Revisiting Reading

 

When I was younger, I used to love reading.

As a child, I was always picking books at school to read. Whether it was from the little selection we had in one of my classes in junior school, or picking things from the school library to read in secondary school.

Most of the time, I found I was mainly drawn to stories about animals. My favourite book series as a child was actually 'The Animals of Farthing Wood', which I got into through the BBC animated series based on the books. Though, as a teenager I also loved reading books based on my favourite show at that age, which was the X Files. I remember how much I loved picking up new stories based on the series when I saw them.

Though as I've gotten older, I've found that I fell out of the habit of reading. I feel it was probably a combination of adult life and other hobbies that took more priority that made me fall out from the habit.

Lately though, I've really been wanting to get back into it.

It has been a struggle to find the time to sit down and read, as my attention very split between other things, like my artwork, playing games, watching shows and such. I eventually decided to try and get into the habit of reading before I go to sleep, especially before work shifts as I really struggle to sleep before it. I figured it'd be better for me to unwind and not be staring at a screen right before bed.

I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things. This year I finally finished my read through of 'Watership Down', a novel I've been wanting to read for a very long time. As a child I loved the original 1978 animated movie and I've always wished to read the full novel it was based on.

It took me about three years of on-off reading of the novel to finish it, but thankfully even when I didn't read it for a while, I could generally remember what had happened in the story that far and was able to pick it up where I left off.

It is a big novel, but a very enjoyable one to read. It was great to finally experience the whole story and I found Richard Adams was really good at descriptive writing. The descriptions of scenery around the rabbits was described quite vividly and was definitely something that really jumped out at me.

After Watership Down, I moved onto 'The Hundred and One Dalmatians' which I bought at the end of 2019, drawn to it by the wonderful illustration on the cover. It was also coupled with it's sequel story 'The Starlight Barking' so it was two stories in one book.

It did take some adjusting going from the very detailed Watership Down, that was written more for older readers, to The Hundred and One Dalmatians, which was written more with younger readers in mind, but I eventually got used to it. I had actually read both of these stories in secondary school, but it had been so long, I didn't really remember them.

The Hundred and One Dalmatians, as we know, is the charming tale of two Dalmatians, Pongo and Missus, who set out to rescue their family after their pups are dognapped by the villainous Cruella de Vil, who wants to make a fur coat and other fur products out of them.

'The Starlight Barking', which I just recently finished, has the same charming feel as the previous story, but the story itself is a little more surreal in nature, but in a really fun way. It focuses on the Dalmatians, and the dogs of the world, trying to find out why everyone but dogs have remained asleep and why dogs can suddenly do things like 'swoosh' about and communicate basically by telepathy. They also find they have no need for food or water and things like doors open mysteriously for them. I won't explain any further, but it really is a fun, though really wild, story.

The next book that I've just started to read is a much more newly written story which came out in 2019. It caught my eye at work and I decided to pick it up. It's called 'The Umbrella Mouse' which is the first book written by Anna Fargher. It's about a small mouse who loses her home, an umbrella shop in London, and her family, to a bomb in World War II.
I think I read about four chapters just in the first night of reading it. It's a very captivating, but quite sad story, just in those beginning chapters alone. The time period seems very well researched and gives a good amount of detail and view into what both humans and animals experienced during the war.

It seems like there's also a second book in the series, so there's a good chance that will be the next book I read after this one.

Going forward, there are also some book series' that I want to eventually re-read too.

Of course, 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' was very special to me growing up and it's definitely a series I want to re-read at some point. Sadly, I no longer have my old copies of the books, but it should be easy to find replacements.

There was also a series called 'Beaver Towers' that I remember our teacher in my second year of junior school reading to us in the afternoons. I remember really liking it and I do have the first book in the series, I just haven't gotten to reading it yet.

I also, at some point, want to start borrowing books from my local library to read, in order to support the library and also so I can read a book without it permanently taking up space which I don't have a lot of. Sadly, I'm still rather nervous about going to places with the on-going pandemic, but my anxiety hasn't been as bad as it was the last two years and I'm working towards getting back to some normality (safely of course.)

I'm curious to see how many books I can read before the end of the year. I may keep a list of books I've read here on my blog and see where I am a year from now.