Confessions of a Late-Blooming Book Lover

As a kid, I didn’t love reading. It made me sad when I was expected to transition to books without illustrations. I loved the beautiful drawings and paintings in children’s books, and the dense pages of black-and-white text in grown-up books seemed daunting and bland. I remember writing a lot of letters, stories, poems, and journal entries starting in elementary school, but reading? Reading books was not my thing.

During the middle school years, my 6^th grade English teacher, Mrs. Sleight, made things notably worse. A strict soul, she foisted Little Women by Louisa May Alcott upon me, insisting I take it for “free reading.” All our progress—or lack thereof—was publicly reported on a chart taped to the chalk board in front. My tally lagged, and everyone knew it. Months passed, and I just couldn’t get through that book. When I got an “S-” in reading that year, the equivalent of a D, I cried. Perhaps the teacher hoped I would enjoy the themes of women’s rights in Little Women, and that I would be inspired by the female author. But she never explained that. Not one little bit of guidance did she offer. I thought she wanted me to wear a long skirt, be quiet, and behave more demurely. I thought she hated me. Only as an adult did I come to appreciate Alcott as an amazing writer and thinker, and I still have no idea what Mrs. Sleight was thinking.

In the wake of this humiliation, I got the idea I read too slowly. To remedy this situation, my friend Tracy and I signed up for a speed-reading class at a local high school. The “instructor” advised us to skim, evaluate, and skip over “unimportant” parts. He never taught us how to tell what was “unimportant” or how to absorb substance any faster. I read even less.

Reading was also frustrating for reasons I didn’t grasp. Eventually I understood that I simply didn’t relate to the characters or the authors in many cases, and that created a barrier. I couldn’t stand The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, for example. Remember that book from school? I knew I was supposed to think it was brilliant, but I didn’t like it at all, so I assumed I didn’t like reading. Ultimately, it wasn’t all that strange that a girl like me—an immigrant’s kid living in a rural area, immersed in a blue-collar world—wouldn’t be into a story about a male boarding-school dropout who was “coming of age.” I couldn’t have cared less about Holden Caulfield, and that made sense, actually. But I didn’t put it together at the time.

In school, I worked hard, and I kept up, but reading nevertheless became associated with fear—of failing, of misunderstanding, of mispronouncing. This was true, even though I had good grades. (And I’m pretty sure it was even worse for the kids whose marks were lower.) In 10^th grade, our English class routinely read Shakespeare out loud—student by student, alphabetically we went. Theoretically, this could have been a good pedagogical technique. But, again, the messages were lost. Only memories of the scary teacher remain. Mrs. Petty, a petite woman with a perma-tan, who wore a white shirt and a different color business suit every day, ruled with an iron fist. Or sometimes shoe. Once, in a fit of rage, she took her pump off her tiny stockinged foot and hammered it on her lectern—bang, bang, bang! Order in the classroom! I huddled over The Taming of the Shrew. CliffsNotes got me by.

The next year, I endured the notoriously difficult “author’s report” with Mr. Frank, a man known to delight in humiliating and terrifying students. He had us choose a particular author for the whole year’s research project. Also not such a terrible idea. But nobody sat down with me to help me decide, and somehow I picked the American-British novelist Henry James. Starting the summer before, I dutifully plowed through The Turn of the Screw, Daisy Miller, The American, and The Wings of the Dove. I wondered at James’ characters struggling to navigate the trans-Atlantic divide, and I began to see how psychology could be explored in fiction. But James’ writing was far too sophisticated for me at that age, at least without a discussion.

There were a few exceptions. I loved Dream of the Blue Heron, by Victor Barnouw, and From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg. To this day, parts of those books run like a movie in my head. What magic! They gave me an inkling that books could transport you in a delightful way. I gleefully read Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels in the back row of 9^th grade biology with another girl, Suzy. The teacher, Mr. Siebert, knew we were reading something other than biology, but he just let us. Later in high school, in AP English I was intrigued by Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Still, reading was not my preferred activity. 

Even as I went off to college, I avoided reading “for fun.” Majoring in economics made it easy. We were bogged down with problem sets and equations.

Then something strange happened. Somewhere during junior year, my book-lover switch flipped on. I would go out of my way to dash into the reading room in our student union so I could curl up in a wingback with a good book. Senior year, I even signed up for an English lit elective—and did well.

What had changed? Maturity, maybe. Perhaps all the layers of schooling had finally gelled in my brain, and I could comprehend more of what I was reading. Even if there were times when I was lost, I know I was lucky to have a strong public school and then some wonderful classes at Cornell. There were a few specific people who helped turn the ship around, such as the brilliant scholar Sigrid Weigel, a professor at the University of Hamburg, who happened to teach German lit to non-native German speakers during the spell when I was an exchange student there. She had a gift for generating a wide-ranging, deep discussion amid a large circle of students from all over the world—and for most of us, in beginner German.  

Looking back, though, I think the most important factor in making a book lover out of me was choice. The few books I loved as a kid I had picked out myself. The same was true of the Bond novels. Nobody told us we had to read them. (Indeed, the teachers probably would have said NOT to read them, but by the way, they are surprisingly literary!) I discovered I loved browsing the stacks of the fine arts library at Cornell (which used to be in Sibley Hall), and couldn’t get enough of The Strand bookstore in New York City, which I first encountered the summer after sophomore year in college. All those piles of used books were a treasure trove to me—endless worlds distilled into little piles of paper.

It took me a while, but I finally realized that if you read books that tickle your fancy, you’re more likely to enjoy yourself, and guess what? This creates a positive feeling, and you’ll be willing to try it again. Then you’ll actually want to do it the next time and the next. (This reminds me of If You Give Pig a Pancake now.) Eventually, you’ll venture into books about something brand new and fresh, another world, others’ challenging ideas. You’ll be able to travel far and wide, maybe even understand someone who is completely different from yourself. You’ll be sucked in. Amazed. Your reading will get

faster. And you’ll be on the book lover road.