15 things about books

[brigdh]

1. I don't remember learning to read. I remember little things associated with the process, like the reading lessons in first grade: we'd get a sheet of paper with ten or twenty words on it, would study them for a week, and then would have to read them, write them, and define them in one-on-one sessions conducted in the hallway outside the classroom. I remember usually already knowing the words.

I don't remember what the first book I read was. I remember books I had when I was very young: one of my favorites was a giant collections of old fairy tales illustrated with ancient sepia-tinted woodcuts. They weren't quite the Grimm versions, but they were closer to that than they were to Disney: plenty of people getting eaten or having their eyes pecked out or being turned to birds that carried millstones around their necks. I loved the Robber's Bridegroom with an unholy glee, but the one that haunted me the most was the man forced to dance to death in a patch of briars. I still have it somewhere, though it's missing both the front and back covers and the spine.

2. I do remember the first time I went to a library. Neither of my parents were really library-people (which was strange, because they are book-people, especially my dad, but I suppose they've just always bought their books), so the first time I went was with my neighbor and best friend Maureen. I was enthralled. All these books, and for free! As many as I wanted! I was five or six, and I have hazy memories of a giant, brick-lined room with the children's section, and the intimidating adult half of the library, which I had to walk past the librarian's desk to get to. These memories are a lot warmer, brighter, and, for some reason, yellower than my more recent visits to the place.

I got a library card soon after, and it became tradition to go to the library every Friday and get ten books. Always ten books, and always ten new ones, because I'd easily finish that many in a week. This tradition continued at least until I was in high school, although I'd since discovered that I could actually get out as many as fifty at a time. The ten-at-once thing was invented by my parents.

3. The book I impressed most heavily upon as a child was The Changeling by Zylpha Keatley Synder. I have no idea where I found it; not a library, because I've always had my own copy of it, and it wasn't a gift, because I don't have any of those "cool aunt" type people who would have bought it for me. Maybe I stole it from a classroom.

It's the story of a relatively normal, if shy, unpopular, and book-wormish, girl who becomes best friends with the daughter of the "bad" family in town, a weird child who talks to imaginary friends and wants to become a ballerina and is convinced that she is a changeling (thus the title). The story concerns the time they spend together growing up, which comes and goes as the strange girl's- Ivy is her name- family gets run out of town and then slinks back, and eventually ends with the revelation that she's managed to find a dance school in New York. My copy of it has been read so thoroughly that it doesn't have a back cover and exists in three or four pieces held together with a rubber band.

I didn't identify with the main, normal character, as you're obviously supposed to. No, I was all about Ivy. I was Ivy, in ways, and I wanted to be Ivy in even more ways. I get hit hardest by characters who ping my emotional radar like she does: not just that I share some trait of theirs, but that they are unafraid of the traits, they embrace them and flaunt them and fuck the rest of the world if it makes them uncomfortable (and dear God, does Saiyuki hit this part of me).

I have issues from trying to cover over parts of me that I know make it harder for me to relate to people socially. I've been told a lot that I'm too smart for people to feel comfortable with, and while there's not really much I can do about that, it's become one of my ingrained habits to not directly mention grades or test scores or anything that quantifies intelligence; when I get excited and slip up, the best response I ever get is a pause while stuff goes on behind their eyes that I don't want to know, a strained "that's great!", and a change of subject. And I don't mind, because I don't need to brag, but I'm jealous of people who can take joy in their accomplishments and have everyone around them join in whole-heartedly. I get tired, sometimes, of having everything be shadowed by the need to fuzz it out, squish it down, make it fit into the realm of everyday.

And Ivy is the first character I can remember reading and thinking, "This is it! This is how I'm going to be from now on! I won't be normal anymore, I don't need to, I can be so much more." Except that, well. It's really hard to do if you don't have that person who will stick by your side and love you anyway. I can track my emotional response to characters who do have that friend, and therefore who are so much cooler than the rest of us, so much larger than life, directly back to The Changeling. I am so heavily invested in it that I will still read anything about changelings, despite the fact that the fairy tales don't really have anything to do with what I respond to.

4. I read about a page a minute. This changes based on how small the text is, how large the pages are, and how interested I am in the material, but it's constant enough that I can time how long I've been reading by how many pages I've covered. I've read at the same rate for years.

5. I cannot keep a bookmark. I lose them in millions of ways: I'll take them out of the book and misplace them, they'll slip from the pages while I'm moving the book, they'll disappear into the stomach of the monster that eats socks from the dryer. After getting sick of constantly buying pretty bookmarks and losing them within days, I started using scrap pieces of paper to mark my place, usually a corner torn off a newspaper, a fast-food napkin, or a flyer handed to me by someone protesting something. Ironically, these often last for several books.

