Wasn't a Reader...

When I was a kid my mom read stories to me sometimes.  Not all the time.  I do remember her reading those really thin books that you give to toddlers who can't read and most of the page is all picture with a sentence at the top or bottom.  Those are about all she ever read to me.  I was never read from a thicker book with no pictures like Pinocchio or Moby Dick or whatever.  I'm not trying to put blame on my mother but I never was very much of a reader growing up.

Now my sister on the other hand was.  I can remember her being in her teens reading horror novels like Christine or Cujo.  I'm just picking names out of the hat.  I do remember my mom and my Aunt Betty reading V.C. Andrews books and my sister would read them after my mom and aunt.  But I never was really interested in reading.  My sister was an A student though and I had "learning disabilities" which later I found out was ADD when I was 26.  I mean really, if anyone or anything is to blame it's that.

When I was 15 I would see my sister reading her V.C. Andrews novels and I wanted to feel a little like part of the crowd so I asked my mom if she would buy me the V novel and since I had already seen the mini series I already knew what would happen in the book so it made it easier to read.  I did only get halfway through the book though because I lost interest.  Not in the book but reading in general.

When I was 19 I bought the Back to the Future 2 and 3 paperback novels which were basically the movie verbatim.  I hadn't yet seen the 2nd movie and the 3rd was in theaters so I wanted to read the 2nd book then rent the movie then read the 3rd book then go see it in theaters.  Unfortunately, by the time I was finished with the 3rd book the movie wasn't in theaters anymore lol.  But eventually I did get to rent it when it went to VHS.

It did make me feel smart to read a book but that was the last book I read until I was 25.  I had bought a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel called Prophecies : Lost Slayer Serial novel Part 1 when Buffy was still on TV.  I mainly bought it because I was at Barnes and Noble with my aunt and uncle who are avid readers and I felt stupid so I bought a book.  I didn't want to buy something expensive because I really didn't have the money to blow on a book that I knew I would probably never read.  It sat in a box in my closet for years.

In December 2005 after Christmas I was going through my boxes looking for something and I came across this thin novel and I thought you know what, I'm going to tackle this.  I started reading it and I was hooked on it.  It certainly kept my interest and I read it all the way through and it only took me maybe an hour.  There were no hard words in there that I would either need a dictionary or a PHD to figure out what they meant.  So I told a friend of mine that I read it and then she bought a book that was all 4 parts in 1 book and I read it all the way through in a very small period of time.  I was hooked on reading finally.

Then I bought the Harry Potter books 1-5 box from Amazon and read them.  It probably took me 4 or 5 days each book which was fine by me, the longer the better.  But, the first 3 books were thinner than the rest and I read the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th one all in the same amount of time as the first 3 which meant that I was getting faster.

Unfortunately though Harry Potter ruined it for me because J.K. Rowling's books were so easy to read that no other book could keep my interest.  I'd fall asleep while reading other books so I mainly gave up.

Now I've started on the Piers Anthony Xanth novels and those are pretty good and keep my interest.  I've bought so many books that I thought I'd read and never did so I'm going to try and tackle them all soon.