Another very early reader here. I can’t remember not being able to read. I know I was reading chapter books early in my school career as well. I also speed read and can finish a 300 pg book in about two hours or so.
My mom is a big reader and always has a book or two going. My dad is less so, but reads the paper daily and often a book on the weekends. My sister is not quite as voracious a reader as me, but does read pretty often. I read daily - usually a book a day, depending on what else I am doing. And I read almost anything, except fantasy/sci fi. I go through periods of great interest in a single subject or author and read everything I can find about that, then move on to others.
As a kid, I was another one always getting in trouble for reading ahead, for sneaking a book under the edge of my desk or inside my textbook, or for (gasp!) taking a book onto the playground.
My kids like to be read to, my son (4) more than my daughter (19 months). My son is picking out the odd word already and I am proud. He knows all his letters and can spell some words. They will both pick up books on their own and “read” for quite a while. I read to them every day, and they see me and their dad reading a lot, so I hope they develop a love of books and reading too!
I have always been addicted to reading. My parents read to me all the time when I was little, and I started learning to read by reading along with them. By the time I left kindergarten, I was reading at a 3rd grade level. I cannot remember a time since then that I have not been in the middle of reading a book or two (or ten).
I cannot function if I do not have a book with me. I’m going on a business trip in a few weeks, and I’ve already planned out what reading material to take with me. I even selected my PDA based on the availability of ebooks in the format it supports. “Syncs with Outlook – OK, but how many ebooks can I put on this thing?”
My hubbie, on the other hand, is not a big book reader. His parents never encouraged it, I think, and it’s just not something he has ever enjoyed. Neither of his brothers are readers, either. However, he does thoroughly devour magazines like Popular Science and whatever car magazine has caught his fancy lately.
hyperlexic checking in; i was reading seuss by about 2 and read “young adult” books before four. i am now 15.
i don’t actually read that fast, maybe five hundred pages in eight total hours spread over about three days, generally. it’s a good thing, too, that i don’t read so incredibly fast; i have pretty limited interests and i don’t want to read faster than my favorite authors can collectively produce.
i mostly stick with sci-fi/fantasy and john grisham. my mom is trying to get me to spread into more mystery, but it never really takes.
my 14 year old sister reads a great deal, but mostly just huge volumes of newsprint romance, and some of my fantasy books.
my 10 year old brother doesn’t really read much, but you know the seed is in there somewhere; he packed off all the harry potters in about a week. after Artemis Fowl he has taken to borrowing my Pratchetts at the rate of one every other week. he shall be assimilated!
I’m another born addict. Taught myself to read around four or five. I didn’t have a flashlight so I’d sneak out of bed and read by the nightlight. Boy did I get in trouble for that.
Both my parents were born readers too though and I did grow up surrounded by books so it seemed pretty natural. All my siblings read to one degree or another, some more than me and some less. But none of us can go for too long without reading something, even if it’s just an ingredient label.
saepiroth try Turow if you like Grisham, his work is similar, and IMO he produces a much better end product. Unfortunately you can probably go through everything he has written in a few weeks, tops.
I’m from a family of hyper-readers. Growing up, there wasn’t a room in the house that didn’t have at least a stack of books in it. During the summers my brothers and I would read whatever we could get our hands on. Histories, biographies and Sci-Fi were our favorites.
One summer it was the encyclopedias because we had read everything else in the house and the nearest library was 30 miles away and we had already finished our weekly checkouts. All three of us were reading at 6th grade levels in the first grade.
My kids, thank goodness, also love to read and like my Mom’s house, there are books all over the place in our home.
My Dad got me addicted by reading a couple of Nancy Drew books (the old ones with the blue covers) to me one chapter per night when I was a little kid and then telling me he was too busy to continue but I could read them myself if I wanted to.
First of all, I’d be interested if there were many posters who aren’t reading addicts, purely due to the nature of the medium.
I, too, was an early reader. Way before school, I learned to read through a combination of pestering my mother in car trips as to what certain signs said, and Sesame Street.
I learned early on in school that I could read when we were supposed to be doing homework, then put my book away and finish the assignment in time. I also pulled the stunt where you hide a fun book behind a text. Around 5th grade, my parents got wise to this and gave me the following punishment: they removed all the books from my room, boxed them up, and put them in the basement. They were trying to instill the habit of reading after you get your work done, so they got mad at me if I was reading on the bus home (because I’d be bringing the book home). I think it was a bit harsh and think of all the parents that would kill to have children pick up a book of their own volition.
I’m a very fast reader (just today I bought a 450+ page novel and finished it within 3 hours). The trouble is, a lot of the time I’m so eager to get the end that I stop paying attention and start skimming instead. As a result, I have a habit that is unnerving to some–frequently when I finish a book, I open it up and start from the beginning again.
