How school ruined reading for me (and how I got back into it)

If you are anything like me, school and the educational system made you hate reading at some point. It could be a certain teacher making a comment that you did not like, a book that you had to read but that troubled you or that you found too hard to read, anything really. Let me tell you about my experience.

As a child, I used to read ALL THE TIME. I was obsessed with books, and more particularly two book series: The Princess Diaries, by Meg Cabot and Cherub, by Robert Muchamore. Of course, I read a variety of books but these two were the ones I gravitated towards the most. Whenever a new book was announced and released, I would get super excited and basically read it in a day or two (I still went to school so I could not just spend the day reading, much to my dismay).

To me, books were a sort of escape, and they really helped me develop the imagination that I have today (which is a big part of my everyday life). But also, in a time when smartphones weren’t really a thing, and I was too young to have one anyway, books really helped me with anxiety and insomnia. From a very young age, I realized that falling asleep was not that easy for me, and books helped me fill those nights when sleep just would not come. I remember nights spent rereading books because I couldn’t fall asleep. My books meant a lot to me back then, because they were an escape but also helped relax me until I eventually felt like I could sleep. But of course, that did not stay the case forever.

When I entered 6th grade, things changed drastically. My days were much longer, as I was in school from 8am to 5pm, 5 times a week, and had much more to do for school; including imposed readings. Now, I have very mixed feelings about imposed readings. On the one hand, I believe that yes, they are important to study, and I know that as I grew older (probably 15/16) I really enjoyed studying the so-called ‘canon’ to see the hidden meanings in the stories. But as an 11-year-old, these readings seemed too hard and confusing, and of course, they took away from my recreational reading. Looking back, I think that the other problem that I have with the ‘canon’ is the lack of diversity. At least I know that for me, the books that I studied for school, from 6th grade to sophomore year, were all written by white men talking about their own time. Of course, these are interesting to study deeply as you are older, but at the time, it just felt heavy and hard to understand, and as an 11-year-old girl, I did not care much about Balzac or Zola. I am not entirely sure that I would enjoy them today, even as a Literature major. I understand the importance to know these books, they are well-crafted and important representations of a different time, and I know that, ultimately, teachers have a program they must follow, but I would have appreciated more diversity. I think it would have been interesting to also study newer books, or just books that are not well known, but just as important.

I think it is also important to tell you that this was a time in my life when I started to feel very self-conscious about myself. Middle school is brutal, and as a kid who was quiet and preferred books to making fun of others, I was struggling a lot to be myself, which did not help me pick up books at school and just do what I enjoyed.

I think that the one thing that really made me stop reading for a few years was something that happened when I was in 8th grade. For one of my classes, the teacher asked a few students to pick a book that they really enjoyed, present it to the class and read a passage. I believe that the point of this exercise was to have kids share what they enjoyed. I picked a book that meant a lot to me, called Toutes ces choses qu’on ne s’est pas dites, by Marc Levy. The book follows a young girl who had a strained relationship with her father, and a few weeks before her wedding, she receives news that her father passed away. After that, she goes home, and finds a box in her living room. Inside the box is a robot one that looks exactly like her father. For the next few days, the two of them will try to reconnect, something that her father had wanted to do before he died. The story is incredibly beautiful, and as someone who is really close to her father, I grew very attached to this book. And so, I decided that I would present this book in front of my class. Now, this book was contemporary, the author still writes to this day, and as it was considered more adult contemporary (in the sense that adults read it rather than children), I believed that this was considered a good book. I hoped that maybe my teacher would approve that I was reading a book for ‘grown-ups’. During the presentation, I felt very emotional, as I read the passage that I had picked, I was shaking, and my voice was wobbly. I felt very proud of myself once I was done. Then, my teacher looked me straight in the eyes and frowned, before telling me that this was more of a beach read and that he would not recommend this book as it was not really ‘literature’. I felt destroyed by that, and deeply ashamed.

This is when I stopped reading for fun. After all, what I enjoyed reading was not really ‘literature’, and what other considered to be good literature did not interest me. Why bother, then? For the next two or three years, I only read what my teachers told me to read for class, and honestly do not remember much of it because I did not care about it. Now, I am deeply annoyed with this teacher. After all, who was he to tell me what I could and could not read? Or decide what was literature and what was not? There is nothing wrong with enjoying a book that was not written at a different time, with a vocabulary that is not used anymore. Is it not the point of literature to make you feel things? To make you interested in what is being said? As long as what I read makes me feel these things, then I believe that it was a good book, period. But it took me a long time to understand that.

It was not until I was 15 that I started reading again. This happened mostly during the summer, when I would read maybe a book or two that I had chosen (the rest of the books were mandatory summer readings for school). The process was long and tedious. For the most part, the reason why I started reading books was because I had become addicted to YouTube and wanted to read books written or recommended by Youtubers. And so, the summer I turned 15, I decided to pick up The Drowning of Arthur Braxton, by Caroline Smailes (you can find it in my top 10 books of all time), and All I Know Now, by Carrie Hope Fletcher.

What made me pick up Arthur Braxton was the fact that a Youtuber that I really liked, Luke Cutforth, announced that he was adapting it into a movie. This got me really excited, and I figured I could at least give it a try. I was also very happy to be reading something in English, as I was starting to understand the language well enough to read entire books. I read it in maybe two or three days. Granted, it was during summer break, and I had nothing else to do, so I might have been able to read it in only a day, but considering that I was not reading at the time, it really meant a lot. To this day, this book is still one of my favorites, and I really recommend it.

All I Know Now was one of those books that you pick up just because you like the person who wrote it. Carrie is a wonderful human being and crazy talented, and when she announced that she had written a book, I decided to buy it almost right away (I still do that nowadays, her books are amazing). As this is nonfiction, it took me a bit longer to read it, but I still really enjoyed it, and it gave me the confidence to read more books in English. Which is how I started reading a bit more here and there, mostly in English, as it was a great way for me to train myself and improve in English.

With the years, and as I started studying English Literature, I gradually started reading more books for my own enjoyment, but it was still only one or two books here and there. Until, in 2018, my cousins got me a book in English for Christmas. The main reason why they got me a book in the first place, was because the gift that they had ordered for me had not arrived yet, and they decided that a book could be a small gift while I waited for the “real one”. In the end, that book was one of the greatest gift I had gotten, because it transformed my real view on books.

That special, amazing book was Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo. It was the first time in forever that I could not put down a book, and spent hours just reading and enjoying a story. I was so enchanted by it, that I started looking for more books, more stories, and looking for other people who, like me, had enjoyed it so much. In about a month, I was completely obsessed and spending hours on BookTube and Bookstagram, looking for more things to read. And the rest is history.

So, I guess that brings us to where I am now. Two years later, and I am still absolutely obsessed with books. I am very involved in the BookTube/Bookstagram community, and still watch hours of videos to find books that I want to read, even though my TBR (To Be Read) shelf is getting longer by the minute. I am so thankful that I found joy in reading again, and that I found a community online of people who share the same interest as me. Books are now a big part of my life again and I do not know what I would be doing with my life if I did not have books at the moment.

To everyone who has been discouraged by a teacher, a parent, or anyone and who does not see the point in reading anymore, I promise that it gets better. You just need to keep trying, and find that joy again, even if it is only five years from now. Only you know what you like, and no one can tell you what you can and cannot enjoy. If it means something to you, if it helps you, or if you just find it entertaining, it is enough. In the end, it is their fault if they feel the need to comment on other people’s lives. In the words of Marie Kondo, “if it brings you joy, keep it”.