The First “Real Book” You Ever Read thread got me to thinking that I may have been much more attuned to radio for early entertainment and information than I was to books. We didn’t have TV until I was in my teens, so it’s pretty much a choice of books, movies, radio and gossip for me.
I think that using my ears for most of the input that I really scrutinized (to whatever degree I really did scrutinize it) may help account for why I pay more attention to what I hear on the radio than to what I see on TV or read in books.
In your own case, do you see a similar correlation between your own early exposure to information and how you receive new information today?
In the '50s, when I was a kid, my parents bought me a set of World Book Encyclopedias (I still have them). Since I always suffered from insomnia, I’d stay up all night reading them. I learned some pretty amazing things that I surely wouldn’t have known otherwise.
We had this huge kid’s dictionary, I can still remember the tweedy-looking cover art with each letter a different design. Somehow or another I learned to read early-ish and stole the dictionary away from the older sibs. I remember poring through that thing for hours, just being fascinated looking up words and feeling all smart if I knew a big word my siblings didn’t.
We also had an ancient set of encyclopedias, but they weren’t very accessible, written for adults to read, so I’d get interested in something and go between the books for hours trying to understand it.
Every time I think that every possible interesting topic has come up on the SDMB, I see something like this and think “wow, that’s an interesting new question that I’ve never thought about before.”
My father had a set of books that he got from his parents, they seemed like a sort of “book of the month” club type series about general science, from the 1920s. As soon as I learned to read, I always went back to the volume on “Animals of Africa,” because it had a lot of neat photographs of animals. The books were for adults, so the other topics were a little beyond me, but hey, animals are always good. The information was presented more or less as a series of facts – when the animal was discovered (ha, of course it never struck me that this meant “discovered by Europeans” until much later in life), how large the animal was, what the animal ate, etc etc.
This is still how I like my information today. I like to get all the facts lined up first, and once I feel I have a handle on them, then I like to put everything in context and build up to the big picture. In school, information was often presented in a way that felt backwards to me – sort of general, sweeping information at first, and only later did you get to drill down to real specific facts. I never connected this to “Animals of Africa” before, but I honestly think I chose my major in college (art history) because it was the one department that started with a million facts to be memorized.
The Lincoln Library of Essential Information. It was like a giant almanac. Maybe 6 inches thick. I doubt that my parents read it, but I sure did. Wozzer. What a treat for a 6-10 year old. And I had tv from the age of 4, but tv wasn’t the real world in the 1950’s.
This is the biggest compliment I could ever hope to get here at The Dope. Thanks.
Your description of the way you like to get exposed to new things is a pretty close match to my own. On the other hand, I do subscribe to the
Tell 'em what you’re going to tell 'em
Tell 'em
Tell 'em what you told 'em
school of exposition when the information is either complex or easily memorized. (I realize those things are at opposite ends of the spectrum.)
It’s annoying to have someone revealing a fact or two and then trying to persuade you how to interpret that fact. News coverage of something like the State of the Union is a perfect example. It’s like if you watched the thing and are too dim to form your own opinion of what was said, why does this nitwit think you’ll accept his (or her) version any quicker?
I could rant a while on the issue, but you’ve done a better job than I could.
I was about three or four years old, and my father told me I should take a look at his atlas - I don’t remember what it was called, but it was a gigantic, heavy, brown and gold beast. I opened it up, and came to my own realisation, without anyone telling me, that I was looking at the world, the whole world, and it was pretty darn big. I ran my fingers over the bumps that were mountains, I carefully studied all the little charts. But what amazed me the most, the thing that made me lift the heavy thing and bring it to my father to ask if it was true, was the giant section on the solar system. It blew my mind. The book was the first thing that made me aware of it, outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I thought space was a fairy tale until then.
So, technically, my father had a hand in it, but I “got” most of it without him. And it shook my whole, tiny world. There was more to life than my backyard and trips to grandma’s.
I learned to read very quickly, battling against dyslexia, specifically so I could learn more about what I was seeing/reading in this atlas. I remember being so determined to read so I could go to libraries as soon as possible. All because of an atlas.
We had an old edition of the great big World Book encyclopedia and I think a kid’s sort of version, too. I remember being very impressed by those mutli-page translucent diagrams that overlapped of bodily systems and things. I still remember the first paintings I ever saw reproduced all tiny in there-- Winslow Homer and Eakins and mostly all these American painters my work has so little to do with now. I think the first painting I can recall, or one that really struck me, was Bellow’s “Stag at Sharkey’s”.
Heh, I also remember the first book I got at a library, when my dad took me when I was about 5. It was a colorful book on fungi. I loved that book so much-- I was all about fungi for a while.
When I was very young, I was far more interested in reading stories and playing with my toys than in learning stuff. If my parents didn’t know something, they would refer me to an encyclopedia. I didn’t really start learning on my own until I discovered that facts aren’t as interesting as the opinions based on them.
Then I discovered the library computer system. I would check out five or six books on a subject, looking for something unique from each author but also seeing what they had in common.
That’s pretty much how I absorb information now, only I read more online articles than hard copy.
I’ve been told that I was easily entertained by picture books and I think that that translates into my obsession with color.
But the first substantial information that I got other than from my parents was from a floor model radio (which is still within a few feet of me as I type). Before I could read, I sat in the floor playing with toys and listening to the radio. Arthur Godfrey’s show was a link to the world. And I remember Art Linkletter’s Houseparty, but I’m not sure how old I was for that one.
I think that my perceptions were a little twisted by spending hours listening to soap operas. That was my impression of the real world out there! Yikes!