Mrs. L :-)

Hi,

I'm not in your book club, but I've been obsessed with reading since I was old enough to prove to my first grade teacher that I was able to read and understand books more complicated than the demoralizing 24-page "Dick and Jane" series. Who cares about Dick, Jane, and their boring dog Spot when I could read chapter books. Come on!

I read every book in my K-2 school by January of my first grade year, breaking the rule that a student could only check out a book once a week. What's with that? I could read more than one book in a single night. Once they got over my rule breaking, I also read every book they had on the mobile cart and was allowed to start borrowing books from the K-4 school across town until I completed second grade.

When I was ten, we moved to within walking distance of the huge library in Biddeford and I was shocked to find out that I was eligible for a library card of my very own. Up until I moved away at age 24, I was still the only member of my family to have a library card. Kind of tells you how little my family valued reading; unless it was on a cereal box or medicine bottle, reading wasn't necessary.

Once I outgrew MacArthur Library children's section of reading every book they recommended and many they didn't, I was allowed to go upstairs to the really good stuff. When I was a teen, there wasn't much out there for high school age students. They presumed you could simply make the jump to adult books, I guess. So I did with a vengeance.

During all of third and fourth grades, I moved and didn't have access to any library. Our school was a brand new open school concept and libraries were for the 'old school model'. So, I read the only books in our home. A set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias. Wow, was that different, but it made me appreciate a good book so much more!!!

Moving back to Maine by junior high - I had the BEST English teacher in the city. She was the first to see my reading obsession and was willing to help feed my need with such a variety. It was then that she helped me discover such varied books as Helter Skelter (terrifying) and Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Robert Frost's poetry.

By high school, I loved Stephen King and Danielle Steele. I loved every kind of book out there that could replace my life, even temporarily, with something more worldly or exciting or just different. I didn't like boo hoo for me books, where the main characters whine their way through as if their life was so much worse than mine. If their story was fiction, then it wasn't that bad for them after all.

Since I've had children, I can't bring myself to read those really scary books anymore. I love drama, and mystery, and of course 'chick flick' romance and comedy. I love reading along during Free Reading in my mountain time and suddenly laughing out loud because of something I find funny. My advisees may think I'm crazy, I don't care.

I love that I still use reading as an easy escape - leave my little world of being a teacher, mom, wife, daughter, and friend, - leave it all behind and join the characters on their journey. That is what a good book can do for me; and I've realized within the last few years that life is much too short to read a bad book. If I'm not 'hooked' in the first chapter, page, or paragraph I just may give up on it. When there are still so many millions I have yet to read, who needs a bad book?

Slainte,
Mrs L

I laugh at book all the time!!
i hate it when people give me funny looks when i do

I do something even worse when I read... sometimes, if it describes the character doing a certain action, or making a particular face or sound, I try it out myself and often will then look up to see people looking at me REALLY strangely. (Maybe I do it to understand it better or maybe it's kind of subconscious; either way, it's kind of embarrassing!)

Hi Mrs. L! I agree with you about books where the main characters whine their way through the story. It gets really old! Was Helter Skelter about Charles Manson?

Yes..Helter Skelter was the gruesome, psychological biography of sorts of Charles Manson. What I think was most disturbing for me was that he was able to attract so many lost souls, and exploit them by making them do some of his dirty work - stealing and killing brutally.

Sadly, I think many serial killers in the following decade were trying to achieve the same level of fame.

I was only twelve when I read it, and my mom was furious javascript:emoticonp('') that my teacher lent it to me. It didn't help that that teacher and my mom had been high school friends until my mom got pregnant with me at age 15. Her friend went on to college and a busy, "professional" independent life. My mom had more kids. Maybe a little jealous too because I spent so much time after school with the teacher, as I needed to better understand more about what I was reading. I didn't grow up watching television (if you don't count Star Trek, Irish Rovers, and Lawrence Welk with bubbles!) or the news so I hadn't been aware of any of this until after I read the book.

Now that I am older, I should probably go back and read the book again. At that time, it was the only book like it. Now, they sensationalize so much that society is becoming a bit more numb to these hideous crimes. Sad, really!