B is for Books and Books are for reading

As far back as I remember I started reading at the age of Six. By reading I am not referring to books that were on the list of books for my school class such as the Macmillan readers and Queen's Primer of those days. No. I am referring to books that were out of my school curriculum. 

The first book I ever read of course was a Children’s book. I saw it with a friend in school on the playground during one of our recesses. I liked the book immediately. As a child I was fascinated with the pictures in the book. I think I begged my friend to let me take it home and I showed it to my dad and said, “I want you to buy this book for me, please.” 

The next time I saw my dad he had bought the book and another very similar to the one I had requested for.  You can’t begin to imagine how happy I was. Although it was late in the night when he gave me the books, I was not deterred from reading at least one of them that night. That’s how my life romance with books started.

Some of my first reads as a child

Over the years my dad continued to buy me books. I remember vividly Sleeping Beauty, Heidi, Enid Blyton books and Others. Unfortunately I was never able to keep my Enid Blyton books because it turned out that a lot of kids loved Enid Blyton books.  They were always borrowed and always got lost. I also learnt a lesson with books, if you loved them, if they were precious to you, never let them get borrowed.

As a kid each time I got a new book, I abandoned everything that I was duty bound to do. My mother suffered the most whenever I got a new book. I would not help her around the house until I finished reading the book. Overtime, the books I got became a source of friction between my parents. My mother would be cross with my dad for handing me a new book at the wrong time.

However as I grew up I discovered other intriguing things like movies, cartoons and the likes. By the time I was in secondary school I totally never had time for literary books that were not on the reading list for the school year except when school was on vacation and even then I was not too taken by books. It got worse by the time I was in the University with all the course work and studying, I just did not have the time.

Fast forward to 2017, I am now a book junkie. I am a fiction literary junkie. If it is a book and available in PDF or epub. (or whatever electronic format), your girl just has to have it. Never mind that I will not read some of those books till God’s kingdom come because I have a 9-5 job and other commitments that are time consuming.