Alas, college has changed a lot of this. Given all my studying, I have frequently turned to more mindless forms of entertainment. But as soon as exams are over, I start about 5 different books all at once.
Gramma was the town librarian. Dad read every book in the library at least once. If obsessive reading were a disorder, he had it.
As for me, I read everything I could get my hands on in elementary school. We had this reading program where there was a box with various levels in it (IIRC it was called SRA). Anywho, I would tear through the whole box in about a week. The teachers would use me as a tutor with the other kids. In fifth grade I was excused from class for a portion of the day to work in the school library.
But here’s the curious part…
Around about sixth grade, I stopped reading. You couldn’t make me read. I would ignore reading assignment in class and fake my way through. The teachers knew I was doing it and started to bust me but I just refused. This went on for a couple of years.
Then in my sophmore year of high school I picked up “The Martian Chronicles”, I devoured it. And I’ve been a reader ever since.
So, I guess my point is that it is possible a child can be a reader and then not a reader at different times, yah?
I always read. My parents told me that I taught myself how to read when I was 3, so I really can’t remember ever not knowing how.
When I was younger, my dad read to me all the time. (mostly Tolkein and books he liked, not kids’ books) I don’t think that had much of an effect on my love of reading. My siblings hate to read. They will if they have to, but neither of them like to just sit and read. I’ve noticed that my younger brother likes to have me read to him, so he just might not like having to sit still and focus.
I’ve noticed that some of the people I know that supposedly hate reading just don’t like reading novels. They like books of short stories better. So they don’t really hate reading, they just hate long, complicated books. Maybe those collections would be best to start out with for young non-readers.
jessica
I remember learning to read when I was about five years old (I have always had only a vague sense of time, so this could have been a bit earlier). I am a fairly avid reader (I had to stop myself from recommending several other authors to Saepiroth) but find as a father of two that I don’t find the time as much as I would like. My father is always reading something, my mother reads the newspaper and an occasional novel, but I wouldn’t categorise her as “avid”. My older brother is also an avid reader, but my younger brother and two younger sisters are not, as far as I know. I also vaguely recall my mother reading to us when we were young, but never my father. Since there were five of us, I can’t help but wonder if the ever growing number of children effectively phased out the being read to part of our childhood (the first four of us are each one year apart). I can’t imagine trying to read to a five, four, three and two year old simultaneously.
Mrs. ShibbOleth and I have both read to our two children since my daughter was about one year old. My son got younger collateral exposure at a younger age. They are both fascinated with books and stories, although it is still to early to tell if they will be avid readers, since neither is yet an efficient reader. They both do choose to be read to over TV or videos, however, so that is promising.
Also, in addition to reading we encourage both of them to create their own stories. If they want to hear a story from me I may require them to tell me one first, or trick them to tell me the story. For example:
She: I want to hear a story.
Me: What kind of story?
She: A story about a pony.
Me: What’s the pony’s name?
She: Angel.
Me: Where does the pony live?
She: In a castle by the edge of the forest.
etc
then: Once upon a time there was a magical pony named Angel who lived with her mother, father and little brother on the edge of an enchanted forest…
I taught myself to read when I was four. At the time my parents thought this unusual, but I’ve since met many people who learned to do that even earlier in age, so it’s not too remarkable really.
Anyway, even though I could read, and also was good at maths, I never really enjoyed it. So I didn’t get into reading hardly at all as a young-un. My creativity and imagination was spurred by drawing, usually.
At ten, I had a teacher who encouraged us to write stories of our own, and I really began to get excited about fantasy and science fiction ideas (or rather, use my imagination to concentrate on supernatural adventures). And after that, in High School, I realised that what I like to read is Fantasy, and at 15 I began to really start reading.
It’s been non-stop ever since, though it has slowed down now because I have other things to occupy my free time. Now I only read on the train or at lunch. I hardly ever read at home or in bed any more.
Another child of active readers. I started in the third grade in a significant way, then kicked it into overdrive in fifth and have rarely slowed since ( though that creeping addiction to computers games and the internet did make a dent ). Nothing unusual there, really.
But I did have a friend in High School, who had virtually zero interest in reading. He was perfectly adequate at it, but it just didn’t grab him. I believe he once told me ( and I give it full credence ) that the only book he read all the way through before he was 18, was Billy Martin’s biography . But his first year in college radically changed him into an intellectual of sorts and he became a dedicated reader. It was actually a rather startling transformation. So I guess at least a few people do get hooked late in life.
In day care, at age four, I would sit in the corner, near the bookcase, and read all afternoon. Teachers fussed over me because I didn’t play with the other kids. I just sat alone and read.
