Monday, January 22, 2007

Reading

Maureen Corrigan (Washington Post and NPR) has written a book about her life with books. Her father read compulsively, her mother not at all. My childhood experience with books centered around my local library in Philadelphia. Every Friday I went there and took out the five books I was allowed. The librarian was an African-American woman named Mrs. Robinson and she led me away from exclusively reading series like Trixie Belden or Nancy Drew and into books with more literary aspirations or at least books not written by committee. Not in any strong-arming way, but in a good one. She also blocked by repeated attempts to enter the adult section and read John O'Hara et al. until I was eleven or twelve.
At home, we had one small bookcase with books written by Francis Parkinson Keyes and the Readerss Digest books. Not much to read there because money was scarce and the library close. The books I loved most were the Betsy, Tacy, Tib series by Maude Hart Lovelace and All of the Kind Family by Sidney Taylor. Of course, Nancy was right up there too.
What did you read? Was the library the center of your reading?
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3 comments:

Christa M. Miller said...

I was reading Nancy Drew by 1st grade, but sadly, had no Mrs. Robinson to lead me "higher." I discovered literary on my own, but even there I prefer lit/comm crossovers.

We did go to libraries a lot. Unfortunately I'm now kind of a library snob because I think of our little local one as "too small," but really there is no such thing because the only thing that counts are books. :)

I just have to figure out a way to get Hamlet into books but not in a destructive way....

6:27 PM
Anonymous said...

I was the only reader in our house. My mom read a lot when she was a kid but didnt much as an adult. However she did encourage me to read and took me to the library several times a week. I read through everything in the young adult section and then moved to the adult section with ease. I also had teachers who encouraged to me to read.

As far as a library goes though I never owned any number of books until I was in college. My mom was not big on clutter and I never really bought any books so I had maybe twenty or so and that was it.

But by college I'd amassed enough books to require a bookshelf. A couple of years later I needed a second bookshelf and now I'm starting to eye my third shelf.

My library now is the center of my living environment. They go with me every time I move and though I've never owned any othe furniture of my own, I've always had bookcases. My dream is for my kids to one day troll into my library and start pulling down the books that got me into my favorite writers and my favorite genres.

6:32 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I've always lived in places with good libraries. It must be difficult to not have one nearby. I could never afford to buy all the books we read. Especially with young children, Christa.
I guess I was really the only true reader in my house too. My father and brother didn't read at all. My mother reads now but not so much then. Other than people, it is the great love of my life.

6:50 PM

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