Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The Years Go By And What I Read

It was always books for me.

I was five when I taught myself how to read.

The book was called The Teeny Tiny Woman, and I spent hours sitting on my bed, little legs dangling, while I sounded out the words. I don't remember exactly what came before I opened that book, or what came right after, but I remember vividly thinking "I can read."

And read I did.

I was seven when my mom bought me my very first Baby-Sitters Club book. I read it in one day and made her take me straight back to the bookstore to buy more. And for the next few years, wherever I was, there was always a Baby-Sitters Club book close by.

I read The Truth About Stacey in the coatroom at school. I read The Ghost at Dawn's House sitting on a bench on the playground while everyone else played dodge-ball. I read Super Special #5: California Girls on a family vacation to the Jersey Shore. I read Kristy and the Snobs at my best friend's 10th birthday sleepover party. I read Super Special #2: Baby Sitters' Summer Vacation during my third summer at sleep-away camp, and I read Super Special 11: The Baby Sitters Remember during the spring I was getting ready for my bat mitzvah.

I was twelve when I entered the wonderful world of Judy Blume. I lived in Miami Beach with Sally J. Freedman, I got my period for the first time and figured out that I could raise one eyebrow with Margaret, I was best friends with Stephanie and Rachel, and I spent some summers with Vic and Caitlin long before I was probably old enough to be a part of their story.

While I was reading my way through Judy Blume, I took a spin through the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Supermysteries, but was always more interested in Fred and Nancy's romance than whatever mystery the foursome was out to solve.

During the beginning of high school I read some Jane Austen, had an ephemeral obsession with the Bronte sisters, and started the Harry Potter books as a testament to my eclectic tastes.

I was sixteen when I read my first romance novel. I picked up a Nora Roberts book that my mom had left on the coffee table, read the entire thing in a single sitting, scoured her bookshelves for more, and began a love affair that has lasted for more than a decade. These are the books that bind me to the women in my family. They are the stories that comforted me on my first night of college, offered me an escape from a very sad summer, gave me sanity when I felt like everything was in chaos, and made my brand new house feel like home.

The story of my life is in the pages of the books that live on the shelves in the corner of my living room. The books that have been my loyal friends and constant companions as I have grown and changed and become who I am. And I may not know exactly what the future has in store for me, and where I will go from here. But I do know one thing for sure.

There will be a book in my hand as I figure it out.

Linking up with the Yeah Write Challenge Grid and
Yeah Write's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

38 comments:

  1. This is a fabulous way to do the link post! Love it! Love the walk down memory lane. My first and longest love affair is also books. Oh how I loved Judy Blume, the Baby Sitters Club, Ramona Quimby...

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  2. I love this history of you through books! I love books too :)

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  3. I love this! I read a lot of the same books growing up. I was just remembering how I got in trouble for reading Judy Blume's Tiger Eyes in 2nd grade! Yikes! I love how you can equate books with your life events.

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    1. Believe it or not I never read Tiger Eyes. I was just thinking the other day that I should get a list together of the Judy Blumes I never read and have a weekend marathon.

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  4. My love for reading started much later, after I finished school, but I've managed to infect all my children with the reading bug while they were still kids.

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    1. I think one of the reasons I'm such a big reader is because my parents are both big readers and read to me every single night from the time I was a newborn baby.

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  5. I've always loved reading and wish the Babysitter's Club books had been around a few years earlier...they would have been right up y alley.

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  6. I love books too! When I was a kid, the girls always talked about what we were reading. The library was just part of the day.
    Unlike you, I can't recount the titles, the stories maybe, but not the titles.

    A great post! I really enjoyed it.

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    1. We were library fanatics when I was growing up. It was always the best place.

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  7. Yay books!! A good book is something I've always been able to count on. loved so many on your list. I also read my first real romance novel at 16. it was No Love Lost by Helen Van Slyke and i was hooked!

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    1. Nothing in the entire world better than a good romance. I have 7 shelves filled with them, and my collection is growing every day. My first one was a Nora Roberts book called The Stanislaski sisters, and I never looked back.

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  8. What a wonderful blast from the past! Great idea to write your book history. We loved some of the same books, but I've yet to read a Babysitter Club book. My daughter devoured that series and is really into Nancy Drew just like I was. Happy memories. Great post!

