Dial H for Hitchcock giveaway: Your favorite reading memory
I'll get things started: one of my very very most delightful reading memories was when I was in high school reading Anna Karenina. I was feverishly trying to finish reading it before the school year started (I was supposed to show up with a paper written on the first day of English class). I went to my favorite coffee shop and sat outside with a delicious frozen mocha. I was wearing a sundress and loved the feel of the summer sun on my shoulders, and I was reading a part of the book where a mother and her children are swimming together in the country. Both life and art were so fill with sweet, innocent pleasure.
One of my favorite (there are many!) reading memories is of coming home from the library at age 7 with a stack of books on a hot day, midsummer. I recall lying on the tile floor of our house's entryway (to keep cool), reading Elizabeth Enright's _Gone Away Lake_, and feeling completely transported. These days, the notion of being able to spend a day reading a book sounds like the height of luxury to me!
I used to climb a tall tree across the street from my childhood home and read for hours. I could hear my sister looking for me, but I wouldn't come down until I either finished my book or mom flashed the porch light. I wish I had a climbable tree outside my apartment.
My mother is a high-school librarian and in the summer she would bring home piles of new young adult fiction for my sister and me to read. It was a win-win scenario: we'd lose ourselves in book after book, lying in the hammock out behind our cottage, and then my mom would know which ones to recommend to her students!
I remember the year I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and decided I was going to be just like Francie Nolan and read the library in alphabetical order. I made it to the Bs before I got tired of it.
As a young professional in Louisville many years ago, I could be selfish about my down time - no kids, no husband, etc. I thought reading War and Peace would be a task worth undertaking, mostly for the satisfaction of checking it off my bucket list of 'must reads'. I was captivated and spent many hours as soon as work was done, feet up on the couch, reading about the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins, and the Drubetskoys. Ah, how I long to curl up with a good book and let time slip away...
My favorite reading memory--rather or memories--is that of the Book It! program. Did anyone else do this during elementary school? You read as many books as possible, and every so many books you get a certificate for a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. How exciting that was...my family made so many trips to PH and I read so many great books in the process. It definitely cemented my love for gobbling up books. Doing a little research just now confirms that the program is still going on, 20(!) years later, yay!
With both pregnancies, I would read stories to my belly & watch as Eva & Owen would bump and kick around in my belly. They usually would get more active when I read to them at night, so I always felt like they could hear me and were happy that I read them stories.
I was in the Book It program too! That and the summer reading programs at the different libraries in town. I remember walking down to the library after swimming lessons to get the weekly stack of books. Also staying up late reading the Boxcar Children books by the light of the hallway. No wonder I have such thick glasses now!
I think reading is one of life's greatest pleasures! I have always loved to read - anything and everything I could get my hands on since I was very little. I especially loved ordering books at school - combining my great love of reading with my other great love - shopping! To this day, I must always have a book "in waiting" for when I finish reading my current one...it's a steadfast "rule" in my life. There is nothing better than getting all cozy in my favorite reading chair, a soothing cup of tea nearby, and an enjoyable book to take me away from my busy life for a little while....My husband and I love to wander through any book store we come across in our travels and often have to ship our purchases home. It's so delightfully old-fashioned, in a way, to just take some time and enjoy perusing all the books - to us, it's like a grown-up treasure hunt!
DesigningDiva
When I was a freshman in high school, my mom gave me a copy of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I didn't always take my mom's advice at that point in my life, so I think it must have been the cold late winter chill in the air, accompanied by the scrape of brittle branches on my window, that made me hunker down in bed one evening to read. I'd always been a reader, a book-lover, but my first reading of ATGIB was the first time I'd gripped pages so hard. I was breathless, falling headlong into Francie's world. Francie was like a friend. She was like me, her family not so different from my own. Francie's Brooklyn seemed so magical despite the poverty that she lived with. Looking back now, I think that that first read was when I realized that beauty is everywhere, not where our culture tries to tell us it is.
