The Globe and Mail has done this cool thing, amalgamating decades of Globe Books and giving readers the opportunity to check off the books that they’ve read and add others to a ‘to read’ pile. (I do not need a longer ‘to read’ pile).
I scrolled back through all the lists – all the way back to 1999, when I was still in high school, and it made me wonder when I stopped reading.
When I was a kid I devoured books. Every Babysitter’s Club, every Nancy Drew the library could offer, I read and re-read Judy Blume. Then I moved to Michael Crichton – I loved ER and he was the creator – which lead naturally into John Grisham. I think I finished The Client in a day.
My mother gave each of us a gift card to Leishman’s Books every Christmas and the real gift was getting to go there and browse around to find the next great read. I read in and out of school. The house was full of books.
Recently I’ve been thinking about how we studied books in high school – Fifth Business, Animal Farm, King Lear, I love it all. (Except Brave New World, didn’t like that one).
I took a year off school after I graduated, before going to college. I can’t remember reading much during that time. I was working, I think we actually had internet at home at that point.
I remember after college, I moved to a small town in Northwestern Ontario for a job and was absolutely shocked that they did not have a bookstore. I drove five hours to Winnipeg and explored Chapters. But I don’t remember packing a lot of books.
Now, when we’ve moved recently I have packed many, many boxes of books.
At some point years ago I picked up books again. Reading became a thing I love again. On Twitter I met Laurie, who ran a Facebook book club that she invited me into. They do book bingo every year and I started trying to fill out the card.
I remember when I went see Ami McKay at the Ottawa Writers’ Festival. She wrote The Birth House, which I dearly love. When I got her to sign my book I told her that this book had reminded me why I love to read. Actually, I don’t even know if I brought my book to get signed, I think I just waited in line to tell her that.
(I gave a copy of the book to my Dad the next Christmas, because he researched the Halifax Explosion for years and that event was part of the book. I found it after he died, he didn’t open it. I knew it was a gamble.
I am not as fast a reader as some of my fellow book clubbers, but I’ve been consistently reading 50-60 books a year over the past decade, finding new authors, switching between fiction and non-fiction.Surrounded by books.
I finally tackled the biggest challenge on my to-be-read list. It’s been sitting on my shelf and I’ve been afraid to start it. Partly because of the logistics of trying to read it – The Executioner’s Song is over 1,000 pages. It doesn’t fit in my purse. But the foreword says that it is a quick read, and so far that’s been the case.
I will not be defeated by The Executioner’s Song.