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    1. The Baby-Sitters Club was the absolute best. My whole collection is still sitting in my parents basement, waiting for someone to read them again.

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  9. I love this!! I was able to take a walk down memory lane while reading this, remembering all of the books I've read, most the same as you! Thanks!

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  10. As a fellow reader, runner and writer, I am excited to find your blog via #31dbbb! Your post is like a walk down memory lane. Would love to see the teenage years, the young adult years, etc... :) Great use of links to flesh out the stories behind the stories. Nice job!

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    1. Runners, readers and writers are the best! There were so many books I left out so I didn't have a post that was 1,000 words long.

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  11. I was a big fan of "Babysitter Club" books too. I read much longer than was appropriate :-)

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    1. Oh I definitely did too. I think I was still reading them until I was 14 or 15.

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  12. I have gotten lost in many a book over the years, often a much needed escape from my ordinary or stressful life. I love the feeling of becoming immersed in another time and place, with people you have just met but become intimately acquainted with through their actions and stories.

    Great post!

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  13. I've been having a hard time reading lately. I've been trying to write my own story and somehow my words never seem "right enough," so I've had to stop reading to stop comparing. Of late, I've decided this is a kind of cruel punishment. I just finished LEAN IN. interesting but out of my genre, totally. But at least I'm back to books.

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  14. You are so freaking SMART. I have a theory about people who teach themselves to read. The theory: They are freaking smart. Anyway, I love love love hearing about your books. I love that you read one in the coat room. Such a fun post!

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    1. Haha thanks. I was also talking in complete sentences by the time I was 1, so I was pretty much a freak of nature.

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  15. I love reading too. It seems I never have enough time to finish books because I love reading blogs so much. But the way they take you out of the here and now and transport you. There's nothing like it. I enjoyed getting a peek into the books that inspire your writing.

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    1. I do most of my reading on my train ride to work, and there really is nothing like it.

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  16. Great link post! I used to devour books. I miss them so much. Someday I'll catch up on everything I missed.

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  17. This post was awesome. You can learn so much about a person from what they read. You know, I've never read a "Babysitters' Club" book. Even now in my 30's I feel like I missed out on something.

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    1. They were the best books I ever read. They teach kids everything they need to know about friendship, family, having a job, and all kinds of other things.

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  18. This is a wonderful post. Books can bring people together, or in fact did so even before internet. I myself loved to read when I was young, at the age of 4, I started Kindergarten. This was because my birthday falls late in November. I picked up quickly though and had no problems. Then as a teenager, I had to babysit my half sister. I would read my mother's books and stay up all night if the book was good. I am now 36 and still have a love for books. My most recent read was Janet Fitch's book Paint it Black. My favorite book I always recommend to people is Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler. Thank you for sharing this.

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  19. Love this homage to books and reading! You kind of took me back to my own reading history. I love the way books let you escape into another reality. And I love how lining the shelves with them makes a home feel like home. It's pretty much why I was resistant to the kindle for so long. Great post!

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  20. Me too, me too! I love this post so much, because it mirrors my experience almost exactly, down to the teaching myself to read at a young age! Books accompany me through life (most of the same ones you mention, in fact, except replace Nora Roberts with Judith McNaught). I love this tribute to the magic of books.

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  21. Just beautiful. I hear the voice of my daughter in 15 or 20 years looking back on her current obsession with the Magic Tree House series. How I love to lose her in the house and catch her reading in a comfy corner somewhere. The way you recount memories by the titles you were reading at the time reminds me of how certain songs stir up my nostalgia. Brilliant.

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  22. Some of my most favorite memories are those of going to the library to get new books - Encylopedia Brown, The Bobsey Twins, Sweet Valley High ... the list goes on and on. My parents were both readers - and in the evenings, more often than not all of us could be found with our noses in a book vs. watching tv. To this day, I would rather curl up with a book than watch a movie :) This was a wonderful post :)

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  23. I just love this post, because it's nice to know that I'm not the only other book nerd out there. Our pasts, when it comes to reading, are similar that it's uncanny. Yay for reading!

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    1. Thanks so much :) I love hearing that I have a reading soul mate. If I could get away with it, I would still read Baby Sitters Club books and surround myself with Judy Blume. Those are the best ever.

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