“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.” - Horace Mann
I definitely grew up surrounded by books. There was a large bookcase my father designed for the stairwell and I remember being so young I'd read on the steps, as the books were often too large and heavy for me to take vary far, and steps are like built-in seats for the home. I particularly remember the Collier's Encyclopedia which was on the second shelf, allowing me easy access. One of the volumes had transparent pages and you could leaf through the different layers of the human body. Skin, musculature, blood vessels and bones. There were many art books, too, and I became familiar with the works of Dali, Michelangelo and Picasso, among other, before I could even spell their names.
What is interesting about being a voracious reader is that I was never a strong reader. I'm still not. I can spend lots of time reading, but I don't do it very fast. Perhaps just a little faster than the speed in which I talk. I remember in grade 3 being at the reading table with students who were not proficient. It didn't bother me, but I found it hard to read beside the kid who had to speak the words while he read, which is hard when you're using your inner voice. In grade 6, I was a little bummed that only the gifted students were offered the chance to read a draft of a soon-to-be-published book, "The Minerva Program." I eventually bought it and thought it was pretty good, but not so much that I felt bad about not being chosen to read it. In any case, despite not having been a proficient reader, I'm glad I never found it unenjoyable. When I found a Penthouse magazine in grade 7, I showed it to a friend of mine in an effort to impress him, but he was unfazed and unimpressed, because his dad had them laying about and he had access to them any time he wanted. He did introduce me to the Penthouse Forum section of the magazine, which is basically sex stories, and I was fascinated, but I also felt like it was wrong. Not that it prevented me from reading them, though. When sexual education was lacking in schools, Penthouse Forum certainly filled in a lot of blanks.
Of all the times I ever observed my dad, the most common was of him reading. He didn't just read, though. He often has a variety of utensils and stickers to properly deface his books with highlights, underlining and little round stickers to mark the most impressive passages and thoughts. He also used a hole punch to create notches in the paper to allow easy access to chapters, kind of like old large dictionaries, to find the letter quickly. Adequately vandalized, they became personal references of deep meaning.
Today, I mark up my books simply with a highlighter. And I use asterisks instead of little round stickers. But it wasn't really until University that I started reading non-fiction. Unless you include magazines like OWL and chickaDEE magazines, so we may as well start there.
I recently bought this incredibly photograph by Chris Albert called Queen-Spadina-AD88. One of the main reasons I bought it was because it was linked to my father's regular visits to Edward's Bookstore in the building on Queen Street. We often went on Sundays, and although stores were not allowed to be open on Sundays, the storeowner fought long and hard against the bylaw or bill or whatever prevented him from opening on Sundays. In a way, it was our church, which is interesting because a friend of mine recently asked if the reason I read so many books was in place of religious texts, because most of the books I read are about seeking guidance, connected to human psychology, philosophies of life and living. Further to that, a girl I was dating who was extremely religious was jealous of my lack of fear, because it seemed everything she was trying to achieve through religious practice, I already possessed, and she didn't understand how I was able to attain it in my life without God. She was incredulous that I had found a way of being that was completely in line with what she hoped to achieve without religious texts. But I digress. Edward's bookstore didn't have many books that interested me, but they always had OWL and chickaDEE and my dad bought me a copy every time. It was where I bought my first Tintin comic, Tintin in America, which I didn't read for many, many years. I was too distracted by the love triangle of Archie Andrews to pay any mind to Tintin who only had a dog. But one lazy weekend, without finding anything else to do, I decided to give it a try, and I was immediately hooked. By then, I was old enough to take the streetcar downtown by myself. I was 11 years old, and would take my allowance money to The World's Biggest Bookstore to buy books, and when I saw the carousel of Tintin comics in paperback for the low price of $4.99, I slowly but surely added them to my collection until I had every story. By now I was also heavily into Gordon Korman and Beatrice Thurman Hunter books. The latter was introduced a few years earlier when she visited my school and read from her book, That Scatterbrain Booky. I bought her subsequent books through the Scholastic book buying program.
One thing that was always true, and something I may have taken for granted, was that buying books was fully supported by my dad. He would buy me any books I wanted though Scholastic and when we went to bookstores together, but I think he was secretly pleased that I would also spend my own money buying books and comics. I remember with great clarity a small token of advice I find true to this day. An expensive book with even a nugget of information that you find useful is worth the expense, but a book that costs pennies that you don't read is a big waste of money.
Scholastic was probably the most exciting and memorable time in grade school. I remember distinctly being anxious about when my order would be fulfilled, and how absolutely elated I was when the teacher announced that the books had arrived and would be distributed. Unlike amazon, it would take 4 to 6 weeks. And if it took longer for some reason, I noticed. I still have many of the books from that time. I recently rediscovered a book about whales I remember flipping though and remember the smell and images from within. And although I never saw The Empire Strikes Back until maybe 4 or 5 years ago, I had the book and remembered that C-3PO was in pieces, and that there was a winter scene.
Getting lost in fiction was common, and I absolutely devoured the Bruno and Boots series by Gordon Korman, most of which I bought from The World's Biggest Bookstore. I graduated to Sidney Sheldon when I was in High School after watching a mini-series of one of his books, "If Tomorrow Comes." I went on to buy many of his other books from The World's Biggest Bookstore, and although they were thick, long stories, I could easily get lost in them.
Although I enjoyed learning from books, most non-fiction was prescribed by high school teachers and university professors. But this time at university jump-started my interest in non-fiction. I think my dad was reading Camille Paglia and when I read a bit here and there, I think my love of non-fiction grew. I started discovering that I could learn anything I wanted from books before that, though. In high school, I loved learning on my own terms, so I would skip class to research more whatever topic was briefly mentioned in class. My curiosity was definitely the gateway to a love of life-long learning.
These days, I am trying to be more selective when I buy books. I'm also trying to get rid of books I'll either never have the time to read, or have no interest in keeping. Even then it's hard. And perhaps one day, I'll start reducing my collection of highlighters.
I feel it is fitting to dedicate this post to my father, one of the fastest readers I know, with a photographic memory, and with the largest private collection of books I've ever encountered. He could ready a 200 page book in his native tongue in a single day and a single sitting. I would love to invite you to share the book that had the biggest impact on your life in the comments.
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