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Reading Story
Jon Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:29 am
Reading Story
Chinky Takes a Parcel, Dudley in a Jam, The Hungry Caterpillar... these are the books that form my earliest memories – being read to in bed. My favourite however, was a story called The Little Engine That Could – and was not too dissimilar to my favourite books now – in that it involved a character gaining against the odds some moral victory or other and achieving a self-discovery of sorts! I have been pretty lucky. My parents did all they could in the circumstances to prepare both myself and my sister for education before we attended school, and being read to nightly was central to this. I began school life interested in the world and keen to learn more about it.
I can remember relatively little about the books I read at primary school – I remember racing my friends through the Oxford Reading Tree series, including the stories about Biff, Chip and Kipper – but little more. I think I had already made a distinction between reading for pleasure and reading for school, and it was mainly the competitive element that got me through the school books, or reading books as we curiously called them. At home however, I was taking great enjoyment from steadily increasing my reading level, and from the books that took me along: Narnia, The Mountain of Adventure, Danny, Champion of the World; through to my favourite period of my reading life when I discovered Kes, There is a Happy Land, Lord of the Flies and Reginald Perrin. My parents saw that I was enjoying realistic but humorous books, and being both enthusiastic and well-read themselves were able to provide me with an array of suitable titles. Meanwhile, as I sought realer and bleaker texts, my sister's tastes became, as far as I was concerned, weirder and weirder. We used to share opinions on The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, but her new penchant for Tamora Pierce meant we stopped talking about books. I began secondary school, and stopped reading.
Reading was no longer cool. But I don't think that's why I lost interest. I wouldn't call it cool now, and I'm no less vain now than I was at high school. Suddenly, we were confronted with classics – so it was implied that we must understand and regard the books as such – if we didn't it was a failure on our part as pupils. Romeo and Juliet sticks in my mind – I couldn't understand why we had jumped from reading language that we freely spoke with, to something that to me was entirely incomprehensible. Feeling like I was no longer good at English, I pursued the things I thought I was good at – sport and chasing girls.
Looking back I'm a little surprised that my parents didn't really push me to try harder at school at that stage of my life, especially considering how well my sister was doing academically. Nevertheless I got the GCSEs needed to go to sixth form. I chose English Language and Philosophy as I enjoyed debating and communicating, and Computing as it guaranteed a good job. Fortunately, Computing bored the pants off me and after a fortnight I gambled on Theatre Studies instead – and it paid off! As well as improving my self-confidence immeasurably, it offered me a way back into literature and reading. I think a lot of people's political antenna are sharpened at sixth form for one reason or another – and while I was there it was the beginning of the Iraq war, so politics was at the forefront of many of our minds. At the same time in Theatre Studies we began studying Bertolt Brecht, and his belief in freedom and justice awoke my slumbering academic side. His plays were accessible and humorous – and being plays were infinitely more readable than essays or novels – but also had serious messages. I went on to discover Nikolai Gogol, Dario Fo and above all Steven Berkoff, and gradually the joy of reading returned to me. I was then able to find reading-pleasure in my other subjects – and fell in love with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and the philosopher David Hume. Having failed a module of English Language at university, it was philosophy that became my central academic interest – but I was always brought back to English through the philosophers I loved reading – I always valued those with artistic flair above the dry statistic regurgitators – and that's why you find me on this course.
These academic pursuits have influenced what I now enjoy reading, I love the debating of a philosophical conundrum, such as the choices Pip must make about himself in Great Expectations, or more recently the exploration of various aspects of consciousness in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. However, it is not my education that most influences my tastes – it is the element of The Little Engine That Could – both Pip and Toru Okada are characters who find themselves in difficult situations, with decisions to make - to sink or swim, to find themselves or lose themselves, to offer hope or to lose it – I suppose I find hope in reading now, just as I did then.
Chinky Takes a Parcel, Dudley in a Jam, The Hungry Caterpillar... these are the books that form my earliest memories – being read to in bed. My favourite however, was a story called The Little Engine That Could – and was not too dissimilar to my favourite books now – in that it involved a character gaining against the odds some moral victory or other and achieving a self-discovery of sorts! I have been pretty lucky. My parents did all they could in the circumstances to prepare both myself and my sister for education before we attended school, and being read to nightly was central to this. I began school life interested in the world and keen to learn more about it.
