Swallowing Books Whole
“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.” — Louis L’Amour #MayIWrite — Day 20
My first memory of swallowing a book whole was when I was about 12 years old. My mother recommended the novel Dreamspeaker to me and I skipped supper that night in favour of lying on my bed, reading until the end.
Judy Blume and R.L.Stine were staples in my young adolescence and I would get through my occasional weekend visits at my father’s house by making a stop at the town’s library and grabbing 2 or 3 of these young adult novels to consume.
Barbara Kingsolver came in with ‘The Bean Trees’ and ‘Pigs In Heaven’, then Douglas Coupland and Ann-Marie MacDonald entered my world. Of course there were many others, but these authors were the foundation for me as a reader, and all of them were on the ground floor of my gulp-it-down-in-one-sitting approach to reading.
I read Lawrence Hill’s ‘The Book of Negroes’ in as close to one sitting as one can with a book of that size and with two small children. My 3 year old coloured and played and read books of her own, or dug in the garden while my son was cuddled in the sling and the book was in my hand. From morning to night for a day and a half, I read that novel.
I struggle to be moderate with my reading as I’ve never understood how a few pages here and a chapter there actually works. I don’t read before I go to bed because I simply won’t sleep! Once I’m called into the world that the author has created, I don’t want to leave until I’m kicked out (and I can only hope that’s not also how I live my own life).
Falling in love with the characters is such a joy. Feeling different chords in myself plucked and strummed by these fictitious hands, weeping real tears or pulling myself back into the room for a moment with out-loud laughter. For words. How could I stop?
Every book changes me. It’s a hunger that isn’t sated for long, though I pick up a new book with awareness of what will come and choose my timing carefully. …And would you look at that; a long weekend is upon me!
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