Reading and Me

In cleaning out my living room today, I found a piece I must have written many years ago. It's undated, and has no indication of its context. Maybe I wrote it in some writing class. I have a faint recollection that it may have been in response to hearing about a book entitled "Ruined by Reading" which was published in 1996. Anyway, here it is:

Ruined by Reading? Au contraire!

Three times while I was growing up, my brother and I were taken from one family in one place and sent to live with other people in a different city. It was not easy getting used to new places and new caretakers, and books were my constant and trustworthy companions: Nancy Drew mysteries, Robert Heinlein science fiction, and Andre Norton fantasy. The bookmobile was my treasure trove. Books could be counted on to take me out of whatever boring, scary, or strange place I was in and put me into another place: a place where children belonged to loving and stable families, and mysteries were solved and quests were successful, and evil people were either converted to good or defeated. Books were my friends; they made me feel safe and strong.

Later I came to enjoy reading Elizabeth Goudge and C.S. Lewis, and Peg Bracken and May Sarton. I raided my father's library and read everything from The Tin Drum and James Bond thrillers to Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. My mother's library included Mary Stewart, Agatha Christie, and Ngaio Marsh. These books fed my spiritual aspirations and gave me household hints, the satisfaction of having completed a difficult book (regardless of how little I may have gleaned from it), and many hours of entertainment and comfort.

Not just books, but several forms of communication have always been important to me. I was singing solos and in choirs, and leading worship services before I was ten. I competed in public speaking in high school and studied languages and music in college, but went to law school when I became serious about earning a living. Nevertheless, I was performing in reader's theater, singing, and leading worship during law school and beyond, while finding my way into legal publishing - first as a writer and now as an editor.

I can make sense out of the most obscure and abstruse statutes and judicial opinions; I can analyze what they're trying to say and write it out in a comprehensible and well-organized way; and I can take the output of lawyers whose forte is practicing law, not writing about it, and put it into sentences and paragraphs that are much more reader friendly.

When I get home from work, I'm still interested in reading, but not in working very hard at it. Escapist fiction is what I like best: science fiction and murder mysteries, especially those written by and about women. I also read spiritual, psychological, historical, and other non-fiction. Books are my talismans; I do not leave the house without at least one book. If you could see the overflowing bookcases and stacks of books in my home, you would not doubt that books are my friends.