I can remember relatively little about the books I read at primary school – I remember racing my friends through the Oxford Reading Tree series, including the stories about Biff, Chip and Kipper – but little more. I think I had already made a distinction between reading for pleasure and reading for school, and it was mainly the competitive element that got me through the school books, or reading books as we curiously called them. At home however, I was taking great enjoyment from steadily increasing my reading level, and from the books that took me along: Narnia, The Mountain of Adventure, Danny, Champion of the World; through to my favourite period of my reading life when I discovered Kes, There is a Happy Land, Lord of the Flies and Reginald Perrin. My parents saw that I was enjoying realistic but humorous books, and being both enthusiastic and well-read themselves were able to provide me with an array of suitable titles. Meanwhile, as I sought realer and bleaker texts, my sister's tastes became, as far as I was concerned, weirder and weirder. We used to share opinions on The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, but her new penchant for Tamora Pierce meant we stopped talking about books. I began secondary school, and stopped reading.
Reading was no longer cool. But I don't think that's why I lost interest. I wouldn't call it cool now, and I'm no less vain now than I was at high school. Suddenly, we were confronted with classics – so it was implied that we must understand and regard the books as such – if we didn't it was a failure on our part as pupils. Romeo and Juliet sticks in my mind – I couldn't understand why we had jumped from reading language that we freely spoke with, to something that to me was entirely incomprehensible. Feeling like I was no longer good at English, I pursued the things I thought I was good at – sport and chasing girls.
Looking back I'm a little surprised that my parents didn't really push me to try harder at school at that stage of my life, especially considering how well my sister was doing academically. Nevertheless I got the GCSEs needed to go to sixth form. I chose English Language and Philosophy as I enjoyed debating and communicating, and Computing as it guaranteed a good job. Fortunately, Computing bored the pants off me and after a fortnight I gambled on Theatre Studies instead – and it paid off! As well as improving my self-confidence immeasurably, it offered me a way back into literature and reading. I think a lot of people's political antenna are sharpened at sixth form for one reason or another – and while I was there it was the beginning of the Iraq war, so politics was at the forefront of many of our minds. At the same time in Theatre Studies we began studying Bertolt Brecht, and his belief in freedom and justice awoke my slumbering academic side. His plays were accessible and humorous – and being plays were infinitely more readable than essays or novels – but also had serious messages. I went on to discover Nikolai Gogol, Dario Fo and above all Steven Berkoff, and gradually the joy of reading returned to me. I was then able to find reading-pleasure in my other subjects – and fell in love with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and the philosopher David Hume. Having failed a module of English Language at university, it was philosophy that became my central academic interest – but I was always brought back to English through the philosophers I loved reading – I always valued those with artistic flair above the dry statistic regurgitators – and that's why you find me on this course.
These academic pursuits have influenced what I now enjoy reading, I love the debating of a philosophical conundrum, such as the choices Pip must make about himself in Great Expectations, or more recently the exploration of various aspects of consciousness in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. However, it is not my education that most influences my tastes – it is the element of The Little Engine That Could – both Pip and Toru Okada are characters who find themselves in difficult situations, with decisions to make - to sink or swim, to find themselves or lose themselves, to offer hope or to lose it – I suppose I find hope in reading now, just as I did then.
Jon- Posts : 25
Join date : 2008-10-08
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Join date : 2008-10-07 -
Re: Reading Story
Joanna Moan Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:37 am
It's really interesting that what gripped you originally albeit in a simpler form is what you enjoy in fiction now.
Joanna Moan- Posts : 28
Join date : 2008-10-08
Re: Reading Story
amandawoo Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:09 am
I'm interested in reading some of the plays you mentioned. Do you have any copies with you in Bath? Amanda
amandawoo- Posts : 30
Join date : 2008-10-08
Re: Reading Story
Immalee Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:34 pm
That's an interesting comparision - it would have never occured to me to think of Toru Okado and Pip in the same light.
Immalee- Posts : 21
Join date : 2008-10-08
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