Carla's Book Crush

I’m not sure when it all started. This knowledge that reading can transport you to places unknown. Move your soul. Make you laugh, cry, or even terrify you. Perhaps it was from a shitty schoolhouse rock type advertisement during my cartoons. I just dated myself. Or maybe it was when I picked up my first book. But I don’t remember what that was. I do have a deep-seated love for One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish so that might have been it. At this point, I don’t really know. It’s just something that’s true.

The Early Reading Years

I remember going to the library at Coleman Elementary. The bookshelves were a light tan color and the section in the middle of the room was my favorite. There you would find all of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries. All blue and lined up perfectly. Even back then they smelled old and musty. I had a secret book challenge where I was going to read them all before I went into 7^th grade and was no longer at that school. The only issue was the check-out limit at the school library. I could read way more books than what you were allowed to checkout.

There were also the Judy Blume books I picked up along the way. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Blubber. And then, even though I was way too young to read it, Wifey. Just a note to parents out there. If you and your children have a favorite author that writes across ages, please make sure to lock up the adult version. Or better yet, read it while they are in school. But still, read it in your car while eating McDonald’s and then donate it to a book store as soon as you’re done. Or give it to some other mother to read. Just give her a warning about the do’s and don’ts of reading the book. And don’t get a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. You’ll surely get busted when they see the toy in the car.

Oh, and the romance novels when I was a preteen and teen. P.S. I Love You sticks out as a favorite. I think I read that one a couple of times. Really anything from the Sweet Dreams series. I should read them again and see if there’s a glimpse into my current love for romance.

The Impact of Stephen King

Somewhere along the way, Stephen King, made his way into my life. I want to say middle school but it may have been high school. I really loved Stephen King and devoured anything he wrote. Until I couldn’t. Once, my sister and I were sharing a room in our home. This was a single wide trailer and we had a bedroom in the back with two closets. Between the two closets was a little piece of wood (probably plywood) that served as a little vanity. She had one closet and I had the other. For the record, we could have each had our own room but for whatever reason we sometimes chose to share a room at that time. Even though she is almost five years younger than me and got into my stuff. I digress. I was reading Night Shift, one of King’s short story books for those of you who don’t read his books. Or are older than me. Or both. I’m not sure which story it was but it scared the hell out of me. Not just an “oh, this is scary” kind of thing but terrified out of your mind, pray to God, and sleep with a flashlight scared. I threw the book into the back of my closet and never touched it again. I was even afraid to open that side of the closet. “I had to reach into the closet blindly and pull my clothes out because I couldn’t bring myself to open that side of the door. That trailer is probably smashed into pieces, sitting in a dump somewhere, with a copy of Night Shift precariously sitting at the top. Mocking, taunting, trying to lure the next unsuspecting reader into opening the pages so it can take over their mind and turn them into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife. That’s what happens when you let evil enter your mind. Or something like that.

There was a brief period in high school when I was obsessed with true stories. I even wrote a compare-and-contrast thesis for my psychology class on The Minds of Billy Milligan vs. Sybil. I got an A on the paper. Of course, the teacher was probably too terrified to give me anything else — nobody else in the class did anything so disturbing. It might also explain why, when I was his teacher’s aide the following year, he had me do about 15 minutes of work and then let me leave school for the rest of the day.

When Kids Interrupt Reading

Then I start getting into my 20s and I have small children. This is a time when most mom’s would be like, “I don’t have enough time to read.” Not me. Take small children to a place with a ball pit, stick them in said ball pit, read with one eye and watch children with the other. Problem solved. I don’t recall any specific books during that time period. I’m very much a mood reader so it might have been anything from non-fiction to thriller to romance. No horror though. That stopped when Stephen King got chucked to the back of a closet. I do, however, recall some of the interruptions I received. There was the time at Six Flags that my daughter got “hit by the brown boy.” My pathetic and inappropriate attempt to raise children who are not racist by totally ignoring the color of people’s skin. I did not know much in the early 90s. Or the time that my daughter fell down at some indoor ball pit owned by a STL area athlete and cut her chin so deep I had to take her to the emergency room and get her stitched up. While we were there my son, who was about four at the time, opened up the heavy hospital bathroom door and it slammed on his finger cutting the entire tip off and making my daughters chin cut seem inconsequential.

Self-Help

In my late twenties and through my thirties, I probably read more self-help books than anything else. They did not help. If they had, I’d be twenty pounds lighter and have no self-esteem issues. Here’s a tip: save the self-help book money for an actual therapist—it’ll pay off better in the long run.

Now, I read a little bit of everything. Okay, a lot of romance, and a little bit of everything else—cookbooks, self-help (still not helping), thrillers — whatever I’m in the mood for. Still no Stephen King. Everyone has to draw the line somewhere.

Tell me about one of your reading memories.