Last week I had to write an autoethnography for the Graduate school class I'm taking this summer. And while I thought my end product was a little contrived (the class is called "The Body Electric" so we were asked to make connections between our personal reading histories and our philosophies of the body and, to be honest, I'm quite certain my philosophies of the body played absolutely no part in my reading decisions as a child, teen, or even adult) it made me think a little more about my reading history. So I guess, in the end, it did what it was meant to do.
I can't remember the very first book my mother, father, or older siblings ever read to me; I grew up in a house full of books and readers so I know it probably started very young. But, I do remember the first book I ever read. I was sitting on the front, side pew in our chapel in Richmond before the sunday meetings had started. My parents were up on the stand singing in choir practice and I was bored out of my mind so I started looking through the large bag of books and snacks that my mother, the mother of ten children, had packed to keep us busy. And then I saw it. The bright orange hardcover that I knew belonged to Green Eggs and Ham. I'd heard the book before, it was a favorite of mine. I thought, if nothing else, I might at least look at the pictures. But then it happened, I looked at the words on the first page and I understood them, "I am Sam." Quickly I turned to the next page and it happened again, "I am Sam." I flipped one more page just to make sure and read "Sam I am." I could read I didn't have to wait anymore for one of my sisters or my mother or my father to finish what they were doing, I could read for myself. And I did.
Since then I've read hundreds of books. I mean hundreds upon hundreds. In one class alone last year I read some 200 books. Of course they were picturebooks, but still. It's safe to say, that after that magic moment with Dr. Seuss I got hooked. I started something that I've never been able to stop (though some semesters I have had to force myself onto a pleasure reading fast). If its a sickness, I don't want the cure. Simply put, I love stories. But one thing I realized as I frantically typed my autoethnography (okay, so maybe I procrastinate just a little bit) was how much of my life I can trace through my books.
When I was a kid I loved books that played on words: Fox in Socks, A Chocolate Moose for Dinner, Amelia Bedelia, Roald Dahl books, and so on. I thought they were hilarious even if I didn't understand a quarter of the linguistic complexities or cultural allusions that made the jokes funny. I was also fascinated by the way things worked, how the world fit together and so on library days I had a rotation of non-fiction books about working dogs and Cam Jansen mysteries that I checked out. When I got a little older my interests shifted towards historical fiction and fantasies (yeah, I know, if I ever get pregnant I'm probably going to be one of those people who like pickles and ice cream. I just have strange tastes, I guess) until my thirteen year-old teenage self absorbed just about every Robin McKinley book ever written. Then, as about a sophmore in highschool I made a complete 180; I sank up to my eyeballs in 19th century British literature: Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, and Elizabeth Gaskell and I stayed there for a long time. It wasn't until I was an "adult" that I finally read Anne of Green Gables and began my steady diet of young adult literature. I've never turned back. Even during semester breaks when my classmates eagerly pick up books with protagonists in their aged twenties or, gasp, thirties, I pick up another installment in Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series or read Melina Marchetta's fantasy book.
What I'm trying to say, not at all concisely, is that the books I've read have made me who I am. None of my reading history was constructed consciously, though it was directed at times by my mother or a sibling recommendation, but for better or for worse they've made me who I am and they've affected how I write. Each book, each genre I turned to imparted its own philosophies and styles and I soaked it all up. So while when I was fifteen years old and writing secret novel projects on my dad's old work laptop in my room I was certain I was going to pen great fantasies, today I find myself writing historical fiction. I think I know what red-headed orphan I can blame for that. All I can say is, I'm glad I "met" her.
