Every so often, I take out the trash. I delegate this job to my husband whenever possible, but he wasn't home and the kitchen trash can was overflowing. On my way to the trash bins at the back of our complex, I passed an open garage door where I heard two people talking.
"I'm not much of a reader,” a woman said. “But lately I’ve been reading a book a week."
For a second, I wanted to stop, turn to this woman, and say, "What's the big deal about reading a book a week?" I thought about my own struggle to find time to read and balance reading with the hours I spend on social media, at work, and doing chores around the house. This woman had every right to brag.
Before I became a mother, I read whenever possible. Reading a book in a few days was easy-peasy for me, and I’d stay up all night finishing a book I couldn’t put down without feeling separation anxiety from the characters. I knew when I reached the final page, the soul-satisfying feeling of finishing the story was my reward. Then I'd start the search to find another book by the same author or someone else that would allow me to become lost in its pages. If I had heard someone boast about reading a book a week in those days, I wouldn’t think much of the accomplishment, depending on the book. War and Peace, yes. The Secret? Not so much.
After more than a decade of motherhood, plus studying for a graduate degree and creating a working life resembling a career, I can see that reading a book at all is a tremendous accomplishment. For any mother it is so much more, considering all the distractions. Also, getting sucked into Facebook or other social media doesn't help.
I’m fortunate I was raised to love reading in the pre-Internet age. Both my parents read a lot, and my mother taught me letters and sounds and words they form before I was three; I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. By the time I entered kindergarten, I read well and often, so much so that I wondered why my teacher was giving all the children stickers that announced, "I can read!"
"I can read already," I said when my teacher tried to put a sticker on my shirt.
My fellow kindergartners considered this bragging, and they ignored me for the rest of the day. Yet I continued to read (and learned to keep my mouth shut in certain circumstances -- an important lesson for a five-year-old).
I never counted the number of books I read unless it was for the library's summer reading program. We'd get a prize for reading a specific number of books, which throws suspicion on the motivation of the reader. Why count the number books you read when you love reading for its own sake? Reading was never a chore to be endured. Until college.
From early childhood, I read whenever I could. I was one of those kids who read the back of cereal boxes and bottles sitting on the table at mealtimes if no other reading material presented itself. As I got older, I'd read the back of the newspaper while my dad read the other side. I’d have to hurry, though, in case he finished his article before I finished mine and the page would rustle and turn without warning. I was content with a book and a free afternoon. If the book was short enough and the story, good, I’d finish it in a few hours and even sooner if it was anything written for kids by Judy Blume.
By the time I graduated from college, I had stopped reading for fun and pleasure. As an English major, I read short stories, plays, essays, and poetry by British and American authors from all eras from the Renaissance to modern times. I rarely read books of my own choosing, with the exception of a few novels by Dickens I read for extra credit in my Victorian literature class. After graduation, I avoided reading anything but magazines and newspapers until early 30s, when I rediscovered my love of books through the legal thrillers of John Grisham after finding a stack of his books at my local thrift store. After I breezed through those books, I visited my local public library to find his other novels.
I think of my reading habit as a glorious compulsion. It’s something I plan to continue until either my sight or my ability to understand the written word fails, two events I hope never happen. My grandmother, who died at 97, enjoyed reading until she was unable to see during her last few years on Earth. A lover of mysteries and romances, it must have been depressing for her to no longer enjoy the written word.
Writing teachers and mentors say that you must read if you want to improve your writing. Sometimes I don’t read enough, but most of the time I read much more than I write. For me, reading is like breathing in air and writing is like breathing it out. Without one, I cannot have the other: a balance of words entering and exiting my mind, enriching it and giving life to new worlds.
So whether you find the time to read a book in a few days, a week, or longer, at least you're reading, and that's all that matters.
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