6. One of my clearest memories of eighth grade is a day when no one was paying attention to class; people were shouting, whispering, passing notes, getting out of their seats to run around, etc, etc. Finally, in desperation, the teacher screamed at all of us and pointed to me: "Look! [Brigdh] is the only one who's actually listening! Why can't the rest of you be like her?"

Hearing my name, I jerked up and pretended that I had some idea of what was going on because I was, of course, actually reading a novel underneath my desk. Although the teacher couldn't see it, everyone to my sides or behind me could, which meant they all knew exactly how little I was listening. I'm just lucky I only got teased later instead of being told on.

7. I love to read out loud. Unfortunately, most people, including me, hate to be read to, especially when they have no particular interest in the book being read. I forced my parents to listen to me for a while, until catching them doing something that required both hands, like driving or fixing dinner, ceased to work because they'd refuse to listen, and then I invented a ghost that lived in my closet and was so bored by having such a small afterlife that he'd listen to whatever I wanted.

8. One summer, when I was around ten, my father announced that I was no longer allowed to read as much as I had. His reasoning was that endless reading was no better than endless TV watching, and I needed to be outside playing more to be healthy. He was probably right, but that didn't keep me from being convinced that this was the most terrible tragedy that had ever oppressed a child (italics deeply intended! I remember spending the few days after he told me in tears).

It ended up having no actual effect on my amount of reading, as none of my other guardians cared enough to enforce it and he soon forgot the whole thing, but I was traumatized by the fear of having my books taken away.

9. I have always had insomnia. Since as a child, you're not allowed to get out of bed to do something else the way all 'cure insomnia' books tell you, I started telling myself stories to help me fall asleep. I remember that by seventh grade, if not earlier, these stories were essentially fanfiction (I can date this because I remember snippets of a story about Drizzt Do'Urden, a character from R. A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms books I adored at that time), but even before that one of my favorite tricks was to populate my room with all my favorite characters.

When I found out that other people did the same thing, I was amazed, because I'd long since convinced myself that it was a weird and bizarre behavior that I should never let anyone find out about.

10. I don't get motion sickness at all. It's fairly rare, actually, for me to be in a bus or car and not be reading; after all, what else is there to do? Watch buildings go by? I can carry on for hours without feeling the slightest bit nauseous.

11. I scope out the books that other people have in their homes, and yes, it does impact how I feel about them. Fortunately, given that I'm in college, most people I know will at least have textbooks somewhere in their living space. Books they were forced to buy for a class probably shouldn't count, particularly when they own no others at all, but just the sight of books on shelves gives me enough of the emotional weight I want that I look more kindly on them than I would someone with no books at all.

I also will always attempt to see the title of the book when I see someone reading in public. Since people generally read by holding the cover down, this can involve some interesting positions as I try to make it out without obviously staring. If I've read it myself, or even if I just know of it, I'll usually say something to the person, because hey: fellow reader!

12. I've never had an issue with reading books with adult content, and as far as I can remember, my parents never tried to censor my reading. Which lead to several strange discussions: I once asked my mother what a 'hoo-rey' was. When she looked for herself and corrected my pronunciation ("whore"), she attempted to explain what it was. I'd recognized the word however, and was already backing, blushing, out of the room. I think I was 10 or 11 at the time.

I ended up rereading that book a million times, actually. I can still remember the opening line: "My mother was the village whore, and I loved her very much."

13. I cannot remember a time when I didn't carry a book with me constantly. It was easy enough in grade school, because I could just put it in my desk, but high school was a new challenge: we switched classes! If I wanted books, I'd have to carry them where everyone could see and make fun of me! Such a choice: popularity or reading? I angsted over it, came up with compromises: maybe if I always carried them face-down, maybe if I'd only carry relatively thin paperbacks, maybe if I hid them between textbooks...

I chose books, of course. I did get tired of having people think they could reach onto my desk and look at what I was reading though, so by my sophomore year I started wearing purses big enough to hold books. Which got bigger each subsequent year, as I then decided they needed to be big enough to carry even thick hardcovers, and then they needed to be big enough to have a book and a notebook, and then they needed to carry multiple books.

In college I gave up on purses and started carrying a backpack constantly.

14. If I start a book, I will almost certainly finish it. The few exceptions to this come from my reading multiple books at once, and forgetting about the least interesting of them until months have passed and I can no longer remember what was happening, at which point it just goes back on the to-be-read pile. But I don't think I've ever simply decided to put a book down.

15. I always have a bookshelf within reach of my bed. The last two beds I've bought came with bookshelves built into the headboards, which I consider the greatest invention since pillows. If I'm not sharing a room with anyone and can therefore read before falling asleep, I will sleep with books directly in the bed. I have done this for years, and it's not terribly uncommon for me to change the sheets and find a paperback kicked to the bottom of the bed and tangled in a blanket.