Spoiler ahead! When Francie and her brother find out that their mother will marry another man after their father has died, leaving their baby sister to be raised with the new, wealthier man as a father figure, they lament the fact that she won't have the fun that they did. Poor Laurie, they think. This, said by two kids who grew up without much in the material sense.
What a great question, Sarah! ATGIB still sits on my dresser for nights when I need comfort and inspiration, both. Now you have me thinking about rereading it whole.
During elementary school one of my favorite books was Snowbound with Betsy by Carolyn Haywood. It has been out of print for some time, so I was so happy to find a copy a few years ago. It brought back fond memories that I could share with my children.
I have so many fond reading memories - how to choose!? One I will say is reading Island of the Blue Dolphins when I was in elementary school. I was driving home to Maryland with my parents after a long road trip down to visit my sister in North Carolina. The world in the book was such a far cry from my own and all I had was my imagination to guide me -- to this day I still feel like I've been to that island! Reading is such a great way to stretch a child's imagination and creativity.
As a child, my Mom worked in the library at my elementary school. Everyday after school, I would join her in the library and bury myself in the books surrounding me. It taught me an appreciation and love for books that I cherish!
I remember Book It! I used to have a big purple Book It button on my backpack. One of my all-time favorite books is Matilda by Roald Dahl and I remember reading it over and over again on road trips as a child.
My parents were teachers at a small country school in Kentucky. Teachers (and, by extension, their children) generally return to school two weeks before the students. One year-- I think I was eight -- during teacher in-service, I found Little Women. I remember lying on my stomach in the rectangle of sun coming through the library window, smelling the old books, and devouring Little Women, then Little Men, then Jo's Boys. That utter absorption in another world is what I love most about books. And I still love to read lying on the floor in a sunny room!
Well, I do love to read but I don't have ~only~ one favorite memory. I have many favorite memories. However, my first favorite memory of reading is when my mother presented me with my first Nancy Drew mystery. She hoped it might wean me from my steady diet of comic books. The Secret of the Old Clock totally captivated me--I couldn't put it down--although it was rather a while before I actually understood the meaning of "titian blonde."
I remember when the reading light "switched on" for me. I was 12 and being home schooled (one random year). Both my brother and sister went to school and I was home all day by myself most of the time. I dove headfirst into my first adult (not YA) novel, The Oath by Frank Peretti and he had me at hello. I've been in love with reading and writing ever since.
My love of books began when I was in 4th grade and was introduced to the Little House on the Prairie books. I couldn't wait to get home from school so I could continue reading them. Years later, the TV series was made - I liked it, but nothing could compare to reading the books.
Learning how to read at a very early age(5) I have too many memories to count, let alone pick one! I will have to say that what changed the type of book I read had to be the most profound. In my 10th grade, I found The Princess Bride by William Goldman.I read this about 6 times before the movie actually came out. If you have only seen the movie, give yourself a treat and read the book! There is so much more back story to catch up on. It truly is one of the yummy treats that I read aloud to my girls.
I could read when I was 4 and always had a special love for books. I remember going to the store with my mom and instead of a new toy or candy I would ask for a new book. The last book I really enjoyed was Blue Castle. Before that I really loved the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I cant wait to Khaled Hosseini comes out with another book.
When I was 5 and living in France with my Air Force family, I attended French kindergarten. I had two favorite books: Mon Petit Chat and La Maison De Bebe. At 8, I moved to California and on to The Red Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, which I read aloud to my friends, gathered in a circle on the rug. Then I discovered there were more books by Frank L. Baum than The Wizard of OZ. My mother took me to a bookstore in Santa Barbara where she purchased a new OZ book for every OZ book I bought from my allowance. I introduced my 3 girls to books and they fell in love with books and read the same books I had. Is it a surprise that I grew up to be a reading teacher?
I have loved reading for as long as I can remember. It started out when I was a kid reading Roald Dahl's books and the Boxcar Children to present day in which I will always have a book with me when I go out. One of my favorite reading memories though, has got to be when I was 12 and left the young adult section and started peeking into the regular book stacks at our library. I got my first taste of adult novels then, reading Gone With the Wind instead of doing my math homework, reading Jane Eyre and all of Louisa May Alcott's books by the public pool in the summer. This is also the time that I started my love affair with romance novels. It started pretty innocently with YA romances, like the Sunfire series (with titles like "Victoria) to Danielle Steele, to Nora Roberts, to Julie Garwood and now I am full on romance novel addict.
