the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

Reading is one of the great loves of my life, it falls behind the Berkshire Belle, who is also a great reader, that’s one of the things that brought us closer way back, and probably sits alongside music as a joint second.

In my early days we didn’t have pre-school or play school, so the basics of reading came from my parents. Having been born in October my start at primary school aged 5 came a month before my 5th birthday, and so I was usually always the oldest in my class, and such things can make a difference. Reading was one of the joys of school for me, even if it was the teacher who was doing the reading whilst we tried to follow in the book.

My education was spread across three primary, and two secondary, schools as my parents moved around, and my primary education was also interrupted by illness, bouts of bronchial asthma keeping me off school for weeks at a time, but that brought a different dimension to my learning. My parents were in service, and the big house always had a library, amongst which could be found books that the owner’s sons had read. I had a fount of learning that I could enjoy whilst flat on my back in bed, with even the slightest exertion causing me breathing spasms.

I also had a world atlas, bought cheaply at a jumble sale, and a 1940’s copy of Webster’s dictionary. As I read I could look up words that I didn’t know, and I could find on the map the places where my stories were set (even fictional places are usually given some geographic context). I was learning to read, a modicum of history and geography plus some moral values, all whilst lying in bed. I also had the family ratio brought up to me every morning, and could listen to that; Worker’s Playtime, Women’s Hour, Mrs Dale’s Diary and more all entertained me, and taught me, even if I didn’t understand all that I was learning at that stage.

I had read Rider Haggard before I was ten, and was along way ahead of my classmates when at school, even allowing for being nearly a year older that some of them. Once I got to secondary school we got into specific reading through the terms with the aim of critiquing and explaining these books. Rumer Golden’s An Episode of Sparrows is the first of these that I remember, and I have a copy of that on my Kindle now. We moved on to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice an Men, and both of these books taught me a little of a book having more than just the story about them. I didn’t really understand it until some years later; for me a story was a story, and I either liked to or not.

I knew from bible studies about parables, but it took me years to pick up that many books have moral values and social commentary floating along with the story. When asked to write an essay on the background to a passage from Mice and Men, I wrote something facetious about what Mr Steinbeck had eaten for breakfast having upset his digestion. My English Literature teacher launched into me over that one, but once she had got that off her chest, she did admit that it was both beautifully written and had made her laugh. I went back to enjoying stories and didn’t bother about allegorical writing.

I was in the generation that followed the beat one, and, Steinbeck aside, I struggled with a lot of the modern writing of my schooldays; Jack Kerouac I went back to 15 years or so ago, and still can’t get on with him, nor could I relate to Huncke, Ginsberg, Hemingway et al, and still can’t. And whilst my tastes haven’t changed to accommodate them, they have in terms of some authors that I used to avidly read, but now don’t enjoy.

The Berkshire Belle and I read two or three books a week each at least. I always have an ebook on my ‘phone to read during breaks at work, another on my iPad mini for reading at home, a talking book to listen to in the car on my commute and a physical book beside my armchair. We have over a thousand books around the house, and almost three thousand in our shared ebook library. We share a love of books, and will read almost anything, including the ingredient lists on food containers, but whilst I read, and enjoy, some of her books, she has no interest in mine, we just love reading.

Most of my reading these days is non-fiction, but I still enjoy a story, and the use of language to tell it. I don’t read much modern fiction, some I like, but little of it compares, for me, with what Verne, Wells, Conan-Doyle, Buchan and co could turn out. Amongst my favourites are the first two Musketeer sagas, and both of these are Victorian translations from books written earlier that century. Language has evolved, but I enjoy much of the earlier incarnations.

The advent of the ebook has been a blessing in that we just don’t have enough space in the house. I am planning more bookshelves at the moment, as we have one cupboard that we can’t access because my lady has a vast collection of cook books stacked on the floor in front of it. Ebooks allow us to keep collecting, but there is nothing to compare with the joy of a new hardback book.

My eyesight is not what it was and loss of my sight is one of my greatest concerns. To no longer to be able to read would take away a massive part of my life. People who say that they have bought a book to read on holiday I can’t understand; I would need at least four for a fortnight away, and would probably take six. One of the great joys of our thirty plus years of American vacations were the bookstores; Barnes and Noble, Borders, BooksaMillion and many others. A lot of our trips, where we were booked for an overnight stop before driving on, were planned around dinner and a Barnes and Noble visit before bed. We would inevitably spend more on books that evening that on dinner, there was no point in taking books with us when we could buy them at the other end.

Reading has taught me much, but, whilst I get pleasure from learning, I also get it from a good story, one that draws me in, where I feel I know the characters, and am sad to part from them at the end. I love it.