I took it for granted — that the kids would be bookworms, too. After all, they were born into a house where every wall has a buckling bookcase. Both their parents write books. And my primary self-mythologizing rant is about how my third parent was my local library. Going neither to school nor university, everything I know comes from Warstones Library on Warstones Road, Wolverhampton, where, between 1979-1989, I read pretty much every book. “And with my eyes,” as I would explain, proudly. “Not audiobooks. They don’t count.”
I was both snobbish and proud about the number of books I read — sometimes, one a day; I’m a speed-reader — because I didn’t really have anything else to be proud of. My “natural beauty” had yet to manifest, and my only friend was my dog. Being a book-obsessed amateur intellectual was my only positive attribute.
And at first, of course, the kids seemed to love books. We would read to them, all the time — the Bedtime Routine involved at least three; and, by the time my husband started on Harry Potter, very impassioned voices for each of the characters. His voice for Dobby was ill-advisedly high-pitched, and strangulated: by the third book, he was having to use Difflam throat-numbing spray to get through his impassioned performances.
Yes: we did everything we could to make the kids bookworms too. But, as time went on … it just didn’t “take”. They just didn’t want to pick up a book and read on their own. In vain, I would leave enticing piles outside their bedroom doors; casually chuck volumes onto the table with “I think it’s time you met Anne of Green Gables!”; present a Holiday Kindle loaded with “The ten books which will genuinely change your lives” — of which one, of course, was Jilly Cooper’s Rivals.
My primary self-mythologizing rant is about how my third parent was my local library.
But: nothing. Even when I gave up all pretense of subtlety, and straight-up offered them a fiver for each book they read, they demurred. And this, frankly, terrified me. Everything I am, I got from books. They have been my comfort, my joy, my resource and my career. If the girls didn’t read — what would they be? How would they cope? I would be raising girls who would be, for want of a better phrase, dum-dums.
But — they’re not? For, as my eldest explained to me, patiently — and incredibly wisely — “Books are your thing. You love words. But I’m visual. I want to be a director. You read a book a day — I watch a film a day. And, given that I am the one who has been able to analyze this situation correctly, I don’t think I’m a dum-dum?”
The youngest chimed in. “And music is my thing. I know I don’t read fiction, but I read books about musicians! And I watch ten TED talks a week, and I’ve always got a podcast on the go. These days,” she said, comfortingly, “there are different ways to learn things. It’s not like when you were young and you had to unfold a scroll.”
And I am comforted by this. There are new ways to absorb information, and stories. You don’t need novels, and books — humans are inventing new ways to talk to each other all the time. Like in The Never-Ending Story, where Atreyu can communicate with his horse, Artex, using only his mind. I read that book with my eyes too.
But the kids have seen the film. And the youngest can play the theme tune on the piano.
Caitlin Moran is a journalist and the author of More than a Woman, How to Build a Girl, and Moranthology
