Tell me about the rabbits, George . . .

The hazard in regularly posting to a blog is that if you are not careful, you will let yourself start every blog post like . . . well, a blog post. As I write this introduction to what will eventually be a thesis on my own personal literary evolution and addiction; trite statements are scratching at my screen door, mewling and causing that "thump, thump, thump" vibration against baseboard as they try to get my attention enough to let them slip in. First sentences like, "I have not always been a reader . . . " and "As a child, reading was not easy because of my learning disability . . . " have to be chased off my porch with a straw-bristled broom and yelled epithets so that I can get the peace I need to be able to write my awkward cat metaphor.

To begin, I reference a statement made to a couple of dear friends one night and has since gone on to become legendary in our circle of three: "I am one of the children for whom Hooked on Phonics worked." That's right, I learned how to read using the reading REVOLUTION. For the low, low price of $48.95, my parents bought me a cheesy, 80's music-based reading system guaranteed to get their dyslexic learner cracking Voltaire before she started her first period.

The culturally prolific and widely scorned system that drilled "A-aah-APPLE!! [doo-doo-doo-doo] B! Buh-BALL!" into my head so deep that even today I will sometimes sit and hum the tune at my weekly staff meeting, was effective at getting me to recognize the difference between apples and balls without referring to a diagram. Damn it, it worked. I am still about six Christmases away from forgiving my parents for making me a part of that gigantic national laughing point and not just allowing me to live out my illiteracy in my belltower waxing my humpback, feeding my pigeons, and nursing my dreams of becoming a chorus girl in Atlantic City. (That is the plot to "Hunchback of Notre Dame", right?)

Dyslexia had effects past learning to read though, and they were nothing if not a challenge. I could not read as fast as other kids without the words pretending they were playing Red Rover, and my reading comprehension did not permit me to skim at all. Guess how excited this made me for reading assignments in school? College? More appropriately, guess how many books I actually read when I got to grad school? Give you a hint- we are just barely in the double digits for two full years. (Suck on that, UO College of Ed!)

Remaining effects of my learning disability can still be found in my handwriting where I am constantly transposing letters in anything put down without the intervention of a keyboard. Each day I bless the digital age in which I live and give a mental middle finger to Mrs. Hill who told me that I would never make it anywhere in life if I did not learn to write my letters correctly. I would write her a note and tell her off for real, but I have the feeling it would come back with red ink all over it.

Not being able to read very fast and having to read EVERY WORD of everything I was tasked with reading made reading a chore- and not a fun one, like testing the structural integrity of your older sister's leaf piles. In addition, my sugar-fueled tendency to alight from project/topic/errand to project/topic/errand like a moth in the lamp section of Home Depot would ultimately prove useful to my chosen career of meeting planner aka One Who Keeps the Batons Aloft, but was crap for establishing good reading habits in childhood and adolescence.

This is not to say that I was illiterate- if it was a subject in which I had interest, or if the movie had been good, I would actually take the time to enjoy a book. Of course, by "take the time", I mean that it would take me six months to get through it. There was that glimmer of hope in the late 90's, when a precocious boy-wizard entered my life and made me care about dragons and ghosties and cellulite-hiding robes, but like much of America, most of my good intentions never made it past multiple repetitions of the book about the boy-wizard and the dragons and ghosties and cellulite-hiding robes. By the mid-aughts, it appeared as though I was doomed to a life of illiterate ramblings about the band Coldplay and whether or not Adam Sandler had staying power.

In 2008 though, three things happened that turned me around.

Event #1: I went to my first annual conference for work. The last hired before the event, my status as an office peon was firmly solidified by the staff page of our agenda book which showed my picture in the exact opposite corner as our executive director, who at that point pretty much lived in a cloud with a megaphone at the top of Mt. Vesuvius for as much as he intimidated me.

While tending to the merch table with a girl in my department, we started to talk about books. I referenced my old standbys- "Catcher in the Rye", Sherman Alexie, and the four books I actually DID read while getting an art degree (she seemed to have limited interest in "Elements of Design in Impressionist Brushwork"). When she talked about the books she loved, she described a bedside table overburdened with a scizophrenically arrayed variety of fiction, non-fiction, young adult tragedy, fantasy, sci-fi, and bike repair. Listening to her talk with such passion about the things that she loved to read and the things that she hoped to read made me feel initially literarily impotent, but eventually determined to become more well-rounded and interesting in ways that were actually important.

