I would rather spend money on books than just about
anything. Consequently, we have hundreds
of books in our house – biographies, novels, romances, sci-fi, educational, science,
historical, foreign language, scriptural, dictionaries, encyclopedias – a little
bit of everything.
As a child, my family was very poor, but Mama always made
sure there was something around the house to read. My very first book, bought from a Book Mobile
at school, was a Barbie based story called “The Best Dressed Girl” or something
like that. Even though I never had a Barbie
myself, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her and her friends! We did not have very many books, but those
that we did have were read over and over again.
Two of the books that I recall reading numerous times were “The Little
Lame Prince” and “To Dance, to Dream”.
This week I re-read “The Little Lame Prince” for the first
time in over forty years. While I
recalled very little of the story line, I vividly remembered how he traveled
on a flying cloak. As a child, I used to
imagine that I could travel the world like that, too. How wondrous!
From “To Dance, to Dream” I learned about famous dancers
like Maria Tall Chief and Isadora Duncan.
I adored them and wanted to be a dancer … too bad I have such very
little rhythm. That, and the church I
attended as a very young child would have disciplined me for dancing.
Mama used to buy weekly romance magazines like “True Romance”
… I grew up on a steady diet of those.
To this day I adore a good romance, especially those based in the
Regency era. Historical novels are also
a big favorite.
My favorite book of all time is Jane Austen’s “Pride and
Prejudice”. I re-read it almost every
year and have collected several movies based on her lovely book. Jane’s characters are so well-drawn and her
prose so wonderfully written … I just get lost in her words and in her world.
I don’t recall Mama reading to me, but my children definitely
grew up with the blessing of a read-aloud mother. We devoured Boxcar Children books, Amelia
Bedelia stories, the Little House series, Anne of Green Gables, the Animorph
books, Harry Potter, and many other wonderful works. One of their favorites was a Sesame Street
story, “The Monster at the End of This Book”.
Of course, I always had to liven things up by using different voices and
lots of sound effects!
These days I mostly read books on my Kindle (recommended by
my chiropractor because I had neck issues), but the feel and smell of a real
book is a pleasure that will never get old.
