Books brought me to places I never imagined I could without leaving home (or wherever I am).
Books opened my mind to what’s possible.
My earliest memory of books is second-hand ones our neighbors eagerly discard during their cleanup. Together with my sister, we happily choose the ones we like, and for me, they are the ones filled with drawings and photos, while my sister is old enough to want books that have more words in them.
I also have a memory of gathering the Reader’s Digest magazines my father left (because he died when I was a month old) and scanning through their photos when I was about five years old. By then, I could read simple words, and I have this memory of reading an article about a dog, which resonated with me because of my fondness for dogs.
It was in the 2000s that I learned books are not easy to come by for my kind of family. Why? Because books seemed to be a luxury that my mother could not afford at the time, raising her two children alone. Thus, putting food on the table and saving up for our education plans were the top priorities for her meager income.
But it wasn’t all that bad growing up because my grandmother lent us encyclopedias from A to Z (because having a complete set matters, if you know what I mean), and my mother purchased a hardbound dictionary set (two big books I always go to when I want to understand and learn new words). So, I have access to these resources at home even before Encarta and Wikipedia and the portability of internet access.
At the same time, my grade school classmates from well-off families were generous enough to lend us books when they were done reading with them. Because how fun is a book when shared, right? You can talk about it with friends who can relate to your enthusiasm about the characters you’ve been fond of.
Aside from books my classmates freely lend us, I also visit our grade school library, which stores books that are too dusty and old but still worth checking out (given my limited access). That’s when I first saw a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but I can’t remember reading it, primarily because of how it was written, which felt too heavy for me to read at the time. With my book-reading friends, we also frequent the city library, where we can access not-so-old books and magazines, including Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, which was filled with entertaining images.
It was in my sixth grade when I first purchased Trip To The North Pole from my pocket money (the money was an allowance our school gave out to journalism participants like me). Why that book? Aside from having an “eight-page color insert of movie scenes,” it also fits right into my budget so. . . 😁
In high school, I still had classmates who were generous with lending us their books, so I was still getting access to good reads, aside from occasionally going to the school library. As a matter of fact, I first read about narwhals in a National Geographic Magazine I found in the school library. I also discovered another copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and attempted to read the first few pages, only to return it to the shelves (although I finally read the book in college).
Why not purchase a book I could own? Well, there were books sold at the local bookstores, but they were often too mature for me to read at the time, like Raise the Titanic! my mother bought me in high school. And there’s a limited choice of titles, too!
We had to go to the next city to find a national bookstore that sells books for my age, and only well-off families could do that. Growing up, I had this impression that acquiring books was a luxury primarily because my family couldn’t afford to buy one.
I can remember when my mother and sister went to the city next to ours, I asked them to buy me a book. They were confronted with so many options that they spent hours finding a title they thought I might like. Well, when they went home, they told me they bought the books from a book sale (because we couldn’t spend so much on leisure reading) and I ended up reading them not because they are good stories [because one of them was a drag to read (Summer People) and the other too mature for me at the time (The Dark Room)] but because I’m so touched my family made an effort to buy me two!
Just because we come from a low-income family did not snuff out my desire to read more books. When e-books became more accessible because we finally had internet access on our mobile devices, I even devoured more books, which helped me read about 271 books today (excluding all the books I missed or failed to record).
Today, I can afford to buy books my younger self would be excited to hear. But mostly, I just read e-books for portability, having one library in a 4.5 x 6.2 x 0.4-inch e-book reader.
While my list continues to grow, I’ve observed that I can only read as many as ten (10) books in a year and as low as six (6) than my usual 29-32 books annually from 2016 to 2020. Even more so now that I spend more time reading journal articles than books to support my academic research work.
My journey of reading from fiction to non-fiction has proved to be a hard habit to break, which has been years in the making. And since I cultivated my hunger for reading, I couldn’t imagine life without reading so every year, I make sure to read at least six books (reading a book within two months, whenever possible).
But I did not stop there.
Recently, I’ve discovered the joy of listening to 20 Minute Books on Spotify, allowing me to engage in books I wouldn’t normally read. So now, I have widened my scope of topics aside from the ones I would make time to sit on for hours and enjoy, whether in transit or just winding down.
Listening to book summaries also allowed me to spend my time better than mindlessly scrolling through my social media feed (has it been an hour already?).
To what lengths are you willing to do to read a book or two?
If you’re also fond of reading like I do, check out my book notes and you might just find there your next read.
jessa 