What Is Your Secret Connection to Books?
We all have our own reasons for reading.
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I’ve had a longstanding book club. We started meeting during the fall of 2019, and we’ve been meeting monthly or bimonthly ever since. Our books tend to be contemporary fiction and they’re often published in the last year. We take summers off so everyone can read whatever they want, and most of us are in the group because it’s where we let down our guard and come clean about our vulnerabilities as women, mothers, daughters and friends. (If you read All Fours in your book club, you know what that convo looked like.)
Our April book was The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods. If you haven’t read it, it’s ultimately about three characters and their deep connection to books as antique book dealers, readers and devotees of a good story. As we discussed the magical realism elements of the novel, the conversation seemed to be waning when my friend Georgene said something about her connection to books over time. This gave me an idea for a question and I posed it to the group. “It would make me so happy,” I said, “if I could hear each of you talk about your special connection to books. What role have books played in your lives?” Suddenly, everyone had something to say.
We went around the living room one by one, and each answer felt like uncovering a new gem in a jewelry box. I’ve been thinking of that meeting since so I wanted to share some of my favorite answers.
Laura, a children’s book writer, told us books were sacred in her house growing up. “It was a special time of connection for all of us — even when we were all reading independently (oftentimes the five of us would be reading at the same time on different parts of the couch). My mom and dad were big readers and my siblings and I learned the importance of books at an early age. My first vivid memory of books was my dad reading Stuart Little to my sister and I each night. I have been hooked on the adventure and the power to be transported to other worlds ever since.”
I loved what my friend Nicole said, too. “Being able to imagine a story while reading and see it play out in your mind's eye has always been very satisfying for me as well as comforting. Something about the intimacy you create with the story and characters as you read is different from storytelling through any other medium. My connection to reading and books began with my mother reading to me from an early age. I loved the Laura Ingalls Wild series, The Secret Garden, Charlotte's Web and many others. As I got older I remember perusing the aisles of my city library and finding new genres and stories to get lost in.”
My friend Nancy, who had Asian immigrant parents, said that she loved reading books that connected her to American culture. “My parents raised me, but I was also raised on the books I took out of the public library, dozens at a time. They were my entertainment, respite, escape, and glimpse into daily American life.”
My friend Kelsa, who just finished running her 17th marathon and has a great newsletter called Sit With It, said, “In college I had few belongings but my books were my prize possessions. I specifically remember packing and unpacking them with such care—from dorm room to dorm room, and apartment to apartment throughout those 4 years. They were my connection to something bigger than the small town from which I was trying to escape. They contained concepts, philosophies and ideas from minds that extended my limited worldview. The authors were my guides, mentors and peers that spoke in the same language that I spoke in, which didn’t seem to be spoken in everyday life by people that I knew. They eased my existential aloneness, because the authors confirmed there were others like me.”
Tovah said she loved going down memory lane and thinking about her first loves in fiction. “While my father was a university dean and my mother was an English teacher, they didn't push for my siblings and I to only read "properly." I devoured books such as Sweet Valley High (there were like a hundred of them at the time in my bookcase in my room!) and yet ironically, my favorite book of all time was a much more dense read of The Handmaid's Tale in AP English during high school. Being transported into the society that was being portrayed in that book, very well, may have lead me down the path of a curiosity into other cultures and ultimately majoring in Cultural Anthropology in college.”
Georgene tends to read more non-fiction but has gained a deeper love of fiction since joining our book club. “I would say that non-fiction is my way of understanding a bit more, one book at a time, what can seem to be an impossibly vast and complex universe/ world and so it’s about education, escape and knowledge. For fiction, I tend towards Chimamanda Adichie’s perspective that it’s one of the only realms/last frontiers of true freedom. You can be anyone and explore anything, in a way that isn’t always other possible outside fictional worlds. It creates empathy with people and situations (even monstrous ones) that would otherwise be inaccessible.”
Sam, who grew up in Zambia and South Africa, said, “I still love reading books written by African or Chinese authors and set in Africa or Hong Kong/ China because they take me back to those places and helped me to deeply understand the culture. I also enjoy reading books about the under-belly of the human experience that brooch taboo topics like, say, evil in children; topics that we don’t often talk about in a public setting.”
For me, books have always felt like friends and they’ve always been a comfort to me. One of my earliest memories is snuggling up on my couch and reading all afternoon. Reading on the beach. Reading on a hammock. Always reading. Books like Bridge to Terabithia or Where the Red Fern Grows stand out because they illustrated that you could move a person (a child!) to tears while writing, which struck me even at ten years old.
Today, I keep books all around my house because they feel like old friends and the characters and stories inside are a comfort. I look at the spines lining my dining room credenza or living room shelves or nightstand and I’m brought back to the people and places that delighted me or changed me. Books just may be the most eye-opening friend you’ll ever have.
What is your deepest connection to books? Please share.
Where the Red Fern Grows. One of my all time favorite books.
Another wonderful newsletter. I loved reading about these connections to books. I loved Bridge to Terabithia or Where the Red Fern Grows as well!