I don’t think I taught myself to read, but I don’t remember being taught. I do remember being fascinated by individual letters and numbers and punctuation marks, though. Font freak in the making, I suppose.
I am physically unable to pass a library or bookstore without going in.
I can barely remember a time when I couldn’t read. (Once when I was about 4 I asked my mother what one of the words on a sign was, because it was long and had a Z in it. The word was “Nazarene.”)
I just coasted through reading classes in elementary school, squirming in my seat for what seemed like hours as some kid took five minutes to read a single paragraph, stumbling over every word. (Switch to advanced classes? Ha! This was a fairly small private school; there was no tracking.)
And after school I’d read the World Book Encyclopedia (they only had the 1964 edition!) or the teacher’s edition of some textbook until my mother came to pick me up at 5:30.
The first adult novel I read was “The Glass Inferno” by Scortia and Robinson, at age 7!
During junior high and high school, I’d skip lunch every day and go to the school library instead. (The cafeteria never had empty tables, and I didn’t want to eat with strangers.)
I too taught myself how to read - part of the family legend (none of them readers in the sense that y’all are) has me, at the age of 3, in Daytona Beach constantly asking:
“H-O-T-E-L. What do dat spell?”
“M-C-D-O-N-A-L-D-S. What do dat spell?”
ad infinitum, in the manner of 3 year olds…
The first “adult” book I read was at the age of 6, Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. The first novel I read was in the second grade - 7 of them, actually as the book was a compilation of H.G. Wells’ science fiction novels. I used to get in trouble for bringing in outside reading material in school, and I calculated that, in 1977, I had over $100 of books “stolen” from me by my 5th grade teacher who thought that I was reading all these thick books just to make the other kids feel bad. :rolleyes: Idiot.
My wife is a reader, but only of non-fiction. When asked why she was an English major if she didn’t like to read fiction, she’ll get all defensive on your ass so don’t even try. Sophie (our yet unborn daughter) will have quite an array of books to choose from as our interests are very broad. I too will be one of those parents who will have no problem with their child tackling any book, on any subject, regardless of their age (because that’s what I did.) Hell, I read The Exorcist for the first time on an Easter Sunday!
But I sucked as a student, couldn’t be bothered to be taught stuff that I didn’t want to know - I figured I would learn it in my own sweet time, which is exactly what happened.
Do you keep an emergency book in your car, too? I have a couple that live on the floor of my back seat. And here I thought I was the only person who carefully considered what books to take on a trip! I’ve been plotting what books to take with me on a trip I’m taking in a couple of weeks. I don’t know how much time I’ll have for reading while I’m there, but I’ll require at least an hour or so a day to recharge, so I need to take two or three.
One of the ways I’ve been saving money for this trip is…get ready…sit down…not buying books. I haven’t been to a bookstore in nearly a month. Aaaaugh! It’s not like I don’t have plenty to read around here, but I want a new book or six or eight, you all know how it is. But I’ve saved so much money, it’s scary!
One of my older brothers is like this. He was the only non-reader in the family, including my parents and my other two brothers. After college, he became more of a reader, but only if there is nothing else to do, and then he reads short stories/essays. He says this is because he can finish one story, put the book down and not come back for months.
My other two brothers were both readers at one point in their lives, but the impression I get from them is that they don’t read nearly so much anymore.
Mom reads, but only just before bed, normally. Dad and I both have books around constantly, and it’s almost anything. I have always been like this. When mom would try to punish me by not letting me read, I’d go hide in the bathroom until she asked me if I was having trouble. Weekends, I’d wake up early and read for a couple of hours. It was constant, and it still is, though real life tends to interfere at times.
I was a reader. Big brother wasn’t but is now at age 50. His wife is a reader, eldest daughter a book a day reader, second eldest has some focus problems but reads Harry Potter and car magazines, eldest son has focus problems but loves Harry Potter, and youngest son reads a lot. Second big brother read some for pleasure but not a reader.
My wife never reads, but on occaison will pick up a Chinese historical classic novel or a Jin Yong novel, and read the 3,000 pages (three thousand, not a typo) almost straight through. It’s like watching an addict. Strange.
I put my love of reading as why I was able to learn Chinese. Learning the characters and everything was a lot like reading. It’s a good thing 'cause it took me at least 8 hours a day for years to get proficient.
I read my daughter Kim by Rudyard Kipling starting her first day on planet earth. At around 4 months, we got a shipment of books in from my brother, including Dr. Suess’ Hop on Pop. From that point on she has liked books. I think she’ll be a reader.
). Nothing unusual there, really.
. But his first year in college radically changed him into an intellectual of sorts and he became a dedicated reader. It was actually a rather startling transformation. So I guess at least a few people do get hooked late in life.