Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts

Monday

"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Childhood reading

The prompt for the week is:    
Childhood reading
The Brief:
  • Did you read as a child?
  • Did you experience the wonder of bedtime stories?
  • Favourite books
  • Did your childhood reading influence you?
  • Special moments and memories
I cannot remember being read to as a child. I can remember going to the library in Kindergarten and having them read to us. In the next grade we still did that but we could get some books to take home to read or have read to us. I always took them home to read or even just sit there looking at the pretty pictures.

I still remember the years one of my teachers would read to us from the series "Little House on the Prairie" and loved how it took you through another person's life. I couldn't believe all that information was in this tiny book.

The Library in Walden, NY
By the time I was in about the 2-3 grade, I found libraries. I found I could go there and read a book and be taken anywhere in my imagination. I started to read anything I could get my hands on, so I could read or try to. I say try to because they found when I was in grade 1, I had a learning disability where I had a hard time comprehending what I was reading. Was I reading? Yes, but understanding what you are reading and reading are two different things. Because of this, I was kept back in the first grade and then after this grade kept in the lower graded bracket of classes because of the problem. However, by the time I reached grade 8, I found young adult romance books.

Over the years, I did try and get my nieces and nephews interested in reading. With my nieces, they seemed to get into it a little bit but I put it down to still trying to find the genre they liked. They now love reading and have passed that along to their children. My nephews, they never took to the reading thing as far as I know. I know their mother, Jean, wasn't big into reading and thought it was a waste of time. I have lost contact with those nephews, so I have no idea if they ever took up reading at all.

The you adult books were great because they almost always had a happy ending and I was taken from my not so happy home to places where people did have other problems but they didn't seem as bad as mine and most of the time by the end of the book, they had happy endings. It really took the focus off of my own life and put it some place more optimistic.

By the time I was in high school, I had moved on to reading adult romance novels. I started reading Harlequin Romances and found they were interesting. However, after this some of the other lines from the same company came out and they were more expressive on the sex part and less on the romance and relationship part. Even today, I bounce between different lines. I do both electronic books (iTunes, ibooks, harlequin app, and amazon) and paperbacks but in the last 8 or so years mainly stick with the electronic books due to paperbacks taking up most of the house. In fact today, I still find them in suitcases, closets and nightstands I haven't looked into for awhile.
One thing I am sure of is I'm glad I can read in any language as my grandmother and great grandmother's could not for either most or part of their lives. They missed out on taking adventures or catching up with news because they could not read.


  Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.    

Friday

"The Book of Me, Written by You" - Hobbies & Collections

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations.
This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf
This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf
The prompt for the week is:   

Childhood Hobbies & Collections
 The Brief:
  • Did you share a "passion" with a family member or friend?
  • Tell us about it - How, why, where
  • Do you still have any old hobbies - the ones that have been with you since childhood?
  • Do you still have those childhood collections?
 I had many hobbies and collections growing up. Both of which has stayed with me in some respect throughout my life up until now. Sometimes there was a break from doing them, but I've always gone back to what I like and love to do.

Hobbies
I had many of these growing up. This was always a challenge because we never had any extra money really laying around, so you had to be creative and think a bit out of the box.

TV - I loved my television. From Soaps (Ryan's Hope - how many remember that one!) to the "newest" TV shows (like Buck Rogers, Mork & Mindy) to sports (Got to love the Yankees!) I just loved it. I was always entertained and later intrigued by how they could tell stories from different angles and make them seem soo real and believable. During summer, the Yankees were the one think I looked forward to watching no matter what.

Dogs and Puppies - I've always loved pets. Over the years we've had many different types of dogs, many stray cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, and many gold fish that never seemed to last long. However, it was a common theme to always have some type of pet running around. The only time I hadn't had a pet was when we moved during my senior year of high school until I moved out and got married (about 5-6 years) and that was only due to where we lived wouldn't allow us to have pets. In fact, when we moved into the apartment, we had to give the 2 pekinese dogs we had up which was really sad. Since I married, we had dogs once we moved into our own house.

My library card from elementary school and a reading award
Reading - Reading I've done since I could string sentences together. In fact, I used to help out at the library in elementary school. Most kids wanted to go outside and run around and,I wanted, and usually asked, to go to the library. You know its a sad day when in 5th grade my homeroom was across the hall from the library and I was excited about it because it wasn't very far to the library. Everyone else was complaining because of the stairs. In fact, once I read just about every book at the elementary school, I took up going to the local library and checking books out from there. I went there almost every day after school just to sit and read.

The local public library where I grew up
Throughout the years, I've read many types of stories - from Planet of the Apes (now that's one think and heavy book!) to romances and sci fi. In fact, during the early part of the 2000's, I used to do book
reviews for Harlequin Mills & Boon here in Australia. It was great because I got to read books before the hit the shelves and was able to give great feedback on them. It helped the hip pocket because by this time I was buying my books.

In fact, in the past 10 or so years, I've been tossing up if I should try and write my own book, but for now its just that - a passing thought.

Running - When I was in elementary school, I lived at the edge of town and would walk to school. One day I took up jogging and then followed that up by running. It was great and I loved to do it because it cleaned out the head and actually made me relax. First, I started to help out more with family and then I hurt my back and it hurt to run, so I stopped. However, this brought me to my next hobby - Bike Riding.
One of my results of running growing up

Bike Riding - I took this up more once I realized it didn't hurt my back as much as running did. I did have a bike but if I had to choose I'd choose running over using a bike. However, that was taken from me, so I rode my bike. In fact, it was great because I liked it and I could get over to help out with family (as we now lived in town but they lived out of town - around in farm fields back then) and I could take my bike (a ten speed) and ride it over to help out.

Swimming - I learned how to swim by going to the local pond and watching others and then going to the library and reading about it. Then by the time summer came, I knew how to swim and I wouldn't feel left out of being able to do what the other kids my age did. It worked and it didn't cost anything which was even better.

Collections

Baseball Cards -  When I got to the 4th grade, one of the teachers shared with us baseball cards. I never knew about them and they intrigued me with all the information that was contained on them. Once that happened, I started to save some but as this cost money we just didn't have, I had to be careful on what I could afford to buy. Because of this, my collection never got big but I do still have some of these cards. They are in our our garage some place.

Stamp collection - Stamps didn't cost too much, but I would get books out of the library and read all about them. Because of this I did collect some and I just went around asking people to save the stamps. After awhile I realized those stamps didn't actually contain much money in saving, so I stopped. However, during my teens when I started to work, I did join a stamp collection group at the US Postal Service. I still have these today and my husband complains because they are so odd shaped they are hard to put in the book cases.
Some of my stamp collection

My 14K gold Elvis stamp from my dozen or so 14k stamps
As I grew up, I developed more hobbies like picture taking, baking, cooking and driving - just to name a few! 


Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.