For this report, I decided to interview my mother, who has told me in the past that she used to be an avid reader. We have not talked in depth about it and I am using this report as an excuse to do so, and to find out exactly when and why these habits may have changed.
I started off with some simple preliminary questions about the dynamics of her reading in the past. She revealed that she did not start reading until her teen years. My mother lived in a small house with her parents and seven siblings, so I thought it was important that I find out exactly how she read her books. Was it around the rest of her family? Was it difficult to find alone time to read? I hypothesized that she would tell me that she found it easy to read everywhere and anywhere with anything going on around her. Instead, she surprised me with her answer by saying that she needed complete and utter isolation to read her books. I asked her if it was hard to find this time in a small house that had so many people. She said that it was, but she managed to do so.
I was curious what she read. When I asked, she rattled off authors like Judy Blume and Peggy Parish, but she said that her favorite thing to read was always anything by Danielle Steele. I was interested in this answer, thinking that such romances are generally a form of escapism for many readers. Was her reading an escape from reality?
She was quiet for a few moments, thinking about the question, and eventually answered me: yes. She explained that there were always plotlines where the impossible happened. The covers would be photographs of a man with flowing brown hair and a woman who looked like some kind of angel, with a perfect body and perfect features. My mother described these books as her “happy place.” She said that when the books finished, she found herself wishing they wouldn’t, wanting further insight into the lives of the characters.
With seven older siblings and no part time job, I could only imagine that money was a little bit tight, which would have made it difficult for my mother to acquire books. For this reason, my next question was how she obtained her novels. I was completely surprised when she said that she had absolutely no clue as to how she got a hold of them. When I asked her if it was from a library, she said no, that she owned them. I told her to think hard and finally she came up with an explanation for three of them. Someone who knew that she loved these books gave them to her as a gift. She remembered that she loved this person very much but could not remember who it was, which I found surprising.
The last part of my informal interview with my mother related to her current reading habits. She explained that she is desperate to get into reading again, but is finding it difficult to get deeply interested in a book. Her regular routine after putting my little sister to bed was to watch television. When I asked her what she watched, she said it was usually something light and easy to understand. She then said that she wanted a book to be so interesting that it deterred her from watching television. When I mentioned to her that I liked watching mindless television after studying because I didn’t want to do any more thinking, she wholeheartedly agreed that this was her situation as well.
She also spent quite a while reading a book on my e-reader. I was very curious to hear about her experience with it since she is from a generation that didn’t have access to electronic books. I barely got out the question before she said, “I hated it.” I laughed and said that I understood but asked her to give me her reasons. She explained that reading involved a book. That’s the way it has always been. When she held the e-reader in her hands, it did not feel like “the authentic book reading experience.” I found this very interesting, since it was almost the exact same words I had used, even though we were both from completely different generations.
