Becoming a Reader

A read­er recent­ly post­ed this mes­sage on my Face­book page.

I remem­ber check­ing out Dev­il’s Race from the school library when I was in sixth grade. That book is what made me a book lover. I just recent­ly found it again, after search­ing for over 20 years. I fin­ished it again today and even at 39 years old, it’s still as awe­some as I remem­ber it being when I was a kid. Thank you.

Aside from the plea­sure of receiv­ing such a note, it remind­ed me of some­thing I have heard over the years: About the ONE book that turned some­one into a reader.

My wife was such a per­son. She has told me that until she read (as an adult) Wal­lace Stegner’s Angle of Repose she had not been a read­er. “What was it about the expe­ri­ence of read­ing that book that turned you into a read­er?” I asked. Her response: “I dis­cov­ered myself in that book.”

I don’t pre­tend to be an expert on the mat­ter of read­ing psy­chol­o­gy, but I find that answer, not just fas­ci­nat­ing, but impor­tant. Ulti­mate­ly it is the best ratio­nal for the push for diver­si­ty in books. But ulti­mate­ly, I sus­pect her answer works for all would-be read­ers in search for books, which, in time, they dis­cov­er are mir­rors for their soul.

My favorite ver­sion of this expe­ri­ence is about my son, Kevin.

He was, I recall, about eight years old. My night­ly read to him was Edith Nesbit’s The Would­be­goods, a humor­ous tale of a group of Eng­lish, Edwar­dian kids, who are try­ing to hold their fam­i­ly togeth­er when their moth­er dies.

As far as I was con­cerned the plot and the main char­ac­ter could not be fur­ther removed from my son. But Kevin loved the book, and its pro­tag­o­nist, Oswald.

One night he said—knowing of let­ters my read­ers sent to me—“Dad, I’d like to write to the author of that book.”

“That’s love­ly Kevin, but I’m afraid you can’t.”

“Why?”

“She died a long time ago.”

Kevin sat bolt upright in his bed. “That’s impos­si­ble!” he cried.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because she knows so much about me.”