dancingthroughchaos

‘Books are a uniquely portable magic’ – Stephen King

I can’t remember learning to read, but I do remember growing up in a household full of books. Wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling books.  Everybody was always reading something; we began with Beatrix Potter and AA Milne.  My Dad positioned a modest bookcase on the landing so that small people could easily access a variety of reading material, from Ladybird books to Puffins and Penguins; from picture books to ‘I-Spy’s and collections of poetry.  Not only that, but he kept a suitcase jam-packed with another set of books in a cupboard under the eaves.  Every six months or so, he would solemnly heave it out, dust off the spiders and swop one set for the other so that we could have fresh material or revisit ‘old friends’ in our reading time.  Some of my earliest literary memories are of reading the Ladybird ‘well-loved tales’ series of fairy stories at infant school: ‘Cinderella’, ‘The Princess & the Pea’, ‘Snow White’, ‘Dick Whittington’ and company.  The illustrations are as fresh and vivid to me now as they were then.

Dad taught us how to handle books: with respect and care.  He taught us how to turn the pages: from the outer edge, not too close to the spine, so they wouldn’t tear.  He encouraged us to thoroughly enjoy them but never to make a mark on them with either dirty hands, pencils or coloured pens.  He read them to us, in chapter-sized instalments, after Sunday lunch. Books were our friends, our comforters, our inspiration, our joy and our refuge from all the burdens – such as they were – of a small child’s innocent world.  They were doorways to adventure, oxygen for eager imaginations, windows into new and exotic worlds.

One of the best Saturday morning activities for me was to wake early – as on a school day – nip downstairs to make a plate of marmalade sandwiches – inspired no doubt by Paddington Bear –  and return to the warmth of my bed, armed with sustenance and a book, for some sustained escapism. My birthday and Christmas money was spent on completing the full series of ‘Famous Five’ books.  While modern opinion is that these should have been filed on various compost heaps long ago, I maintain their value as the first ‘proper’ books – i.e. without pictures on every page – which we ever tackled, and I have Enid Blyton to thank for that.

We had Library cards to expand our book harvest-fields, and we trudged home armed with eclectic combinations of fiction as we traversed the seasons of our peculiar preferences.  My sister had a penchant for Jean Plaidy, while I giggled my way through ‘Bobby Brewster’ books.  Together we made furtive forays into the bodice rippers of Barbara Cartland until I found my feet through CS Lewis to the ‘proper literature’ of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and a whole new raft of genuine classics.

By nature we are story-oriented people.  Generations of oral tradition remain and books have not deprived us of the magic of a tale well-told. Books have the power to shine a light on our shared experiences and a mirror to our hearts, as well as a spy-glass into the world of others.  They are a valued gift to share with every new generation.  And so, in due course I taught each of our children to read.  My maxim was then, as it is now, that if you can learn to read you will never have an excuse to be bored again. Ever.

The variety of accessible books literally offers something for every possible taste, interest, age, ethnicity, and intellect.  There is always knowledge to be gleaned from encyclopaedias; skills to be learned and upgraded in ‘How-to’ books and recipe books; fascinating history to be explored away from dreary, suffocating classrooms; stimulating essays to be processed and debated; commentators to agree with, or not; philosophies to examine; adventures to share; mysteries to solve; thrillers to excite; pastoral, whimsical, romance novels to bring hope to weary, tired souls; humorous accounts to evoke laughter and a smile; weird, surreal, time-travelling escapades of fantasy to transport you to new worlds and galaxies; accurate, and less-than-accurate, historical stories which seek past solutions for present problems; biographies and autobiographies designed to make you thankful for your lot, sympathise with someone else’s or stir admiration for those who have overcome hardship and adversity, and which inspire you to greater things yourself.  Travel books appeal to all your senses, evoking the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of a thousand far-flung shores and cultures.  There are plays of all flavours available, providing rich reading material, even if you cannot see them performed; from Shakespeare to Sheridan to Stoppard; tragedy or comedy or anywhere in between – take your pick and enjoy them all.  And there’s still more: acres of poetry plumbing the depths of sorrow and the heights of ecstasy; some cathartic, some combative; a raft of expression for every emotion and experience known to dwellers of planet earth.  There are wonderful picture books, coffee table books of breath-taking images that stimulate that part of your brain which is so often starved of sustenance in the hurly-burly of life.  And if course, we are fortunate to have access to various translations of The Bible, a privilege still denied readers in some nations where it is considered too dangerous with its talk of reaching out to enemies, radical forgiveness and sacrificial love. Scholars respect this book as a hallowed piece of literature, others view it as, ‘The greatest story ever told’, and still millions more embrace its contents as a living love letter from God Himself, oozing with the keys to redemption and salvation; life, light and hope for a broken world.

My fingers itch for them all. Whether I pick up a bag of them for pennies at a local jumble sale, scour the shelves of charity shops, plunder the resources available online, browse the offerings of the library or discover a particular treasure in the cathedral-quiet of an old-fashioned book shop, I find that books still draw me like a magnet.  The ritual of opening the cover on a fresh delight or an old friend, firmly pressing the first page into obedient alignment and taking a fragrant breath as I launch into it, is a treat in itself.  Don’t tell my Dad, but I do now read some books armed with both a highlighter and pen.  Some books need to have the good physically wrung out of them and I refuse to be bullied by their pristine pages anymore; but that’s OK; the sky has not yet fallen in.

As children we align ourselves with the heroes and heroines portrayed betwixt the pages; we learn about the world and about ourselves.  We absorb ideas that subtly but clearly equip us for dealing with the challenges ahead, and provide courageous role models and noble ideals in a world that no longer offers many. The tough jolts of adulthood alert us to the unpalatable fact that there are times when we are no longer the hero of our own story.  When our choices have led us down darker path-ways than we had envisaged, our bodies have failed to sustain the spirit within and our reactions have perhaps been less altruistic than we had expected; then the stories take a different turn.  But they are our stories; they are a living part of our family history; they are precious and valid and important.  And for all of us currently reading this, the last page has not yet been written.