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My Reading Journey
13
My Reading Journey
Earlier Years
Early
Memories in Miami
My clearest real memories of "reading" come from when my family moved from Mexico to Miami and, to help my sister and I learn English, my mom would read us a story at bedtime.
Storybooks
Fairy Tales
As we got older, our mom read us more elaborate stories, which my sister found more engaging (I drifted off more quickly)
"Harder"
Books
Although I was confused most of the time, I remember the ending was probably the first book ending that ever made me cry.
Note: it's about two sisters, my mom read it to two sisters... I won't spoil it but this really played into why the ending was so devastating to me.
Fun Fact: the Unicorns of Balinor series was never finished by the author.
Didn't "struggle" to read but I was a very high-energy child who preferred to play and run around.
Learning
to Read
My sister reads enough for both of us...
At Home
My older sister did actually really like to read from early on, it was "her domain" to me (she liked computers, I liked dolls, she was shy, I threw tantrums, she liked reading, I liked book covers). Still, eventually when she got onto the Harry Potter books, I was persuaded to join in by instead listening to the audio books.
We literally had this radio in yellow in our bedroom to listen to Harry Potter.
Book Fairs and Library
At School
My criteria:
a) does it have a pretty cover? (If they were very long, I'd probably just have them around for decoration anyways)
b) oooh, these ones are fun but you can't possibly read them in one go!
Communication Challenges
Moving
back to
Mexico
Going back to Mexico was actually really hard on me because:
A) my English was stronger than my Spanish at that point,
B) I found it hard to fit in and communicate with my cousins and new classmates because we didn't have same cultural references, which made me feel insecure and "weird".
Reading books in English became my sanctuary, the one place I could still flow in that language that was more famliar to me. I started reading a lot and carrying a book with me wherever I went, to make up for the fact that I was lonely and also to have an excuse not to talk to anyone.
Books for
Comfort
Case-point: It was my greatest dream to own all 54 Animorph books. It didn't hurt that these covers seemed soooo
cool in the 2000s.
Bookworm to Vamp-mania
Eventually I got past most of my social issues, as I grew to have more in common with the people around me over the years. Even so, reading was still something I liked and turned to often to distract myself from self-esteem issues in my teen years.
Because I always crazy for a good romance, it followed that I got really into YA fiction and I am still remembered by my school friends as the first girl to introduce the Twilight books in our grade and yes, basically every single girl (and a few of the boys) did read them, no matter what they might say now.
YA
On a less cringey note, my obsession with vampires led me to read Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire which made a really lasting impression on me and was the first real example of a homosexual perspective and love story that I had ever come across.
I'll admit that I spent most of my university years reading so many academic texts that reading for pleasure took something of a backseat.
After graduating, however, I set out for a new genre (YA now seeming a little cheesy) and I fell into the next trend: Psychological Thrillers by Women!
Adult
At the same time, however, I also stumbled across Agatha Christie's classic mystery novels and, in a fun echo to my childhood, I now dream of owning all 33 Hercule Poirot novels! (I'm currently stuck at 25)
Even today, my favorite place to be is any Barnes and Noble with a large Mystery/Thriller section.
Through rought times, reading offered me an escape, brought me closer to my sister, and was one of the many ways I can appreciate my parents' love for me (as there used to be no Amazon, let alone Amazon Mexico, it was through expensive overseas shipments and carrying book lists in his suitcase during business trips that my dad got me books in English when we were back in Mexico).
Final
Thoughts
I always felt a little "silly" for being particualrly drawn to "girly" books and essentially refusing to read a book with a male protagonist (the one exception being Harry Potter) but today I see that as a very early allegiance to female representation and female writers: I wanted to see myself through female protagonists and it frustrated me to read stories that only included women as side characters or hollow love interests.