this story.
No, this is not either my oldest or youngest daughters. They just look exactly like me…
Prom, sophomore year. Spring 2000
At the end-or really past the end of this blog story. It’s really hard to find pics of myself without a ton of other people from my growing up.
