Writers Read Too

Ever since I can remember, I've loved to read. When I was in kindergarten, I told my Mum that I wanted to be an author, so I guess that shows how much I loved reading and storytelling even back then.

I remember spending hours in libraries and the excitement of looking at the shelves and picking a juicy tale to sink your teeth into. I couldn't believe the generosity of libraries; fancy choosing as many books as you liked to take home for free! In primary school, I loved to play in the schoolyard with my friends but what I loved more was the library.

I think our primary school librarian enjoyed a tipple or two. I remember when my friends and I found her cask of red wine and took turns opening the little spout right into our mouths. It tasted horrible but we knew it was wrong and it was so much fun to break the rules.

The librarian trusted us. Silly lady. She used to let me and my girlfriends into the library alone at lunchtimes. Some lunchtimes she shut up shop (maybe go stock up on more red wine from the bottle-o) and she let us stay inside as long as we promised to be very well behaved. Little did she know it was party time for us 10 year-olds. As soon as she left, we pulled out our favourite book - 'Where Did I Come From? - giggling over the pages and sipping our Shiraz.

Each year I would enter the MS Readathon competition. I would ask every adult I knew to sponsor me 5 or 10 cents a book. They all agreed, chuckling at my earnest efforts to raise money for MS sufferers. At the end of the reading challenge, I would visit my sponsors to collect their donation.

"What?! You read 48 books! At 10 cents a book! That's $4.80! I don't have that kind of money!"

This would be the usual response from my family members and their friends. (For all you Gen Y's out there...$4.80 was a lot of money in the 80's!!!)

But a deal's a deal and I could usually get most of them to pay up by looking very sad and deflated. And although I was doing the readathon for a good cause, for me, the love of reading was enough of a drawcard. I was hooked.

Places I used to read (when I wasn't allowed too):

In bed under the covers with a torch
On the toilet (even public ones)
In the backseat of the car at night with no light except for the street lamps we periodically passed on our way home from Nan's
At the dinner table - this normally lasted for all of 5 seconds before my Dad realised and yelled at me - (again for the confused Gen Y's out there, parents were strict in those days!)

I wanted to read (and write!) so much that when I played with my best friend, I used to insist that we write letters to each other (I normally specified that they had to be 10 pages in length, yes I was a hard taskmaster) and then go off in private to read them. Her letters always started with the same line -

Dear Lizzie,
                     I hope this letter finds you in the best of health.

How cute. Her Mum had taught her the polite way to start a letter. It was just so ludicrous coming from one 10 year old to another...who saw each other daily in the street!

Anyway, I stumbled across someone's blog today who does a 100 book reading challenge every year and it got me thinking about how much I read when I was young and how that little version of me, puts this big version of me to shame!

As a writer (and I use that term with increasing confidence the more courses I attend and writers I meet), probably the number 1 tip you are given is to read. Read everything. Read books you hate and books you love. Read all genres. Read all mediums; online and print, magazines, literary journals, nonfiction, newspapers, blogs etc. Just read.

So I've decided to start my own 2013 Reading Challenge. I know what you're all thinking - 'But Lizz, we're already a third way through the year!' And yes my cyber smarties, you are quite correct. But I will be backdating this challenge to books I've read since January 1st this year. Although that's not really going to help my tally too much because I've found it hard to commit to reading a book the whole way through this year! I'm worried about my attention span actually...bloody smart phones!

So my challenge is to read 50 books this year. I decided on 50 instead of 100 because damn it, I have a novel to write as well! I really think I'm gonna have to quit my day job because I've got far too many commitments now outside of work. Well, one can always dream!

I will be putting my reading tally on this blog as motivation and hey, I might even write the odd review or two :)

Who's gonna join me?