
I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth. —Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
I was maybe nine years old. We had a relatively large public library downtown, and as homeschoolers, we’d often go during the day when no one was there. My mom had to keep her eyes on my sisters, one of whom was a toddler, so I was given free reign to explore the shelves. One day, I discovered books on the Holocaust in the juvenile nonfiction section. At this point I think I had read Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, and possibly The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, so I knew that during World War II, Jewish people had been in danger and other people potentially got in trouble for trying to protect them. I flipped through one or two of the nonfiction books and saw a picture of an emaciated concentration camp survivor. I realized I had a lot to learn and began to make a stack.
I had my own library card, so when it was time to go, I took my stack of at least a dozen Holocaust-related books up to the counter and pushed it toward the librarian. My mom was standing behind me with my sisters. The librarian’s eyes grew wide as she looked at the titles, glanced at me, and looked back at the books. She looked at my mom and asked her if she was alright with me checking out “so many books” (“on this topic?” I think she wanted to add). My mom, who had seen clearly what I had chosen, glanced at me and then nodded at the librarian.
That was my first true deep dive, and the first time I realized that books had so much information. There was so much to learn, and in those days, books were the only place a nine-year-old without the Internet could learn anything new.
One of the churches we went to when I was 11 or 12 had its own library. It did not contain only Christian books, although it did contain the entire Left Behind series, which I devoured, leading to anxieties that I will share another day. I read anything and everything. I’m sure if I had come home from the library with a Danielle Steele novel my mom would have intervened, but for the most part I was allowed to read anything. This was somewhat ironic, as my television and movie viewing was highly restricted as a child. (I was also not allowed to read the Harry Potter books, but my mom eventually came around on those.)
As I got older, I enjoyed most of the reading I had to do for school, but like many young adults, when I went to college, my reading appetite declined. There was not only a lot of schoolwork to do, but there was a lot of life to live. Then, after college, there was work, and getting married, and having two little boys very close together, and my husband was in seminary and I was basically a single parent, and I was so, so tired. (I did read the whole Harry Potter series in my first year of marriage because my husband brought into our new home his entire 7-volume set.)
I also discovered Stephen King’s books when I got married. I had always assumed they were scary, and I assumed I would not like scary books. (Inexplicably, I suppose I did not consider photographs of concentration camp survivors scary.) My husband suggested I read some of the less-scary King books, like The Green Mile, and I was hooked. I moved on to The Stand. I realized I liked scary books, and I liked books where the world had experienced an apocalyptic event and everyone was going to have to fend for themselves. (Just wait until later in my 20s when I discovered zombies!)
So I did read some here and there in my 20s, but it was in 2017 that my reading life really took off. I had just had our third child, our daughter, Zoe. The older boys were 6 and 7. On paper this would not have been a season to read more. But Zoe was very fussy in the evenings as an infant, and the only way I could settle her was to sit in her dark room and rock her. I would sometimes do this for hours. I had never thought I would enjoy an audiobook, but I was desperate for some kind of stimulation during those long hours, so I found a pair of wired headphones and checked out Anna Karenina on Libby, the library’s app for audiobooks and ebooks.
When I think of Anna Karenina, I think of the shelves in my daughter’s room, casting an odd shadow by the light of the moon peeking in above her blackout shades. I think of trying to get the headphones untangled from her before I placed her in her crib at night.
Much like finding the nonfiction books on the Holocaust, this was transformative.
After that audiobook, I revisited Anne of Green Gables, which I had loved as a child. I then listened to the rest of the books in the series.
As I listened more, I realized I could listen not just when I was rocking Zoe to sleep, but also when we went for walks. When I walked the dog. While I was folding laundry. While I was making dinner. The possibilities were endless, and my reading began to increase.
The following winter, I lamented to my husband that I didn’t really have any hobbies.
“I think reading is your hobby,” he said.
“Huh,” I replied.
Reading had never felt like a hobby. As a child, it had felt more like breathing, like an extension of myself. I would wake up on Saturdays knowing I was supposed to get up and do chores, but I would delay breakfast and the bathroom, because if I stayed in my room my parents would think I was still asleep. And I would read until I was found out.
Could reading be my grown-up hobby? I rolled the idea around in my head, considered it. I didn’t have a firm definition of a hobby, and it seemed like a relatively boring hobby, but I decided to commit to it. Reading would be my hobby.
At the end of 2017, my daughter was 8 months old, and I had read 77 books.
In 2018, I read 84 books.
In 2019, I read 181 books.
And in 2020, the year I had another baby, who was 9 months old at year’s end, I read 192 books.
The following year, I read 200.
I then read 90 books in 2022, 103 books in 2023, and 130 books in 2024.
I love reading. I am part of “the clan of the book, who read not to judge the reading of others but to take the measure of ourselves.”1
I don’t read to feel superior over others. I read because I love to read.
The words and sentences and paragraphs of these hundreds and hundreds of books are part of me. I don’t remember all of them, of course, but I have been changed not only by what the books say but also by the act of reading. If it’s true that the medium is the message, then the message is that it’s good to have our minds challenged and stretched. It’s good to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s good to think about things you’ve never thought about before. There is nothing like reading something in a book, being struck by it, then having to pause and go back and read it again. And then putting the book in your lap while you stare straight ahead and try to process what you just read.
I have as many memories of books as I do of real-life people.
I cried in Starbucks while finishing The Dearly Beloved.
I sat in my car in my driveway and wept as I got home right at the end of the audiobook of Beth Moore’s All My Knotted-Up Life.
The soundtrack for attempting to sleep train my youngest was Alex Haley’s Roots.
I remember walking the streets of our neighborhood in South Carolina pushing a stroller, with All the Light We Cannot See playing in my headphones.
Last summer I read Sally Hepworth’s The Good Sister straight through in one sitting on the beach in New Jersey, and how I felt when I closed the book was what I have to imagine being high on drugs is like.
Stephen King’s Under the Dome was my companion the season our oldest played Pop Warner football and I had to sit on the field for hours at a time.
If you think you don’t like to read, or if you have gotten out of the habit, I hope you have your own (perhaps less disturbing) discovery of the Holocaust books on the nonfiction shelves. I hope no one ever gatekeeps what you read. I hope you find a genre or category of books that makes you want to keep coming back for more. I hope one day you can read a whole book in one sitting. I hope someone else mentions a book they loved in conversation, and you can say, “Me too!” I hope, if you haven’t already, that you fall in love with reading, too.
And remember I’m always thrilled to offer book recommendations! Just leave a comment or reply to this email.
Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life
Great post. Reading is definitely a hobby! I don't read as much as I'd like to but I get so excited to find words beautifully painted in combinations I had never seen before. Historical fiction is my jam but it also might be my hindrance as I never really look for anything other than that... I'm a huge fan of civil war era books and I put my hands on just about anything that reminds me of Little House on the Prairie.