Event #2: I moved in with some new roommates who were best friends with each other. This turned out to be not. smart. I was not the type to fan the magazines before company came over so I did not fit in with them; and they were not the types to actually HAVE company come over, so they did not fit in with me. I was desperate for a place to live though, and they were desperate not to pay $800 for January, so a devil's bargain was struck. I marked the lightning flashes and rolling thunder that accompanied my signing the lease to a late winter storm.

In an effort to "bond" (note to self: do not live life within quotation marks- it only ends badly), I began reading those teenage girl vampire books that everyone had raved about and for which both of them seemed to be pretty crazy. I read the first and thought, "That vampire is controlling . . . and not in the sexy Dracula way that tells you that you are probably getting laid." I made the mistake of giving the second and third book chances to pull me back in, but I just couldn't get over how DUMB the story was, and MY GOSH, could the woman come up with another type of stone to describe a lover's smooth skin than "marble"? Seriously woman, go to the bathroom section of Lowe's and TAKE NOTES!

By the time I finished the third book, I was determined that I would never again read something this bad unless I had read five or six good books to counteract it. So, to tell the truth, I am not especially sure of whether it has been my love of the good literature or the bad that has compelled me to read so much, but either way, this policy has proven effective volumetrically.

Event #3: I read "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay". If you have read that book, you didn't need to read past that sentence to determine why this comprised a whole event. If you have not read that book, I will say this- the language, the plot, the characters, the bloody, fucking WORDS, were everything that I wanted at that period in time to re-ignite a belief in miracles taking place in 600+ pieces of paper. That book made me weep and weep and smile and gasp out loud. I hugged that book and let it take the right side of the bed. It was writing-you-bad-poems and smiling-about-you-on-the-bus love, and for the first time the object of my affection did not play in a garage band.

These events set in motion subsequent literary feats of which I am somewhat proud- In 2009, I decided that I would read 52 books in a year. Despite a rocky July, I made my count and even read about half of "The Stand" as well. I started a library of texts both familiar and obscure, and have continued to take in lonely paperbacks despite my collection far outstripping my reading speed. Like a matchmaker, I have done reasonably well at pairing friends and family with their best match depending on their current literary needs- my only wild card being my recommendation of "The Road" to everyone, and having two of my best friend accuse me of trying to make them kill themselves from depression caused by post-apocalyptic lack of hope.

I own all of the books that I read, and at the end of each, I write my own review saying when I finished it, what was significant about that day, and what I thought. This is especially fun with things that are truly terrible, as is evidenced by my review of "Why We Suck" by Denis Leary:

"I finished this book on August 3, 2010 on a day that I got 3.5 hours of sleep and yet could somehow manage NOT to pass out. This book sucks. I like Denis Leary, but less so after reading this badly written, meandering, stale piece of inconsequence. I am keeping this book on my shelf in the hopes that it goes forgotten and is eventually urinated upon by a passing animal. His mom was cute though."

Whenever I move, I pull my books down from the shelves and get excited about reading the new and re-visiting old favorites. I re-commit myself to absorbing all of the beauty, silliness, fighting, sex, heroes, villains, talking animals, mothers, fathers, pomegranates, and juniper as I can before I shuffle off into the Great Library Beyond- which is exactly like Belle's library from "Beauty and the Beast" but with more Pablo Neruda and Chuck Pahlaniuk.

And because no blog post on reading is complete without a book list:

• Reservation Blues; The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; and Flight- All by Sherman Alexie
• Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradburry
• The Mysteries of Pittsburgh- Michael Chabon
• The House on Mango Street- Sandra Cisneros
• One Hundred Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest- Ken Kesey
• The Stand- Stephen King
• Born Standing Up- Steve Martin
• The Road- Cormac McCarthy
• The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison
• A Man Without a Country- Kurt Vonnegut
• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim- David Sedaris
• Yes Man- Danny Wallace
• The Hatchet- Gary Paulsen
• Tiger Eyes- Judy Blume
• Matilda- Roald Dahl