My Life as a Reader

I am a reader. I don’t read everything all the time, nor do I read things quickly, although I don’t read slowly – I don’t think. In a conversation only recently I found myself explaining that if I read a book too quickly then I feel duped somehow, like the pleasure has been stolen from me for the rushing. I don’t have a favourite place to read, nor do I have a favourite thing to read. It depends on where I am or on my mood or how much time I have.

None of that really matters though does it? I identify as a reader. I like to browse through reading material; I like to walk through the bookstore at every airport I go through. Despite myself, I walk into the local bookstore to browse through the books, even though I don’t read the language many of them are written in. I don’t really like libraries because those books aren’t for keeping or collecting. I love to see the books growing in number on the shelves at home. I love the feeling of reading a book fresh from the bookshop, the way the spine hasn’t yet been tainted, the pages haven’t been turned by anyone but me.

My mother still jokes about the time I catalogued all of the books at home, Dewey decimal style, as a child. I don’t do that any more, but I do need to keep the genres together. It’s strangely calming to reorganise the books at times too, of course genre always comes first.

I read for work: young authors (at the moment they are 10 & 11 years of age), educational books, books about text type, teaching resource guides, journal articles, chapter books, picture books, comic books, graphic novels, web pages and emails. I read for pleasure: historical fiction (to understand more about Australia, where I grew up and Germany, where I live now), crime, thriller, travel, cooking, biographies and self help books, emails and magazines. I read for instructions when I get new stuff or when I want to learn without figuring it out myself first, when I am shopping to make informed choices and when I am travelling, driving or navigating public transport. I read without even thinking about it.

Isn’t this what reading is all about? Using the written word to make sense of our world and go further within it?

How do you read?