Booking Through Thursday: Being A Reader
A meme from Booking Through Thursday.
Today’s topic is “I love BEING a reader and simply can’t imagine what it’s like to go through life without being one.
Am I the only one who feels this way? That wonders at how other people can simply NOT do something that should be so essential? Who feels almost sad that so many people seem content to go through their lives without stretching their mental wings at all?
Can you imagine NOT being a Reader? How does it shape your life? Your perception of it?
How does being a Reader affect your relationship with all those folks who are looking at it from the other side and simply can’t understand how you can sit and READ all the time?”
*Cue pausing to breathe* (and that wasn’t even the whole post!)
I still think of myself as a Reader, but I think that I have… mellowed a lot over the years. Dead serious there was a time in elementary school when I ran into a wall while reading because I read so constantly that I read walking between classes. I was the kid with the book in my lap when we were doing stuff in class. I was the kid hiding my book in the text book I was supposed to be reading. I was also the kid who read so fast I finished what I was supposed to be doing and then got to read my fun book. I was the queen of Accelerated Reader (until this kid moved into town and brought his score with him and beat me… it was a dark time in my life). I would be fascinated to know just how quickly I tore through books back then. I can also remember when my favorite librarian moved to the high school and we had a new one for the 5th grade who tried to question my reading choices.
Middle school was a very weird time. I didn’t get along with that librarian in the same way and I feel like I was more disappointed with the options available. That was when my buying habit started. My bank account and the space on my shelves would be very different if I had been sated by the library I think, especially because once I started I couldn’t stop. I have a lot of books I want to reread. I have a lot I want to read for the first time. If you calculate how long that will take me based on how many books I have read a year in the past… it is terrifying. Though in some ways the blog is a nice excuse to spend lots of time sitting around reading. Though I have confessions. I haven’t touched a book in a week, but you can blame NaNoWriMo for that. Stuff like that scares me sometimes, not reading feels like I am losing my identity.
As far as non readers… for one I don’t think there are as many out there as we act like. Okay, not everybody is us, but different people read differently. Ben likes specific big heavy books. He doesn’t tear through anything but I definitely consider him a Reader. My entire family is made of of readers of various genres and degrees. I did a project once on a friend who didn’t consider himself a reader but he read lots of nonfiction. I suppose maybe I have just done a good job of surrounding myself with readers to the point that I don’t feel that extraordinary. There is one definite Reader at work. The interesting thing about the readers all around me is while there is a wide variety of tastes there are overlaps so while we don’t all read the same things we can talk about certain things in common and those give us points of reference for other discussion. My best friend is definitely the Reader that I have the most overlap with.
As far as can I imagine not being a Reader. I can definitely imagine being less of one. There are so many things to do in the world. We work. I play video games, I want to cook more. I want to sew more. I want to exercise and walk more. I want a puppy. I want to be more social. I want to write more. I want to craft and decorate a home. I want to play games. As much as I love reading and am glad that it is a huge part of my life I can see how there are people who are totally occupied with other things and happy without it.
(Oops, temporarily forgot to post this. Yay, back dating!)
