Diane doesn’t remember learning to read. The family story is that one day she just
started reading out loud the words on the cereal box. She was too young to read! At age four she and her sister went to a
Catholic school where they let her read beyond her age with the supervision of
one of the nuns. Strangely, her older
sister took years to learn.
The first books she remembers belonged to a lady who lived
next door to her grandmother. Her name
was Mona Napier and she had a grown daughter who had left all her books at
Mona’s house. There were all the Wizard
of Oz books, ”The Secret Garden”, “Little Women”, “Girl of the Limberlost”, “Ann
of Green Gables” and so many more. Mona
was always willing to help with new words and there was a huge dictionary in
her living room – on its own stand! That
room was heaven for Diane and she read all the books she could get her hands
on.
When the sisters moved back to Oregon after the war, Diane
discovered the local Carnegie Library and started reading with “A” in the
children’s section. She didn’t get very
far alphabetically because some of the books were deadly dull. So she started reading randomly, keeping a
record of what she read. Would that she
still had those lists today.
In the fourth grade she wanted to read Pearl Buck’s ”The
Good Earth”, but the librarian said it was an adult book and wouldn’t let her
check it out. She told her mother, who
wrote a letter to the librarian saying Diane could read whatever she wished. The librarian was pushed out of shape, but
allowed Diane to check out anything in the library. Reading “The Good Earth” periodically over
the years has shown Diane new insights and she soon understood why the
librarian thought it was too advanced for her.
It would be impossible to pick one favorite book out of the
millions available. But there are
favorite authors: Ivan Doig, Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Peters, P.D. James,
Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, Charles
Dickens, and on and on! At a recent
meeting someone had a copy of “Paddle to the Sea” by Holling C. Holling (who
also wrote “Tree in the Trail” and “Minn of Mississippi”) and Diane remembered
how thrilled she was when she read it decades ago. Good books stay with you over the years.
Reading has given Diane a wandering foot; she always wants
to visit the places she has read about and has traveled all her adult
life. But there are so many places yet
to go. And many books yet to read.
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