Forced Bookworm
I don’t allocate time to read as much as I should. I like to feel out the world through experiences rather than words. Ironic, right? I’m a forced bookworm.
‘You can get lost in a book. But, for me, starting is the hardest thing. I’m never able to determine value-gained before experiencing a book, and that’s why my reading track record sits as it does.’
No-one is above reading books.
Books are an escape without the financial and emotional burden.
As a child, I didn’t read.
I watched TV and wrote poems.
As a teenager, as my English improved — I read CHERUB by Robert Muchamore.
I fell in love with a series, its intricacies and sometimes nuanced plot flaws. It made it all the more exciting.
I suppose as a child; I read a lot of non-fiction — encyclopaedias, Guinness World Record books.
But I never caught the reading bug.
One of my nephews loves to read. He’s already reading about all the world’s problems, and he enjoys to engage with them.
I had that recognition too but to a lesser extent.
As a kid, I loved to learn about the world.
I didn’t care too much about history.
I wanted to know the problems of the day, and how we were planning to solve them.
During school, I was better at history than geography.
History involved more writing, at a more vigorous intensity than geography.
Geography consisted of a lot of rivers and physical geography, to this day — I can’t stand the sites of an oxbow lake diagram.
But, there was a glimmer of the socioeconomic, political and ideological concepts.
I didn’t enjoy the content in history, so I chose to do Geography for my GCSE and then A Level.
And here we are.
This is related to books.
I see books as a form of history.
As modern as they may be.
They are an account of reality.
There is a part of me that likes to focus on the future, and I allocate little time to understanding the past.
The present is a product of the past, the future a product of the present.
So logically, it should be of utmost importance to me.
I had to throw myself into books at the start of university.
Not books so much as journal articles — reading all the same.
When I arrived in Fort Worth, I knew I needed to learn the local history.
I visited the library and read a 350-page book in a couple of days — skimming it for essential facts.
This was the first time that I took considerable time to read a history book.
Actually, no.
When I took the anthropology class at UT Austin, I had to read a book every 2.5 weeks.
That was intense, I remember.
But at least it trained me to be able to consume knowledge quickly.
Yesterday, I looked through delicate archives.
Newspaper clippings from 1942 and postcards from 1910.
Touching artefacts for free and as a non-US citizen was terrific.
These are precious figures.
It was a pleasant afternoon after a chilled morning.
I should give more time for books.
I talk a lot about creating opportunities, making time.
I should prioritise books.
They are a vast wealth of knowledge.
A fact I only realised after purposefully locking myself indoors to read the history of the city — something I can’t experience.
Forced bookworm.