So The Book I'm Reading...

I was that child who hated to read, and I know exactly why. It had absolutely everything to do with my last name: Starmer.

I fall into a nostalgic abyss frequently on this blog, and I'm going to do it again here. You need it as the back story, anyway.

When I was little, my parents and I (one, or both of them, situationally depending) would snuggle up before bedtime and read.

We would read Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present.
We would read Where the Wild Things Are.
We would read ALL of the Mercer Mayer books.
We read Corduroy four million times.


I could compose an entry with just the list of all my favorite children's book. You might be better suited, however, to peruse the children's section of Barnes and Noble, because I'm fairly certain we owned them all.


This, if you can't tell, is not when I hated reading. I loved it. It was cuddle time with Mom and Dad. It was a world of life lessons, of learning the foundations of great literature, of using a book to relax at the end of a long day.  It's how I learned to read. It's when I learned to love writing. I am so not ready for children, but I do like the idea of starting a collection of my favorite children's book.
Nick might faint, however, and accuse me of trying to convince him to have kids by way of books. He then might then divorce me when he finds me curled up in a corner reading Guess How Much I Love You before he leaves for deployment.  Don't worry honey! I won't start the children's book collection... yet. Or if I do, I'll hide it well.


No, my hate of reading happened in elementary school.


The first incident occurred in the first grade. My teacher was obsessed (ob-sess-ed) with dinosaurs and whales. What foofoo first grade girl wants to read about T-Rex and Shamu?? Well not me. I'm pretty sure we were on Land Before Time III at that point, and I was over it. There is only so much a bunch of dino babies can do with rocks and trees. Anyway, first grade lasted forever (for a few reasons), but my horrid memories lie in the perpetual post-lunch reading circles that seemed to only produce books on dinosaurs and whales. And while, at first, they minimally piqued my interest, I was done by October. And 40 weeks for a seven year old is a life sentence.


That was incident #1.


The second incident occurred in the second grade. I know. I was hit twice. How ever did I survive?
In the second grade, we began the "accelerated reading program." This, for your non-ninety's kids, is a program that promotes reading at home with your parents. Which is great! I already did that! Ah, but there was a stipulation: I had to check out books from the library.


Theoretically, this was a fabulous idea. The bookshelf that my younger brother and I shared choked with books stuffed in ever open space possible. Really, it was time for a bigger shelving unit. We had read all the books!!  Of course we had our favorites that we pulled out frequently, but the idea of a library fascinated me! We only really visited the public library during the summer time. So I was thrilled to have one in my school!


And then, the first library day arrived.


We walked in, single filed in a 'boys' line and a 'girls' line. The school's librarian, an order woman, welcomed us to her lair. Half the entire library was dedicated to the primary grades (k-3). Half the library! I was so excited to slide my fingers along the spines of the books until I found one with a pretty cover that I wanted to pull out and take home. The librarian, we'll call her Mrs. Eggs, made us sit on the thin, blue rug, and she introduced us to the library.


She gave us a tour. She read a book that won something called a Newbery Award (though I don't remember what book it was, I remember that I didn't like it. Or maybe I just didn't like the way she read it). Then, it was time to choose our own books to take home with us for a whole week until it was library time again.


I perked up, hoping to be the first to the bookshelf. I had to beat out my classmates for the most fruitful selection. But instead, Mrs. Eggs told us to settle down. We were only going to choose from the books on the table. She pointed to a small, round table with about 15 books scattered across it. Then, to make the selection even worse!, she called people up by the first letter of their last name:


"If your last name begins with A, you may go pick your book out now."
"If your last name begins with B, you may go pick your book out now."
"If your last name begins with ...."


I was the second to the last person to pick out my book, and I so very clearly remember my choices:


Dino-Baseball
or
The Elephant's Wrestling Match


Really? Dino-baseball which fuses my first grade experience with boy stuff, or a book about an elephant that wrestles? Elephants were big creatures so it was practically the same thing as a dinosaur or a whale. So I had to choose between baseball or wrestling for a seven-year-old girl probably wearing a pink headband.


The remainder of my second grade year followed suit. Most of the books were chosen for us. Most of the time, I chose last.
"If the last letter of your last name begins with A, you may go pick your book out now" --- "R" is the same as "S". Once, she said we were going to choose by the last letter of our first name. I almost cried out of happiness. And then, she started from the back of the goddamn alphabet. Are you kidding me?


Anyway, those crucial primary years solidified my hatred for books. That librarian added the catalyst  when I started picking out books that were "below my reading level", and I therefore were not allowed to check them out. The world of reading, once so comfy and cozy, crashed mercilessly. Why spend time reading my books at home when they didn't count at school? When I had to read Dino-fucking-Baseball to earn credit?


So I stop. My love for books smothered under the stumpy heel of my librarian.


.... this post is dragging; let me get to my point...


My point is this:
Even today, I struggle with books. If I am not immediately sucked into the bowls of the story by page 5, I have a very hard time finishing the rest of the story. Often I don't.
I cling to the books that steal my heart. The Book Thief and Harry Potter and 11/22/63 and The Phantom Tollbooth (ok, the one good book I read in the third grade). I read others. I stomach through them for the conclusion. I wish I was my mother, who can zip through fifty books during the summer. She absorbs them like a dry washcloth. I wish I loved reading that much but every time I pick up a novel, the novel has to prove to me it's good, or at least that it's worth reading.


That said, I'm reading a stellar book right now. It has no literary value. So if you think the college writing professor from University of Hawaii is recommending something that is deeply thought providing, I assure you, I am not. This book does not stimulate the mind.
It does, however, instigate uncontrollable tears of laughter. I cannot read this book in public for fear of laughing out loud and making strangers feel uncomfortable.


The book is called Let's Pretend This Never Happened, and it's by Jenny Lawson. I'm fairly certain that my two best friends co-conspired to write this novel together. It's a mix of Kage and Krista and their very dry senses of humor (is that the plural phrase of sense of humor?).


Read it. Chapter by chapter will prove hilarious. It sucks you in at page #1.