Readership Up

I can remember when I first realized I liked reading.


I was one of those people who read because I was forced to for English class. I remember reading Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and of course the Odyssey. Some I liked and some I didn’t care for. I wish I could tell you reading all that classic literature prompted me to become an avid reader but regrettably it did not.

So what then prompted by lush desire for reading? I was sitting in my high school library working on an awful project about Albert Camus and the rise of existentialism in The Stranger when I suddenly realized I didn’t really like the book or Camus very much. I randomly started wandering the library. I arrived in the fiction section where I went to the first part of the alphabet my eyes resting on Richard Adams’ Watership Down. I read the back cover of the book, bunnies huh? Still it did seem slightly interesting and certainly better than The Stranger. So I checked it out.

I went home later that evening on the bus where I fished the book out of my bag. I started reading and was 3 chapters in before I got off the bus. I can scarcely remember eating dinner such was the pull of these rabbits plight. Before I knew it, it was time to hit the sheets for the evening. I had worked my way through just over half the book and my desire was to stay up and finish it but I knew the practicality of that was not good, so I let it go for the evening.

I’m pretty sure I dreamed of the black river. (A highway to the poor rabbits, a river some didn’t make it across) I don’t know if I actually was a rabbit or not but I knew what it felt like I guess.

When I awoke the next morning I really didn’t want to go to school. I just wanted to read the book. I knew the trouble that awaited me for skipping so I trudged off. The bus ride again allowed me to reacquaint myself with my rabbit friends. I don’t recall much of school that day until lunchtime where I again started reading. Looking back I must have seemed quite the nerd, sitting on the wall reading a book with a fluffy white bunny on the cover but then I honestly didn’t care.

It was at this ill-fated lunch that things took a turn for the worse. One of my bunny friends died. I was crestfallen. I loved the character of that bunny so much that it was like Richard Adams reached through the book and slapped me in the face. The lunch ending bell was ringing and my eyes were watering from the loss. I had to lumber off to English class. It was there I received more bad news my report about Camus was due by the end of the week. It was loss heaped on loss. How could I go back to the morbid depression of The Stranger when I had the morbid depression of Watership Down to finish?

Well I’d love to tell you I returned to Camus and aced that paper but that would be a lie. I finished Watership Down; it was an amazing book (and still is) and left me hungry to read more. In the subsequent weeks, I finished Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lord of the Rings, and the Chronicles of Narnia. Notice anything missing from that list?

I got a 75(D) on my Stranger report but I was okay with that.