A Serious Reader - by Gloria Guest

 

I’m a serious reader. By that, I don’t mean that I devour books weekly, and have an entire stack by my bed. In fact, truth be told, it’s been quite a while since I’ve read my way through an entire book. I’ve been guilty of dropping quite a few of them smack, dab in the middle and not finishing them, for reasons I’m not sure, other than for whatever reason they didn’t entirely hold my interest. This is not to say that they weren’t well written however. I feel it is more likely due to something going on within myself. That being said though, a book for me, or most anything I read, needs to be deep, usually spiritual, although not directly, and purposeful.

I do daily read up on current events. It seems to be a need of mine, to know what’s going on in the world around me. I suppose even though I haven’t worked in the field for a while now, that I’m a reporter at heart, as I tend to also feel the need to share my findings on social media.

I like to read historical fiction, and so have read many of Brock and Bodie Thoene’s books, and others who write in that genre. I also am drawn to memoirs. The saying that ‘the truth is stranger than fiction,’ is intriguing and often true. I myself have had some of my own truth questioned, in parts of my memoir. Memoir writing is perhaps one of the most vulnerable genres one can write in, and even though I shrink from it at times, at the same time I am fascinated and drawn in by it.

One book that has piqued my interest in the last while, and I hope to finish by summers end (meaning I won’t drop it half way through) is such a memoir. It is called educated (in small letters) by Tara Westover and chronicles the authors life beginning in hardship and deprivation, from a young girl born in rural Idaho in 1986, to first setting foot in a classroom at the age of seventeen, and onwards to her further education at Brigham University and Trinity College and Cambridge University. Tara was born to survivalists in the mountains, who  stockpiled supplies in the expectation of a government takeover. She and her siblings saw no doctors or nurses and they were kept so isolated from mainstream society that there was no help to call when her dysfunctional family slipped into violence or her father became delusional. I find it hard to grasp that this was this young girls life in 1986, in one of the most developed countries of the world. It’s also fascinating and uplifting to read her journey that takes her from such despair and want right into the some of the most upper education halls, in that same country. The strength and determination of the human spirit shines forth.

With this month’s theme being about our summer reading, I can’t help but think, what a fitting choice; to read about a young woman who wasn’t given the opportunity to read.

It makes me realize that I take reading for granted. Reading came easy to me in school and was my most loved subject. From my early years of reading, Curious George, to Charlotte’s Webb to Little Women, to The Hobbit (plus many more) and on to Shakespeare and the classics in high school; I wished that, that was all there was to school! It was the only subject that I was always at the head of the class for; reading and literature. 

I’m most definitely going to finish this book. Next on my list is another memoir, handed to me by my daughter-in-law, called From The Ashes by Jesse Thistle. It chronicles his life in foster care as a young Metis-Cree from Prince Albert and the abuse he went through, and also the healing. Now living in Toronto, he has climbed through it all to become an assistant professor in Metis Studies at York University. The timing of such a book does not escape me with the recent spotlight on the residential schools in Canada.

I believe that there is much to learn from a book, whether we agree with it or not. A book leads us into the lives of others, into our own lives, and our surrounding world. And no matter the subject, as a Christian, I believe that God wants to also show up in the pages of the books we choose to read, to lead us ultimately to Him and His goodness.

 I can’t imagine my life without being able to read. Yet in our country and others there are still those who are illiterate or have never been taught to read well. Now I enjoy reading to my Grandchildren, and it was in fact, the first activity I did with the five year old twins who joined our family, five years ago now. I read to them from my sons book that I had read to him as a child called, Butter Cup the Cow, and the bonding began :) 

I don't want to continue to take reading for granted. I'm most definitely going to take it more seriously.

Gloria reads for herself and to her grandchildren from the prairie town of Caron, Sk. She is a past reporter with hundreds of published articles and columns in various newspapers and a prolific reader of world and current events. She currently takes editing classes online from Simon Fraser University, has published fiction in two anthologies and continues to dabble at writing her own memoir, along with having other writings in the works.