Hellcat Reading
Hellcatkit • 30 December 2019
Late bloomer, slow starter... no faster now.
If I had my way, and maybe one day I might, I’d take the whole of December off and dedicate it to reading as well as the usual December frivolities (you may have guessed that the shortest day excites me a little more than Christmas Day itself does). Well, if not the whole of December, at least the week leading into the Winter Solstice (provided I can get my wrapping completed Cinders).
Having worked Christmases in bookstores (probably a story for another day) and 4.5 years in Large Print Publishing (definitely a story for another day) - it won’t surprise anyone to discover that there are hundreds of books shoved in every nook and cranny where I live.
What will probably surprise you, is that I’ve probably only read around 10% of them.
I am a hideously slow, and easily distracted, reader.
Sure, there are the odd gems that latch on and don’t let go until I’ve finished (raced through) them, but they’re kinda rare these days.
I go through patches of hardly touching a book, and I go through patches of attempting to read 8-20 at a time. (No, this doesn’t work either.)
Neither am I particularly fussy about the format; paperback, kindle, tablet, mobile app, audible, I’ll soak in the material drip by drip however I find it. Hardbacks I have been known to avoid, but that’s a comfort thing and nothing to do with what are often very beautiful editions.
What I am fussy about, is the inspiration to read. The more you tell me I should read something, the more likely I am to struggle with, or even hate it. My editorial manager at the publishing house never did wrap her head around my lack of knowledge when it came to classical literature. And until that role it had never occurred to me just how few novels had appeared on the curriculum at GCSE or A Level – and I took English Literature as a separate paper for both.
Despite having parents who both love to read, and read often, it took me a long time to grasp the habit. Much to my mum’s despair. My mum, who would read to me from the moment I was born and made sure books were as present in my childhood as toys were, has a photograph of me sitting in a basket holding an ABC book upside down – granted it was before I could walk, so I probably chewed it moments later.
When it came to learning to read, I had to have a certain level of interest in which to care. Key Stage books? Biff, Chip and Kipper? Enid Blyton? Sod ‘em. I didn’t care for them. I’ve still never read a Famous Five book. But have I read almost everything Roald Dahl has ever written? You bet.
I don’t remember wanting to read until Mr Simmons, a visiting teacher to my year 4 class, read Danny Champion of the World to us bit by bit until the book was finished. After that I read every Roald Dahl I could get my hands on. I still remember unwrapping a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for Christmas that year and devouring it.
Interestingly, I still haven’t managed to read James and the Giant Peach, I’m not sure how I missed that one. (I have a copy, I’ll get to it – one day).
Since childhood, spats of devouring pockets of the literary world in short bursts has been something I am prone to. First, I focused on authors, Roald Dahl, Jill Murphy... then the Point Horror books as a teen. College saw me tear through Tami Hoag’s crime novels and discover weird and quirky books from Tom Holt and Neil Gaiman.
Uni was when I fell into the genres that would shape my own writing once and for all: Supernatural Horror and Paranormal Romance. Bitten by Kelley Armstrong was the big one for me and soon followed Charlaine Harris, Lyndsay Sands, Katie MacAlister, Nora Roberts and Natasha Rhodes (who I still check up on on social media as she seems to have stopped writing after 3 Kayla Steele Novels and I live in hope that we’ll get a follow-up).
Throughout college and university I started sharing my favourites with my mum and we discovered a mutual love of binge-reading authors. She reads far faster than I do and has over taken me on both the Lyndsay Sands and J.D. Robb books.
My dad and I share a mutual fondness for the absurd, but we probably read at a similar pace and have never competed over finishing a novel.
I may still be slow with the pages themselves, but I wonder whether my parents ever foresaw that ensuring I always had a book nearby would influence my life quite so much. Not only do I read as often as I can, I write – and I have made a career from words. I also frequently add to their bookshelves.
In fact, now that I think about it, I’ve found a way to include books and stories in almost every job I’ve had – even if it has meant carrying one around in the back pocket of my Odeon uniform or reading on Kindle in my car on a lunch break.
Most of my “In Progress” pile sits beside my bed, the pile is currently as follows (keep in mind that it IS still December...):
Nora Roberts – This Christmas (paperback)
Hark! The Herald Angels Scream – Christopher Golden (Ed) (paperback)
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys (paperback)
The Word for Woman is Wilderness – Abi Andrews (paperback)
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing (paperback)
Beginnings – J E Nice (paperback)
The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories – Tara Moore (Ed) (paperback)
Just for Christmas – Scarlett Bailey (paperback)
Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings – British Library (paperback)
Last Christmas – Greg Wise & Emma Thompson (hardback)
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (Kindle)
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