My favorite reading memory is a little...weird, for lack of a better word. I was kind of an anti-social kid. As an adult, that's changed, but I was a bit of a loner back then, although my mother tried her hardest to change that. I would just want to spend the weekends reading by myself, but she was afraid I would grow up with no friends, so she would push me to go on play-dates with other girls. One weekend, she forced me to invite a classmate names Dara over to hang out, but I was in the middle of a particularly engrossing book (I have no memory of what it was) and I didn't want to put it down. So, when Dara came over, I made some popcorn and handed her a bowl of it, along with another book for her to read, and promptly returned to my book. Dara was annoyed (as I would have been at such treatment) and called her mom up fairly soon after arriving to be picked up. But...I got to finish my book! :)
I never enjoyed reading as a kid. I did it because I had to, and I possessed average skills at it, but I never had any fun with it. I did not fall in love with reading until J.D. Salinger introduced me to Holden Caulfield, and it's a typical love story from there. When I was in college, I maintained my love of reading and decided I wanted to share it. I began volunteering as a reading tutor for a program at an inner-city Creative and Performing Arts school (another passion of mine) and worked one on one with students on their reading skills. It was unbelievable to see how a kid can go from being self conscious about their reading skills, to completely falling in love with it. One girl I worked with loved to read the dictionary by the time our lessons were through. It was an honor to know that I had influenced their reading skills in a way that I can honestly say no one had ever done for me. The collective memories of every one of the kids I worked with is my favorite reading memory.
consuming as many of the nancy drew books as I possibly could. she was my idol. there was never one main memory since I would always rather be reading. The library was where I always wanted to be. To this day I still love the smell of old books and the nostalgia of being inside a library.
When I was in junior high, I read a book called "I, Keturah" by Ruth Wolff. I had checked it out of the library and didn't want to return it as I read it a few times and was touched by the young woman who survived a very bad start. This book is no longer in print and I'm not sure that the reading level would be appropriate but I will never forget the survival of this young woman.
My favorite reading memories always involve my dad, who read out loud to my sisters and I almost every night growing up. He had a wonderful voice, and would change pitch and cadence depending on the character or scene he was reading. I particularly remember one night, when we were reading Ralph Moody’s “Man of the Family” series on the big white bed in my parent’s room. My two sisters and I were snuggled up with dad, when we came to the part where Ralph’s father passes away. We tried hard not to sob as Dad read, until his voice quavered and he set the book down. Glancing up, I saw a tear rolling down his face. After a moment, he sighed, “Sorry, girls—lost my composure there for a minute.” He then picked the book up and read the rest of the chapter. That was one of the few times I ever saw my dad cry.
Reading is something that I shared with my mother and my grandmother from a very early age. My mother saved all of her books from when she was a wee one and passed them along to me -- one of my first memorable moments was reading "Little Women" with her, and then watching the Liz Taylor movie version with she and my grandmother. We also did the same thing with "Anne of Green Gables". Now the tables have turned -- my beloved grandmother is now suffering from Alzheimer's and can hardly put a sentence together, let alone recognize me. When I visit her, I read aloud from one of our favorite books, or a book of poems.
I love reading these comments! I grew up with 4 siblings, and money was always tight. I can't remember a time when I didn't love books, but I didn't own very many-used the library religiously.
One of my parent's friends was a junior high principal, and they were clearing out some old books from their library. Somehow my dad finagled a huge box of books for me, it was like a treasure trove. It had a bit of everything-fiction, nonfiction, Shakespeare, and I read every single book. Going downstairs, and picking out a book from that box was such a joy, I really can't describe it. I was in 4th grade, so that was about 40 years ago. The funny thing, I still get that same sense of joy when I have a pile of books waiting to be read. Also, another wonderful moment for me was when I realized that my daughter has the same love of books that I do.