10 Reading Eras: From bedtime stories to blogging!

Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by artsyreadergirl and has weekly topics for bloggers to respond to and share. Click the link for more info and to read more submitted posts!

This week’s prompt is ‘how much reading habits have changed over time’ and initially I thought “how do I make that a top ten post?” (I’m still new to TTT and mentally tied to the format). I decided to just start writing and see what happened, and funnily enough I came out with exactly ten stages of my reading life!

While I have always been A Reader the what, when and how much I’ve read has definitely changed over time. So come on a little journey through my past…

*cue flashback harp sound*

1. Bed time stories

Starting all the way back, as Baby Alice my parents always read bedtime stories. I can still shut my eyes and be back in my childhood bedroom, tucked up in bed listening to either Mum or Dad reading me a story, while I looked up at the hot air balloon border that topped the pale yellow walls of my bedroom, and the whimsical yet slightly creepy 3D light fixture of a clown hanging off the basket of the hot air balloon light shade.

I had forgotten about that light until writing this!

Anyway, clowns aside, I was too young to remember now what most of the books read to me were but I know I always loved Dr Seuss! I have a sister 10 years younger than me and I actually used to read her Dr Seuss sometimes, I got very good at reading Fox in Sox and Green Eggs and Ham!

The picture book I most remember looking at by myself was The Jolly Pocket Postman by Allan and Janet Ahlberg. It was particularly thrilling with all the little bits and bobs hidden in envelopes inside the book. I loved the tiny letters to read with the tiny magnifying glass! We also had the Christmas version.

2. Children’s classics

I struggle to remember much of what Early Reader Alice chose to read herself, though for school we all had to read the ‘Biff, Chip and Kipper’ Oxford Reading Tree books!

All that stands out in my memory are the Ladybird books. My Grandparents had a collection of them, I particularly remember Three Billy Goats Gruff and Little Red Hen. They were simple stories with full pages of excellent illustrations. I’d also read the Rupert annuals which my Mum has a huge collection of and would get me every Christmas, and my brother’s The Dandy and Beano annuals with Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids!

Again my memory is vague on what I was selecting for myself from the tiny primary school library, or the thrilling mobile library that would come around. Sometimes the Schools Library Service one would come to school for class (I now know that’s what it was because I worked for them for a bit later in life!), but there was also the monthly village one my Gran would take us to in the summer holidays. I definitely remember reading a lot of Roald Dahl, all the Dahl I could get!

Otherwise I was just reading whatever books my family had or bought for me, such as all the big collection of Enid Blyton books my Grandma had or bought me. When I try to picture the bookshelf I had in my bedroom, amongst the Roald and Enid, I see other classics like What Katy Did, Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, The Railway Children and The Secret Garden.

I, of course, also graduated eventually to The Chronicles of Narnia, and Little Women.

Someone had also given me a cardboard box of small abridged editions of classics, mainly Charles Dickens. Those lived on top of the bookshelf, but I did get them down to read from time to time, and I do think they helped set me up for enjoying Dickens later in life.

As I kid I listened to audiobooks on cassette a fair bit. I only had a few but if put then on whenever I was at home off sick from school, and sometimes just if I was bored I’d lay on bed with one on. Secret Garden and a tape of Rupert stories were my favourite.

3. Scho(o)l-astic series

The first books I remember truly choosing were Goosebumps (as a child of the 90s!), and the mystery style Choose You Own Adventure books. Like most kids, Year 6-7 Alice would find a publisher’s series and stick with that until whatever the library had was exhausted.

As I got older I transitioned from Goosebumps to Scholastic’s Point teen books! I loved Point Horror with its heady blend of romance and mild horror. I read a few Point Crime but those were harder to come by (oh man, that’s got to be a Top Ten Tuesday freebie topic!).

I also was obsessed with the Making Out romance series by Katherine Applegate! I even bought them because the library didn’t have them all. One of the characters, my favourite guy character, was blind which felt groundbreaking at the time!

Of course, as a child in the late 1990s, I discovered Harry Potter, I started those when I was the same age as Harry. I remember that book 2 was out (and at the Scholastic Book Fair) when I first decided I should read it, falling in love and pre-ordering all the rest of them!

4. Developing taste

After that stage, Year 8(ish) Alice was developing her own taste and starting to read more widely. Another series I loved was His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, and I think that was the start of realising more what I liked and that there were challenging and interesting books out there for my age. His Dark Materials is very mature for a children’s series, they were probably the first books where I didn’t feel talked down to.

