READING | BOOKS | INSIGHT INTO SELF

Has What You Like to Read Changed Throughout Your Life?

And what does it say about you?

If we are what we read, then sharing what we like to read is a great way to get to know not only ourselves better, but also others.

Are you drawn to love stories? Good versus evil? Coming of age? Fiction? Redemption? Nonfiction? Hardships? Bravery?

Are you reading to learn or to escape?

My favorite stories in childhood were fairy tales. It was all about escape for me then. A search for a happily ever after.

I depended on the Scholastic book order forms I brought home from school. Fog Magic was one of my favourites, along with Nine Witch Tales.

Fog Magic is a coming-of-age story, which focuses on the beauty of imagination during childhood and the loss of wonder and innocence that comes with age and maturity. — excerpt from a book review by Read-at-home Mom

My interest in witches was because of my very superstitious mother. I grew up fearing witches. Yet it made me interested in learning more about them.

My mother was not a reader. She often said, “I never had books like that growing up. You don’t realize how lucky you are. I wish I would’ve had it so good.”

But my life didn’t feel good.

So I devoured words like candy, trying to fill an emptiness inside me.

As a teen, horror and the occult drew me in. I read to learn more about witchcraft and discovered that it was a pagan religion based on the worship of nature. It wasn’t all evil or about causing harm.

I read Carrie when I was 15, by an unknown author, Stephen King.

I read The Exorcist. Later, saw the movie in the theatre.

Demonic possession fascinated me. Growing up, whenever I didn’t behave as my mother wanted me to, she blamed my behaviour on something being wrong with me.

My interest was in trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

First, my mother blamed it on a concussion I had at age five. Later, she thought I might have a brain tumour like her sister. Or she blamed a witch having a hold on me. And when those explanations no longer worked, she resorted to calling me crazy.

Books became my search for answers about why I was so different from the rest of my family.

Books were the one place I could escape my mother’s critical eye.

She had gone to a one-room schoolhouse, no further than eighth grade, plus I suspect she also had an undiagnosed learning issue such as dyslexia.

My mother didn’t read books. She only read sale flyers and the weekly newspaper.

Often, she read out loud like a young child first learning how to read. Whenever she came to a word she couldn’t pronounce or didn’t understand she’d spell it out and stop, glance up, looking off in the distance, and say, “Whatever that means.” Then continue on reading.

My mother did not know how much information I got from books. This allowed me the great freedom of buying ones other parents would not allow their kids to read.

My father was the typical father of that time. He went to work. Came home and ate his evening meal. Watched a little TV. Went off early to bed. As an adult, I learned he went off to drink alone. That he kept a bottle hidden under the mattress on his side of the bed. My mother didn’t allow him to drink in the open, except on Christmas Day.

I knew what my father’s reading interests had been when younger. I’d found the stacks of Western comic books and Beeline porn novels in an upstairs closet. He kept the books because he said, “Someday they might be worth something.” He said he didn’t read anymore because he didn’t have the time to read, and I thought it sad.

My quest was to understand myself better and find happiness.

This led to not only reading about demonic possession but also insanity. One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, Sybil, and The Three Faces of Eve.

Ever since I could remember, I loved books. As a small child, I begged my mother to buy me one whenever we went out shopping and I spotted a rack of children’s books.

At fourteen, I asked for money to buy books whenever we went shopping at the mall. My mother would give in to anything that kept me at home. She did not know that books contained an escape route, a map leading me away from her.

The summer of 1973, I was 14 and on crutches after a knee injury. I read two large books on the Manson family.

I read about reincarnation.

I bought books about sex. The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander. Deep Throat, based on the porn star Linda Lovelace.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) by David Reuben.

I was a Jacqueline Susann fan.

I read poetry. Crime. Mystery, Suspense. Self-help. Spirituality.

In my 20s and 30s, I read Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence, and other Canadian writers.

I liked reading John Updike and John Irving.

But more and more I turned to memoir and nonfiction.

I prefer real to fantasy. No longer reading to escape reality, but to better undertsnad it.

So to answer the question of what does what I read say about me?

I see how my interest has always revolved around people. My curiosity and need to understand not only myself but the human experience.

I hope this article inspires you to share your reading journey.

Please share in the comments. Or write an article and tag me.

Barbara Carter Artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.

Likes to take walks, read, watch TV dramas, and practice Qi-gong, and work on her memoir series BARBARA By The BAY.