Yujin: Reading in my childhood

 

In my house there would be books stacked up high on the tables, and if there was no more room, books would be put on the floor waiting to be read. There are a variety of books in the stacks ranging  from mystery, thriller, Sci-Fi, romance, contemporary to self-help, cooking, and motivational books. I grew up surrounded by books. My father would read one to me before bed when I was beginning to learn how to read. When I knew how to read while also being responsible for myself, my father bought me an E-book reader, so that I would not have to carry heavy books around. Although I have been  surrounded by books since childhood, one type of genre which I have always given the most attention to is fiction. It is the genre that builds worlds, characters, and stories that shaped my childhood.

When I was a child, my father introduced me to many books. Some of them were Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Secret Garden, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, to name a few. However, one of the books recommended by my father that made an impression on me was named James and The Giant Peach. Reading the book was a weird and bizarre experience. Although I would feel sick from time to time reading the book when James had to eat a piece of the peach every day, I would still picture myself as James. I remembered being almost jealous of James, making friends with bugs inside a giant peach, while the peach would roll to a new place that James would get to explore and make money from exhibiting his giant peach. Ever since then in my childhood I began to indulge in the world of Roald Dahl, reading almost all of his children’s books. While I read his books, I found that a general theme of the plot was the battling between good and bad, while this is a common theme in many children books, one thing from his books which is uncommon in children literature is a dark sense of humor woven into the texts. I sometimes wonder if I have gotten a somewhat dark sense of humor because of him.

While growing up from childhood, another book that I loved and still love is Narnia. This was where my thoughts of reality were blown away, and fantasy became reality instead. The characters, plot, and world-building were more complex than in Roald Dahl’s children’s books, submerging me even more into the series. Of course, my favorite book in the chronicles was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I was fascinated by the portal in the back of the wardrobe with the fur coats hanging in front of it, imagining how it would feel, to suddenly walk through a portal to a cold and snowy landscape, after being bundled in the warmth of the soft coats. One of the characters in the book that I have a burning memory of  is Edmund. Not only was he greedy for more Turkish Delights and power, he was especially deceptive and lied countless times to his siblings. I have one brother, so I always felt some kind of hatred or annoyance towards Edmund.  I also wondered what it must have felt to have grown into adulthood in Narnia, then coming back to the real world only to find that not even a second has passed, which was what the children went through at the end of the book. In one aspect, Narnia made me find out that not everyone is trustworthy, or even friendworthy. 

These books, including a number of others, have shaped me into who I am; although, I must say some books were a disappointment. Nevertheless, I still think that fiction and fantasy is a genre that brings imagination and excitement to the most boring places or minds, and it has always helped me to escape from an uneventful world over and over again on a daily basis.