I saw a question posed on Facebook the other day.
What book made you fall in love with reading?
It's a good question. I don't remember the first book I read. I know my dad used to read children's Bible stories to me and my brother when we were little, and I remember subscribing to a book club where I got one Babysitter Little Sister book a month. (Ah, my first #bookmail. Glorious.) But I was older then - grade 3 or 4 maybe.
I didn't start reading any earlier than most people. My brother did, I remember that much. But not me.
I did, though, read fervently. Everything. I remember not being scared of big books or grown up books. I read my dad's Louis Lamour books and my mom's Danielle Steel - skipping over the grown up parts because they seemed boring.
Okay, not skipping. Not entirely. But definitely skimming.
But I do remember the first book that made me fall in head-over-heels love with reading.
It was Jane Eyre.
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”
I borrowed it from the school library. It was kept on one of those black little turnstile things right across from the library desk. It was in the top row, and it looked like a "girl book". At that point I recognized the title, but didn't know anything else about it. I was starting grade four.
So I took it home, and read it, and fell in love.
I loved reading before that, but I had no idea that words and language could be like that, could sound like that, could do that.
To this point, I think I've read Jane Eyre more than any other book, except of course Pride and Prejudice. And I have several copies of the book, too. (Though of course, not quite as many as Pride and Prejudice! Haha)
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”
All at once, these words opened up characters that were far more dear and complex than any I had seen before. And they said things! Important things! Things I didn't entirely understand, but also somehow did; I was too young to fully grasp it, but I understood enough to be awed.
To this point, has there been a better description of love than a string somewhere in your ribs tying the two of you together?
“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you–especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”
So much of what I love in books and characters, I realize now, was first informed by Jane Eyre. My writing tends to lean slightly feminist. The role of women in the world interests me greatly, especially in relationships. I love internally strong but haunted figures, and the moodiness of the setting, while not one I write, is so interesting to me. Plus, I've loved classic literature since that first experience with it.
But the most important part of Jane Eyre to me was the effect it had. Not just on my reading or even my writing or my teaching, but on me, my person. My identity. I had read before, lots, but that experience with that book made me a reader. And that has shaped so much of the rest of who I am.
Like all other forms of falling in love, they say when you know, you know. And I knew I loved reading when I read Jane Eyre.
What book made you fall in love with reading? Comment below or via my contact page, and while you're there, don't forget to subscribe to my monthly newsletter. Big stuff in the next one!