Reading & Still Wanting to Fly

Every time I give myself & my budget the luxury of visiting a bookstore, I take me leisure, buy a coffee & browse.

Most people who know me have heard the story of how my father taught me to add, subtract, multiply & divide before I could read.  

And that at age 7, I read Jane Eyre for the first time.  From a lovely volume my father’s mother gave me.  

All those years ago, even in an accelerated curriculum, there was not much between Dick & Jane & the classics.  There was, of course All of a Kind Family, & the Little House series & Nancy Drew  & the Hardy Boys & Beverly Cleary & all the condensed classics my mother provided with our subscription to Reader’s Digest Condensed Classic series.

My mother always took us to the library – one did not browse bookstores in those days.  So, when I liked a condensed version of a classic, we checked it out of the library.

It is a different reading world than those days at the library – a world technology is changing as I write.

But I still go to the bookstore, take my leisure, buy a coffee & browse.

It depresses me that there is no longer a Women’s Studies section in my favorite bookstore.  I used to enjoy pulling Camille Paglia’s books off the shelf & refiling them under fiction. 

 

I got caught once, hiding the volumes in my son Sam’s stroller.  When the store’s staff member confronted me, I simply smiled & said, “But I am certain you meant to file her in the fiction section.”

Several years ago, I read an article about banned books in schools.  One was “The Higher Power of Lucky” by Susan Patron.  It is a Newberry Medal winner.

The objection was to an observation by the title character, Lucky, about a dog, using the word “scrotum.”

I immediately ordered it & reading it, I wished Susan Patron had been old enough to write when I was 11 & when the book ended, I grieved.  

And then began my search for more novels aimed at people who needed to move beyond what was offered in public schools but who were not quite ready for “Anna Karenina”.

The Harry Potter series was already a part of my life & my library.  I rank it right up there with “Lord of the Rings” – high praise indeed.

My exploration into the genre between the beginnings of reading & middle school have led me to moments of immense wonder.

This morning I read “The Girl Who Could Fly” by Victoria Forester.

And I, who no longer fly except in the childhood of my dreams.  I, who longs for the ability to soar unafraid, soared as I read this novel.

I am thinking about trying to fly again.