I used to NEVER read. It’s always been my worst subject. I remember being in the 4th grade and taking one of those state tests and one of the questions required us to read three paragraphs given and then answer questions about them. The first question asked provided a quote from the paragraphs and then asked “who said this?” The three paragraphs included a short conversation within it but I was too busy paying attention to the other details of the story, knowing I was being tested on it, and I couldn’t remember who said what. I remember rereading the part where the quote was and I was still at a loss for the answer. I narrowed the question down to a choice of two but when I circled my final answer, deep down I had no idea what the right answer could have been.
Even in high school I refused to read. I would ask my friends or get on spark notes to look up answers to questions from the readings. I guess back then I did alright at faking my way through it because the teachers always gave me alright grades, but I’m not going to try to deceive anyone I didn’t get good grades from doing this either. The part of this equation that makes my literature background so puzzling is that I’ve always done very well in writing. When I took my college placement test right out of high school, the counselor was baffled when looking at my scores. To tell you the truth he wanted me to take the test again. He said to me “This just can’t be right, your scores suggest that you are at a second year college level but your reading scores are of an elementary sixth grader.” I knew they were right, so I didn’t retake the test. Instead I got interested in my college classes which forced me to become a better reader.
Truth be told, the first story I ever read all the way through was The Catcher in The Rye. I read this book when I was a sophomore in high school. Not because I had to (I’ve never been good at conforming) but because it was a book that was talked about and I wanted to know why. So I read it and was enlightened to find it’s about many things, the one that I thought most interesting was the loss and protection of a child’s innocents. My mom the other day asked me if I had read that book and I told her I had. She said “it’s about a homosexual guy isn’t it?” My mouth hung open for a second while I found the right words and “loss of innocents” didn’t top my list at that moment. Mostly I’m glad I had read that book so I could fill her in.
Next I started reading empowering medical fiction and memoirs that my recovering anorexia/bulimic friend Amanda suggested for me. She introduced me to the next book I read cover to cover called Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. This book started me down a whole new path of literature. I loved to read medical stories but only if I could find a way to relate. For example if I knew someone who had the disease I was reading about. The problem was I didn’t know many diseased people so I stopped reading for a few years.
It wasn’t until the movie Twilight came out that I started picking up books again. I needed something to do to pass the time during the summer after the movie came out. I remembered seeing the movie and thinking there was a lot missing. I knew the movie was based on a book so I went to the book store and bought it. Boy was I right about that movie. There was so much that goes on in the characters head that the movie did it’s best to portray but unless the audience read the book they really missed out.
Twilight was my first book to movie I enjoyed and there have been many others since. I’m excited to share with everyone, through my blog, the movies I have seen that started as books.
