Reading Story - Amanda

My Reading Story

The first book I remember being read to me was “Each, Peach, Pear Plum”. I loved it for the way it was written in verse, the beautiful pencil drawings and the fact that it alludes to many fairy tales and nursery rhymes that I remember well (Cinderella, The Three Bears, Little Bo Peep). I have treasured it all my life and often look at it with fond memories. Other books I remember are the “Mr. Men” and “Little Miss” books, ladybird books, “Peter and Jane” and “Topsy and Tim” not forgetting Roald Dahl’s collection.

I have been told endless stories by my parents about how I was a bossy child and when asking my mum what age I began reading, she informed me that she had tried to teach me when I was three and a half and my response was “No! I’ll teach you”. Needless to say, she gave up and I could only read a few words before I went to school! My mum told me the other day that I was so stubborn that her and my dad actually nick-named me “The Ayotallah Amanda” after a tyrannical dictator from Iran called Ayotallah Khomeini who was around in the 80s!

I recall absolutely loving bedtime stories and taking turns with my brother to choose which fairy tales Mum would read to us. I also remember playing a game called “sausage and mash” with my brother where we would read stories out loud and substitute all the words beginning with “s” for “sausage” and all the words beginning with “m” for “mash” so we would end up in giggling fits listening to our nonsensical stories.

As you can imagine, the stubborn child I was, was also a competitive child and I remember being told I was a “good reader” which spurred me on to read everything as fast as I could, especially as one of my childhood friends was racing through books too. I can’t actually remember many of the books I read which makes me think I wasn’t necessarily enjoying them. However, I do remember the hours spent at the public library on Saturday mornings making the difficult decision of selecting a book as they were much more modern and interesting than the books they had in the school library.

My reading ability was an advantage when it came to school plays and I adored having to perform as I felt I was good at it, despite being a shy child.


Mum and Dad were always reading newspapers and I remember attempting to read one when I was about ten to copy my dad and thinking “I’ll never want to read all this small writing when I’m a grown up”.

I can’t remember ever getting books as presents when I was a child, although my best friend at the time had a pristine bookcase full of shiny new colourful books, all arranged in size order which I was very envious of. Our collection consisted of tatty well-read books bought at school fairs and charity shops and ones that had been handed down by older children we knew. I was more interested in inventing games to play in the garden and acting out plays than to sit at home reading about other children.

It wasn’t until I was about 11 that I got much pleasure from reading books. I think this stems from having “Superfudge” by Judy Blume read to us in school. My parents were getting divorced at the time and I remember being happiest at school getting lost in the world of fiction. I remember sitting cross-legged on the carpet of the “music room” in our school with my classmates and listening to my favourite teacher captivate us all with her soft, sweet voice putting on the American accent required to become “Fudge”.

As I progressed to secondary school, I endeavoured to read everything that had been written by Judy Blume one after the other and when presented with book vouchers for getting a billion merits (or whatever it was), I would go straight into Waterstones in Liverpool and buy brand new copies of all these books and read them and lend them to my friends, and then read them again. At around this time, reading was very popular amongst girls of my age and I remember cosy winter morning spent in our form room reading “The Sweet Valley Twins” books and “The Babysitter’s Club” before lessons began. Other books were the “Point Horror” series, (which my English teacher disapproved of but which I read anyway) “Goggle Eyes” by Anne Fine and “The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole”. I loved books that made you laugh or scared you silly.

I loved most of the books we read in school like “Carrie’s War” and “Across the Barricades” and always had teachers whom I looked up to, which helped immensely. I always enjoyed creative writing at school and for pleasure at home, and at around the age of 14 I started keeping diaries. I think I was inspired to do so by a character out of one of the Judy Blume books I was reading at the time. It was a wonderful outlet and I felt so much better when I had transferred my worries into words on the page. My confidence was dented and my writing stopped briefly when one day my Mum was upset after she admitted she’d read what I had written which happened to be that I hated her in bold black scrawl after a row. Surely writing it in my diary was better than saying it to her face? She didn’t quite see it like that.

Throughout my early teenage years, I remember reading a lot of magazines and stealing “Just Seventeen” from my friend’s older sister. Reading those magazines seemed a lot more exciting than our lives at the time and we couldn’t wait to have boyfriends and go clubbing.

My love of reading and especially writing continued and I decided to do a combined language and literature course at a sixth form college so I could continue my creative writing along with studying literature. For a long time I thought I’d do a degree in Journalism as I loved it so much, but unfortunately I found my English lecturers tedious and my grades suffered for a while and my new interest in Sociology took over as I had such an inspirational lecturer. This resulted in me embarking on a degree in Criminal Justice. The amount of non-fiction I was required to read throughout my degree left me with little time to read or write and after University I was out of the habit of doing either.

In recent years, I have had similar experiences with authors to those I had as a child. If I read a book I like, I will continue to read other books that author has written. I tend to respect authors that write with an element of humour and especially enjoy books by Ben Elton and David Baddiel and autobiographies of people I admire like Frank Skinner and Russell Brand. I enjoy plays, particularly ones with humour in them like “Educating Rita” and favour books with lots of descriptions of real people over action and adventure. The books I enjoyed most of all at ‘A’ level were ‘Dubliners’ by James Joyce and ‘Oleander, Jacaranda’ by Penelope Lively.

Spending time teaching English abroad made me focus on concentrating my efforts on learning grammar and how to teach it along with learning other languages and cultures and I put reading for pleasure on the back burner. It was also difficult to get hold of books written in English and the small library at the school I was working at consisted of nothing for adults except for the books you get free in magazines.

I am thankful to have access to English libraries again and to be on a course where I now have the chance to re-read the children’s literature I loved as a child, such as Peter Pan along with the classics I’ve always wanted to read like “Great Expectations”. I feel a bit overwhelmed sometimes by all the books I haven’t read and should read, but at the same time love the fact that I’ll never run out and I might even write one myself one day!

Hope you enjoyed Great Expectations! I thought it was a bit of a mission but very good;)

I had forgotten Just Seventeen! A friend of mine used to get it and we thought we were so grown up.

MR MEN! aaahhh i rember them.

You have a very good memory for specific books you read, especially as a young child! I loved the point horror books too, although they were quite scary and I tend to stay away from adult horror.