Radvent Day 14: Reading

Did you like to read as a child? Do you read more or less now?

This answer will sound strange. Yes, I liked to read as a child, but I didn't do much of that because I didn't really have encouragement from my family. Instead I watched TV. I always wanted to read, but you follow the example of your parents, and they didn't really read, except for my mother, so I didn't really read. Also I didn't really find anything interesting to read. My mother asked me once what kind of books I like to read, so I said "Something that makes you think." Then I found Edgar Allan Poe in the sixth grade and I thought this guy was the big time. Sure some of the words were really big, like Amontillado, but this guy really hooked me. Grades 7,8, and 9 I didn't really read. I only read maybe 20 pages of The Outsiders in the eighth grade.

Shakespeare was cool in high school, but I couldn't get the language down. Then what was the point of Julius Caesar after he dies in Act III. After that, the rest was dull. Grade 12 was when I started reading. Fearful that I might fail English 30, I paid attention in class and read everything I was supposed to and this time all the stuff I read was good. People died, nobody was happy and this was stuff that made you think. We did Hamlet, and that was perfect because it was modeled after my homelife, minus the incestual innuendo. Same with 1984. I felt like Winston Smith. In university, I read more.

Now I read constantly to the surprise of my family because I read books they wouldn't touch. My sister asked me once if I had read Dante's Inferno because I read a lot of the classics. So yes, now I love to read.