For My Love of Reading

I have this great love of reading. Books have been a part of my life ever since I can remember. Being born in the “old South Africa” as a black person makes me somewhat of an oddity.  Reading isn’t something that black people did for enjoyment, it was something that was done to get an education to better yourself.

Our grandparents didn’t have bookshelves lining their walls, and countless of books that they would read on a lazy Sunday afternoon while listening to the radio. I remember my mother telling me that if you were found reading on a Saturday afternoon it would be assumed that you were studying for a test.

As much as it pains me, sixteen years into the “rainbow nation” this hasn’t changed. A couple of my friends and I have had this conversation a lot of times. We’ve most probably discussed it to death and it still irks me that such a small number of black South Africans give themselves time just to read for the sheer pleasure of it.

My love of books has taken me on a journey. I can’t count how many books my mother bought me when I was a child, and the countless trips to the library on weekends. This was my childhood. I’ve never known a time in my house where there wasn’t a new book.

I suppose I need to thank my parents for their love of reading that they’ve passed on to my siblings and I. It’s something I’ve taken for granted so often and yet it such a huge part of who I am. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I was told that I wasn’t allowed to read, for whatever reason.

And somehow, freedom translates into so many things to so many people. To me freedom is having the right to read what I want. That is my human right.

Books are my companions, and the best, I must say. They don’t judge you and they give so much without asking for anything from me.

Earlier in the year, I was in Franschoek browsing through their second-hand bookshops. And right over there was this book that was part of a series of books I loved as child. “The Secret Book of Gnomes”.

In that moment, I had to acknowledge that my love of reading was helped along by my parents and their persistent book buying. I maybe wouldn’t love books the way I do if my mother didn’t insist on buying us books for Christmas instead of toys.

I can remember significant moments in my life by what book I read during that period. When my maternal grandmother  passed I was reading a book about three children living in Warsaw who lost their home and had to travel through the second world war and ended up starting over in Switzerland. I remember the December my grandmother passed my mother making my cousin and I read I am David.

I also remember when my paternal grandmother passed, a couple of weeks after that I remember feeling depressed (I was fifteen) and going through the bookshelves in our sitting room and pulling out this red book titled the power of one. The feeling of reading that book about Peekay and his journey moved me to tears.

What I also remember about my parents was that if they wanted to reach you and they didn’t know how to they would buy a book that would have that message.

I ask you, after all these years and all my parents have been to me and are to me, how can I not love reading. How can I not want to inspire the same feelings in others when they read a book I’ve written?