The Advantages of Reading

I started reading on my own quite early, I cannot pinpoint the exact time now. But my mother was a school teacher, and drilled us on our reading once we could speak clearly. That was when I was too young for formal after school-lessons that were common in my city in those days. We would come back, have lunch and then be forced to get into bed for an afternoon nap. I must have been in grade two or three at that time, so maybe seven years or so. I wasn’t in the mood for siesta most times, but though I did sleep, what was more likely was that I smuggled a book with me.

I have to confess that for me there’s just something about books and the written word as a means to take me outside myself while still remaining very personal. The writer takes me to a new place, either physically or emotionally and plumbs my depths. I was a quiet child and even when surrounded by my siblings and other people, I would often find myself lost in my own thoughts. I loved daydreaming and the books I read were like the epitome of this fantasizing. It’s like an imagination that came true because it’s been written down. It became so easy to travel to distant, sometimes imaginary lands, meet new people, and experience new cultures.

And so in this way, books became my ticket to escape. The best part about books was that I got to allow my imagination free rein and put the pictures to those words myself. I should explain that I don’t remember my parents buying a lot of fiction for us back then, except you count the books required for school, including the primary readers and story books including ‘Eze goes to school’ and the rest. However, I seemed to manufacture a steady supply from my classmates. It started with the Ladybird fairytales, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and all the other princesses. I also read the Brothers Grimm and some other fable compilations.

There were also the mysterious cartons my parents had scattered across the house. They were from the time before we children came on the scene, and they started off life taped off or simply out of bounds. With time, the cardboard wore down or cockroaches ate through them and in some cases, my parents wanted to take something out. However it happened, the contents of the boxes became accessible. In them were music books, DRUM magazines, some old women’s glossies, my father’s esoteric books and some novels including James Hadley Chase and Nick Carter. I got through all of them before I entered secondary school. Yeah, I’ve always been precocious for my age, at least when it came to reading.