It’s time for . . . Weekly Geeks! This week’s topic:
“There seems to be a bit of a theme going around the bookish blogopshere this past little while. Have you noticed many posts and lists and ponderings about books from our past? To go along with this trend, for this Weekly Geek installment, I’m asking you to think back to the moment when you realized “I am a reader!” The moment you felt that desire to read everything! The moment you knew you were different than most of those around you and that this reading thing was for real.”
I can’t point to a specific moment or book that made me realize I was a reader. I started out as a reader when I was four, and I can still remember many of the books I read as a child. Thinking of them brings back the sense of excitement and wonder I felt back then. My first real fantasy book was a chapbook illustrated with those odd ’70s-style Art Nouveau drawings so popular at the time, a retelling of the Welsh legend of Elidor, called Elidor and the Golden Ball, by Georgess McHargue. Though I forgot the title and author, I always remembered the lady dressed in green with apple-blossoms in her hair, the golden ball Elidor chased, and the snake that curled mysteriously in some of the pictures. Those images would sometimes resurface in my consciousness like a fish barely visible in a deep pool. Looking back, I see that book was my first experience of elves.
(By searching Loganberry Books’ Solved Mysteries, I was able to find a copy of this book a few years ago, and now it’s back in my collection. This is probably the only children’s book I will never let go.)
As a teenager I found less time for reading, but my interest in books was rekindled somewhat by the discovery of romance novels. I read mostly Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood and Lavyrle Spencer, and I still appreciate those books. But eventually, I knew something was missing from my reading that I needed. I think it was magic, and a sense of something deeper, something beyond the the edge of this world . . .
I rediscovered fantasy literature as an adult, with Patricia A. McKillip. I’d always thought fantasy books for grown-ups looked a bit weird, with glowing muscley dudes on the covers with sword in hand, dragons holding crystal balls, that sort of thing. But I loved The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis, and I loved the idea of fantasy. I just needed to discover the right author, and thankfully, I did. I think maybe this is why I always push McKillip on people and why she had such an influence on me; she was the first adult fantasy author I read seriously, and she helped me to see that everything I loved about it as a child was still there. I read somewhere—I wish I could remember where—that there are books you read in which you identify with the characters, and books you read and identify with the author; I think Winter Rose was the first book I felt that way about, and so in a very real way, Patricia McKillip gave me the first clue that I wanted to write. She writes books I want to read, and I want to read more of them. But just a little more like this, or more like that . . . you know?
But . . . as I learned to write, one thing I realized about myself is that although I’d always considered myself a reader, I really didn’t read that much. Life constantly got in the way, and if I was lucky and got to bed before 4 AM (long story I don’t want to go into), I might get to read for five minutes before falling asleep. Reading was not a priority. “I want to read more,” I said. “I want to read that book. I want to try that author. I just don’t have time.”
I think it’s only recently that I’ve decided I will be a reader. I’m not a particularly slow reader (which I used to think was the case), but I still find it hard to make time for reading. I’m easily distracted by the outdoors, and interruptions are many. My current goal is to read at least an hour a day, not at bedtime (bedtime reading energizes me and wakes me up, and if it doesn’t, then I can’t remember what I read the next day). I’m actively working towards a goal of at least a book a week (I know for some people that’s nothing, but for me it’s huge), I’m trying to discover new authors in my genre, and I’m trying to read some of the “Great Books” I missed out on as a wayward, free-spirited youth, hehe.
Now when the more “responsible” side of me says, “I don’t have time to read, it’s a luxury, it’s lazy,” I try to remember what Stephen King said in his book On Writing: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
I love the cover of “Elidor and the Golden Ball.” That’s really cool that you could find another copy of it!