Motivated to Read

 As most things growing up, reading was another habit that was inspired by my need to do everything my older sister did. Being a whole year ahead of me in school, (which feels like an entire generation when you’re in 2nd grade,) my sister was required to read daily and keep records of how many pages of which book she read. At that time, I didn’t have “serious” homework like those 3rd graders, but seeing her sitting in our living room, book in hand, I decided I would flip through a few pages too.

This desire to copy everything my sister did worked to my advantage when I made it to 3rd grade and the reading and recording wasn’t homework but fun. Whereas classmates would complain, I would save reading as the last of my homework and I remember my sister and I sitting next to each other completely absorbed in what the pictures and big fonts offered. Eventually my sister would stop and I’d go on until dinner if I could. My mother picked up on our love for reading and despite being a full-time student, a full-time mom, working part-time, and not having the money for indulgences, she was always willing to buy books for us.

The rules of book buying went like this: buy as many as you want, but you must read all of them and if you don’t finish these books, you can’t get new ones. My sister would choose books from the Baby Sitters Club serious and I, appropriately, would select ones from Baby Sitter’s Little Sister. Soon, I found myself lucking out because I read my books as well as my sister’s. From baby sitting, we moved to the Little House on the Prairie collection, The Chronicle of Narnia, and authors like Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl (who is still a favorite of mine).

With our growing interest and our mother’s willingness to buy books, the third component that instilled the love of reading was reading and listening time in school. All of my elementary years I would sit hypnotized as teachers read out loud from novels that opened my world to the likes of The Indian in the Cupboard and Island of the Blue Dolphins which expanded my imagination and left me salivating for tales printed between colorful covers.

When I transferred to a new school in 5th grade, no one offered to read to me and I had a difficult time adapting to the new social structure which left me all the more hungry for stories. I read through middle school, I attempted to devour most of the classics in the high school library but in college, textbooks took over my life and my tendency to pleasure read all but died. Entering late adolescence/early adulthood, my love for books never faltered, but it has turned into a luxury.

These days, finding the time and space to lose myself in a fabricated world is a treat. It doesn’t matter what type of reading it is, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, blogs, comics and sometimes I wish I was still required to do some daily reading.