Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: When did you first know you’re truly a bookworm? Did you lose sleep over a novel?
I think I’ve always known I was a bookworm…? My parents took me to the library weekly since I was toddler-age, and I memorized The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree before I could actually read (so I count it as the first book I ever “read”). I had a book bag all through my childhood that I’d bring home full of books from the library every week. So this dates back!
Reading was so normalized that I don’t know if there was a point when I realized not everybody read this much. Probably somewhere in elementary school, I imagine, when I noticed the divide between people who liked sports and people who liked books (I’m sure some people cross over but the two camps seemed clear to me at age ten!) Ironically, perhaps, my clearest memory that should have told me I was unusually fond of reading is of reading a book (!) where the kids got points for prizes for each page they read. I was politely incredulous of the very low numbers of pages they were reading and counting as good…
I can’t say I really lose sleep over books. I stayed up late recently to find out the ending of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but the previous book I can distinctly recall staying up late reading was Jane Eyre, five years earlier. And I don’t lie awake thinking about books in a worrying or angsting kind of way. One thing I like about books is that they don’t make me feel that way!
When did you discover you were a bookworm? Do other people often lose sleep over books?
Like you, I have been a bookworm for as long as I can remember. An early reading memory I have was in elementary school when I read a children’s biography of George Washington and was very proud of myself because it had no pictures! 🙂 I am always reading something and at this point in my life I read 2-3 books at the same time. Books do not keep me up at night; scary movies can, so I avoid them. It must be something about the visuals in a movie vs. the descriptions in a book. Besides, if a book has something too graphically violent for me (not often since I don’t read that type of book), I can just skip over it. Can’t do that in a movie theater!
My third grade teacher (who didn’t like me) got angry that I kept reading ahead in our reading circle the first few weeks of class. She reported me to the Principal (who did like me). The Principal had me join the fifth grade reading group.💖🥳 So I knew then that I read more than others my age.
I was a voracious reader, and used to get in trouble all the time when I was a kid for reading by flashlight when I was supposed to be sleeping. And I’ve gone to work a few times as an adult with only a couple hours sleep because I had to know what happened next in a great book…😊