Book Worm

I love reading. Always have, and I strongly suspect that I always will. I’m not all that choosy about what I read, either. The back of a cereal packet will do me, in a pinch, or a leaflet out of a box of tampons. Really, I love reading.

I remember the first book I ever enjoyed reading. Reading myself, I mean, not a book that was read to me. My mother read to me a lot, she worked as a child minder at the time and she worked from our house, so there were other kids to entertain, too. I always got the best spot right beside her and got to turn the pages, too. But the very first book I took out from the library, brought home and read from cover to cover in one day was Matilda by Roald Dahl. I was so engrossed in it, I wanted to bring it to the dinner table, just in case the words dripped off the pages while I was eating and I’d miss the ending. I fell in love. And I wanted more.

Funnily enough, I didn’t read anything else by Roald Dahl. How I ended up reading Enid Blyton, I don’t remember but I thoroughly enjoyed every single one of her books. Under the influence of Famous Five, me and the boy next door, Sami, went around looking for secret passageways out of our houses and suspected every adult we didn’t know to be a smuggler out to get us. I had no idea what a boarding school was, either, there aren’t any in Finland, at least not to my knowledge, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to go to one. I even asked my parents to send me to one. I was promptly told it wasn’t an option.

My two best friends

There are few books I read over and over again. Matilda being one of them. Brian Hall’s Saskiad is on me permanent reading list, as is Pat Conroy’s Beach Music and Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat. I have a bookcase jam packed with books I haven’t read yet. All kinds of books. I love the smell of the pages, the weight of a good book in my hand, and I love putting in my bookmark, leaving it to one side and then picking it up again like a good old friend called in for a catch up and a chat.

And while I’m sure Kindle is a fantastic idea and works for loads of people, it will never work for me. It makes me a little bit sad because I do love my gadgets, but  there is nothing in this world that beats the sound a book makes when you’re opening it for the first time. Of the book-y smell of the pages as your turning them.

Right now, I’m reading Victoria Hislop’s The Return which is turning out to be a very interesting read. I’ll let you know what I think when I’m finished, ok?