Me and Reading

I am now and avid reader.

Now

Not always before.

Growing up, I have always loved narrative and story, I'm a child of the original Disney Princess era.  Reading was difficult for me though.  It wasn't until college I found out I have mild dyslexia.  Then between getting bifocal contacts and learning a kind of speed reading, I was able to suddenly enjoy what I used to work so hard to do.

College doesn't really leave much time for pleasure reading.  So after graduation when I was working as a not-for-profit event planner, event planner, wedding planner, bartender... I did get to start reading much more and for pleasure.  I finally decided to listen to my mother, (also wedding planning is a special circle of hell) and went back to school to get my Masters of Teaching.  Because of my Theater major, my communications background and appreciation for reading, the Language arts endorsement area was the one that made the most sense.

Here I was now, reading book after book that I had passed before: Classics, English, American, and many more.  I have always gravitated to 'fairy tales' or what were oral classics.  My thesis became how to use fairy tales or fantasy to teach in the classroom.  This included more than Disney and Grimm.

Think Shrek.  Here is world where wonder is all around, characters from many stories interact, but rules are still established.  If a history teacher wanted to explain ruling class systems, you could ask what would a Princess would think of a monarchy vs. oligarchy vs. democracy.  What about the dukes or the peasants.  Fantasy isn't just books.  Video games offer a whole realm of other learning avenues.

So, as a part of this I did end of reading fairy tales from all sorts heritages.  German, French, Russian, American (think tall tales if you are coming up short on that one), Irish, South American/Latino, Native American, etc.  I now have a pretty geekable love of all things fairy tales, oral literature, and stories.  Please stop me if you ever hear me mid-conversation on the topic... I will go nuts.

This love of stories, and my education focus of working with secondary (jr. high/high school) students means I got to read lots and lots, and many were YA (young adult for the non-initiated) books, some were for younger students, some for my age demographic.

I now read something like 3 books a week, depending on how busy my downtime schedule is. Thanks to lots of reading fodder, I have lots of books I would recommend to adults or teens and for different reasons.  I will add some of those as I go.