Friday First… on a Sunday (just)

I didn’t forget, just been busy – no really. Plus, this one was a hard one to answer.

Do you have any fond memories from your childhood or can you share any remarkable firsts that, like E.B White's, were a bit... unexpected?

In participating in Friday Firsts, I have learnt one very important thing… I’m TERRIBLE at remember first lines. I spend most of my time jumping up and down and running to the book shelf and then still not answering the question. I find this really odd, because I think that the first line can truly make a great book. Oh well, I’ve decided to focus on the first part of the question and think of some fond reading memories.

I don’t remember learning to read. I truly wish that I did, because the thought of it – especially considering the fact that no one else in my immediate family is a reader – fascinates me. My mother tells me however that as soon as I was old enough to hold a book I was getting her to read. I do remember sitting curled up in her lap our our back verandah, on the old brown chairs with the cracks in the arms, while she read to me though.

The memory of the transition from her reading to me to my reading myself is practically non-existent (why, oh why can I not remember this?), and again falls mostly on what my mother tells me – that she looked for chapter books young enough for me to read without pictures. This, if my bookshelf is any indication, meant Enid Blyton.

I don’t remember receiving Little Women – which I got for my 8th birthday from my grandparents – but I do remember reading and re-reading it constantly, along with Heidi, The Secret Garden and The Little Princess.

One of the strongest memory I have of reading when I was very young mostly revolved around reading the Babysitter Club books. I would take my little list in it’s shiny green clipboard to the library and get a stack then sit on my bed, propped up by a whole heap of pillows, the pile sitting on the floor next to my bed (not at all unlike how I read now, in fact). I would read and laugh and enjoy every minute of it, running out to my mother at the start of every chapter to get her to read the indecipherable handwriting.

Another memory that I can think of comes out of the holidays I would spent at my grandparent’s house. It seems that I would go for the night and just never leave – I don’t remember ever being home for the holidays! I would take my pile with me and would read my way through them – my grandfather watching disbelievingly all the while. One holiday I remember very clearly because it was the year he voiced his believe that I couldn’t possibly be reading all these books. I remember that I took a book of the pile and read it just so he could quiz me when I was done. He actually seemed a little put out when I could answer his questions… though funnily enough, it was also the year I read the final draft of his memoirs, so I guess I passed the test.