Why do I read?

Echoing C.S. Lewis, my mother always said you're never alone when you've got a book and to an only child 'alone' is something you have in abundance. As an undiagnosed dyslexic reading was never antidote to that alone-ness, I couldn't understand how anyone could love reading the way my parents did.

It was all just scibbly black lines of incoherent, isolated words arranged in-between fascinating rivers created by the patterns of the spaces on each page. The words I struggled to read never formed into sentences much less a narrative. If I did manage to get to the end of a sentence it often didn't make any sense anyway "this is Susan's dad" was to me "this is Susan's dab/bad" -*she frowns* huh? I can remember being excruciatingly embrarrassed about not being able to do what the other kids seemed to be able to do so naturally & I was aware that I was different, odd if you will, but I didn't know what questions to ask to find out how I was different. I was particularly sensitive about not being able to tell the difference between 'd' & 'b' hoping no-one would notice how dumb I was - I love the irony now!

How lucky I was to have a mum who read to me so devotedly for so long. She was a wise woman and I adored her, perhaps that's why I believed her in spite of my own reading experience. I loved books simply because she told me they were worthy of loving.

So this is my blog about my love of reading, words and language. It's just for me as an affirmation of a long hard struggle to find out for myself that books are worthy of my affection.