"Words, words, words," said Hamlet in a Shakespearean quote. In fact, words have always been a huge part of my life. Growing up in a family of all girls and having an English teacher for a mother, literacy has always been an important part of my life. As the middle child there was sometimes competition between my sisters and me to see who could get the most stories in at the dinner table about school or who could have the most minutes on their Book-It sheet at the end of the month. The competition between sibling set aside, literacy and reading was always something that was encouraged as well as praised, whether it was the nightly reading of a book or the frequent trips to the library. However, with an older sister who could speak full sentences at the age of two and read by the age of four, my strength lay with numbers. I could memorize phone numbers, license plates, and birth dates with ease; nevertheless, numbers lost my interest and words soon became my fascination.
Learning to read came from examples set in my home. I remember sitting on my mom's lap having her read me books until I was able to read them to her. We never went to bed without one of my parents reading a book to my sisters and me. While reading started at a young age with my parents reading to me, I soon developed into an avid reader. It all started with reading the Cat in the Hat, followed by Green Eggs and Ham, then One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. The rhyming words and the vivid descriptions made it easy to figure out the words. Plus the story was easy to follow. They were fun, crazy stories that you could relate to on one end and let your imagination fly on the other. I still enjoy reading Dr. Seuss to this day. I always make sure to pick one of his books when I read to my younger cousins because I can enjoy reading the book as much as they do. Because reading was such an important part of my everyday life, I learned to love reading with a passion.
After I was able to read on my own with ease, I quickly started to get into various book series that were available for children. I started with the Babysitter's Club Little Sister books and the Boxcar Children. I enjoyed reading these books, but they weren't my obsession. Not long after I started in on these series books did I discover the Babysitter's Club books and the American Girl series. These books were like an addiction; I could not wait to get to the next book as quickly as I could. I really enjoyed reading about girls who were older than I was because it made me feel a lot more mature. I read every single Babysitter's Club book in the series, some more than once. I was obsessed with the Babysitter's Club Super Specials. I can still remember lying in bed at 3:00 AM; long after the rest of my family was asleep, reading as fast as I could with a flashlight under my sheets until I got to the part where Dawn get her first kiss on the cruise boat. Even though it would be several more years until I was able to have the same experience as Dawn, I was excited to feel advanced for my age on the subject matter of boys and dating. I felt like I knew everything that was to come, even though I was only in fourth grade.
I was also very interested in the American Girls series. My sisters and I all had one of the dolls with matching hair color to our own. I liked reading stories about Kirsten, Molly, Samantha, and Felicity. The stories made playing with the dolls that much more realistic in my mind. I enjoyed what I was learning from the stories as well. It was interesting to read about girls similar to my age that lived in a different time period. During my grade school years I just couldn't get enough of reading. I spent a lot of my free time engrossed in these books.
During sixth grade and into my junior high years I started reading books written by Lurlene McDaniel. These books gave insight into people's lives and really touched my heart. Looking back on it now, I wonder why I was so obsessed with books that always had people dieing in them. I enjoyed these books as much or even more than the Babysitter's Club series. I couldn't put these books down. I would check out five or six of them out at a time from the library and be finished with all of them within three weeks. I think I liked the fact that these books made me have emotions. I really connected with the main characters and liked to know all the details of their lives, even if it turned out to be a sad ending. Another reason that reading this series of books was so enjoyable was because it was a group of books that my older sister had never read. It was a literary experience all of my own and I could tell her about what I was reading because she had not experienced the books for herself.
Once I got into high school, my casual reading habits slowed down when my required reading became more a part of my schoolwork. For some reason I just could never really get into the books that were required for my classes; I liked having the freedom to choose exactly which books I thought were interesting enough to read on my own. Not only did my homework load increase, but so did my social commitments. Instead of staying home on a Friday night with my parents curled up with a good book, I was out with my friends going to basketball games, movies, or parties. The same time my social life became more demanding so did obligations to sports teams, clubs, and church activities. Unfortunately, reading took the backseat to all the other activities that flooded my life. It was hard to find time to continue reading as much as I did in the past. However, when summers came and when we went on family vacations, I spent a lot of my days with my nose buried in a book. You could almost always find me sprawled out on a beach blanket completely absorbed in whatever novel I was reading at the time.
It was during high school that I started to get into reading the alphabet mystery books by Sue Grafton. I loved the main character Kinsey Milhone and all the adventures that she encountered. I really do not like mysteries that much; I think it was Kinsey's personality that attracted me to the books. I did enjoy the element of suspense, but I liked that Kinsey was a strong, independent, female character that was working in a field of work that was dominated by men. I still pick up Sue Grafton's newest alphabet mystery every time I see a new one released. After reading about Kinsey Milhone's adventures I started to enjoy other books with strong female characters. Some of my favorites include Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Woman. I found characters in all of these books that encouraged me to be an independent, intelligent female with strong values and goals. These pieces of literature set the tone for the rest of my education. I started writing papers and researching various women's issues including gender bias in education, woman's athletics and Title IX, and how woman are portrayed in advertising. This interest has been one that has carried over into my college career. I have become interested in woman's studies courses as well as woman's literature.
Since I have become a student here at the University of Iowa, I have found little time for leisurely reading. Writing a paper like this makes me realize how much I miss curling up and getting totally absorbed in a good book just for fun. While I do read good literature in my classes, I find it hard to enjoy the books as much when I am under time constraints. I was only able to read two non-required books last semester. There are so many novels that I have never gotten the chance to read and I honestly feel like I have missed out. Even in classes such as this one, I feel that I am a little behind some of the other students because I have not done as much reading in the past several years as I would have liked. I feel that sometimes I cannot add to discussions when people are comparing what we are reading in class to other classics that I have not had the opportunity to read yet. Between class, homework, and meetings I think it is hard to find enough down time that I can actually sit back and relax and pick up a good book. I hope that once my college days are over, I will be able to return to the joys of reading for pleasure.
Overall, my passion for reading started at a young age. If it were not for the encouragement from my parents and a competitive nudge from my sisters, I would never have been as interested in literature and reading as I am today. I do not think that you can find a substitute for a good book. I would rather pick up a good book than watch television or go to a movie, there is so much more emotion in a book that you can't experience any other way. A book that can make me laugh out loud or cry silently as I turn the pages is truly more fulfilling than any new release or episode of Dawson Creek that I could experience. Reading has opened the doors to so many options. One of the reasons I want to become an English teacher is so I am able to share my love of reading different stories and help others with the exchange of ideas. Reading and literature have not only become a part of my everyday life, it has become something that I have grown to love as well as appreciate.