On Reading

 I like to read.  So, that’s not really true.  I love to read.  It is my favourite past-time, the thing I’ve always done.  I will read anything, anytime, anywhere.  I usually have a pile of books beside my bed, some I’ve already read, some new, just in case I want to read something right now.

Before I had children, I probably read (or re-read) five or six books a week.  I read fast, and I re-read books that I love frequently.  When I was younger, I read so much that I rarely bought books that I hadn’t read.  I would borrow books from friends or from the library and if I really, really loved them, THEN I would buy the book.  That all went out the window when I lived in Quebec – the local library only had books in French, but the local bookstore had a very good selection of English language books.  Now, I do enjoy reading in other languages, but my primary reason for reading is relaxation, and reading in your non-native language is less relaxing that reading in your own language, so I have always preferred reading in English.  My only caveat to that is if the book was originally written in either Portuguese or French.  I will read them in their native language because that makes sense.  I actually own Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” in both Portuguese and in French, and I’ve read it in English.  The Portuguese version is glorious.  The French version is almost as good.  The English version . . . well, something in the language is lacking.  It is nowhere near as beautiful as it is in Portuguese.  I’ve read several of Paulo Coelho’s other books in Portuguese, and I’ve read one or two in English (only because I couldn’t find them in Portuguese).  And there is always a sense of something missing in the English versions, something that just isn’t quite right.  It may, of course, be all in my head, but that’s how it feels to me.

Now that I have children, I don’t read as much.  I probably average one book a week, but I don’t read every week.  A couple of weeks ago, I read three books in the space of two days.  I started a book last week that I haven’t even got a third of the way through yet. I still love to read, but I hate to be interrupted when I’m reading, and children always interrupt.  Or want to know what you’re reading.  Or what the story is about.  Or why is there a picture of a sad lady on the cover, Mummy? Or is that a murder book, Mum?  Why would you read that?

My two girls started reading the Harry Potter books a couple of years ago.  I read the first book to them both, at which stage my eldest, then nine years old, determined that she was going to read on by herself.  I was perfectly happy with that – my only requirement was that she and I read the more grown-up chapters (the endings of books 3, 4 and 5) together, so that I could answer any questions that she had.  She read all the way up to book six, but never got past the first chapter in that one.  Ironically, that chapter is “The Other Minister”, probably my favourite chapter in the entire series.  When I told her that (we were reading it together for precisely that reason), she said to me, “But why?  Nothing interesting happens.” She declared book 6 (The Half-Blood Prince) “boring” after that.  I think she’s probably still a little young for it (Harry and friends are 16 in the book; she’s now 10).  My younger daughter is now just shy of nine, and she stopped at the start of book 3 for a few months, then returned to the series (mostly, I think, because I told her that after she finished each book, she could watch the corresponding movie).  She’s since completed the entire series, re-read it a second time and is currently about halfway through her third reading. 

The books that she’s reading?  They’re mine, not hers.  I borrowed the first three Harry Potters from a friend and adored them.  Books 4 through 7, I pre-ordered and set aside the entire day of issue to read the book.  I even booked dinner at a restaurant those four evenings so that I didn’t have to stop reading to make dinner.  I picked up each book at 9am when the bookshop opened; I had read each completely by early afternoon.  My husband likes to tell the story of walking through a shopping centre back to our car with me walking directly behind him, one hand on his shoulder, while I read the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

My kids have all inherited a love of reading from me.  There are books all over our house, because they all read (or in the case of the five-year-old, looking at) books anywhere the mood strikes them.  In bed.  On the couch. In the car.  On my bed.  Sometimes in very random spots, like on the stairs or while sitting on the swing or the monkey bars.  Anywhere, really.

The other thing that they’ve inherited from me?  Their disgust when the movie doesn’t quite follow what the book said.  I watched the first Harry Potter movie with the girls and all I heard the entire way through the movie was, “That’s not right!”, “This didn’t happen in the book!”, “Why did they miss <insert particular scene here>?  That’s one of my favourites!”  My husband just laughed and said, “It’s just like watching a movie with you!”.