Another book that blew my young mind was Junk by Melvin Burgess. That’s about heroin addiction, and it has  sex and teen pregnancy in it. I don’t know if my Mum realised what it was when she bought it! It was published in 1996, I don’t know when I’d have actually read it (I do remember them talking about it on Blue Peter after it won the Carnegie in 1987!) but I could potentially have been as young as 12! That was the first time a book really moved me to think of a true to life reality outside my own.

By GCSE I knew English (reading and writing!) was something I enjoyed and my horizons were expanding. Once I’d identified that as my favourite subject I of course got into my Classics phase!

5. “I’ve got to read the classics”

Teen Alice attempted to read classics to variable success. While her subjects might remain relatable, Jane Austen doesn’t have the most accessible writing style for the modern reader (teenaged!) but I did manage to get through Pride and Prejudice and Emma. I enjoyed Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, but I remembered I struggled with 1984 by George Orwell. I may have been too young to appreciate that one, or maybe I needed it read to me by Stephen Fry!

I suppose this was training for all the reading I had in-store for me over the course of my English degree!

6. English student

During university Student Alice didn’t read for pleasure at all. We had 3 reading assignments every week and that left no time or mental capacity! I will share some of what I read in a future list.

It took quite a while post-university to rebuild a reading for fun habit, and I was really over trying to force my way through classics or anything that was hard work!

7. Charity shop volunteer

Early Twenties Alice volunteered every Saturday in a Cancer Research shop for a good few years, while she was struggling to get a “proper job” (or just full time job) as a Librarian. One of my responsibilities was sorting the book donations out and organising the book shelves, and that meant the first pick of books that came in!

The time I had sorting through piles of books got me excited to read again and I acquired a lot of second hand books during this period! Mostly these were modern contemporary classics and the usual charity shop suspects: Dan Brown, David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas etc not the comedian), Ben Elton, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Angela Carter etc.

This was when I first discovered The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend. I eventually got a full set of that series from the charity shop and I’m quite proud that every book is a completely different style of edition, even different sizes! They’re all cream though so it kind of works.

8. School Librarian

My first proper almost-full-time job was a school librarian and School Librarian Alice (aka “Miss”)  had nothing much to do but read books all day for work! I read a lot of Young Adult novels in this time, and including CILIP Carnegie Award short list every year.

This period really burned me on reading series as so fucking many YA series have one good first book and progressively pointless sequels. (Another blog post idea).

This was also my first phase of reading comic books and graphic novels! This was the original era of subscribing to Marvel Unlimited. I used to run a little comic book club too, I got a few Year 7 girls into Ms Marvel and Captain Marvel years before they got TV/movies!

I was also pretty consistent about writing reviews for Goodreads for these 4 years, which I am very grateful for now (all that free time!).

9. Book Club

After the school job, then Late Twenties Alice’s reading really dipped, and I don’t think I tracked it consistently either. I had a phase of trying to read my Kindle on my public transport commute to my new job but rush hour trams were too crowded so I got into podcasts instead – better to tune out the experience of being crammed in a box with strangers and their conversations.

Then I joined a book club – mostly to try to make new friends and work on my social anxiety issues – and that sparked back up a love for reading and actually thinking about what I’d read for discussions. I was back to reading at least a book a month and consistently reading in bed every night.

I often used the library at this time, but it was also when I started to realise how many great books would pop up for 99p on Kindle! I also read more Kindle because I’d moved house 3 times in 4 years and had been getting rid of the physical books I owned and didn’t want to acquire more because I knew I’d move at least one more time! (It was actually two more times!).

The pandemic put a stopper on Book Club but I was left with a reignited passion for reading, and it had inspired me to look for a community online. I started watching the occasional BookTuber videos which pilled up more wonderful contemporary lit recommendations, and I looked for discussions online more than I did before.

10. The Wallflower Digest

I actually didn’t originally intend to include my reading on this blog. I first attempted Bookstagram, but that was not for me. Eventually I figured out how to find other book bloggers, and I then quickly realised blogs are where I’m comfortable and have fun!

As I mentioned in my Reading Achievements TTT post I read a lot now, and it’s mostly on Kindle! I love my Kindle (my cat loves it too, much better for rubbing her head on), it’s so much easier to get books and with the 99p deals I save money (I think) and it makes me less afraid to try books I might not like.

I also now listen to lots of audiobooks through my Library and Spotify, so usually I have one audiobook and one eBook on the go, and usually a series of comics on Marvel Unlimited!

These days my reading feels supercharged and it is a rare day that goes by without me thinking or writing notes about books!