Mentally interpret the characters or symbols.

[malinowy]

Happy Birthday beyondtheworld! I hope you have a fantastic day and a great party and lots of presents and overall fabulous time. ♥
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This entry is going to be something not that many people probably end up commenting on, but it's something I've wanted to write for a while because I do find this subject interesting. Yes, this is going to be a post about reading and it is a very long one, but I still hope someone clicks the cut and takes the time to leave their thoughts. I do hope to get some discussion.

So, why am I writing this? Sometime last week I was going through someone's Tumblr I was linked to and ended up seeing what I assume to be a Harry Potter secret. The OP was saying that they didn't believe someone at the age of 6 could have read the books and the people reblogging and commenting were saying they were reading at the age of 2 (none of them said they were reading Harry Potter though, so I assume they were referring to other books) and there were comments with things like if the OP came from a place where you could get better education they would believe a six-year-old could read those books. Now, this is why I got interested and started thinking about how I and a lot of people around my age in Finland have learnt to read.

(Sidenote: When I talk about reading I am here referring to reading books, not magazines or newspapers or fics.)

I learnt to read when I went to first grade, at the age of seven. My parents (my Mum mostly) read to me a lot when I was kid, though funnily enough my most vivid memories of someone reading to me are from the days I was in daycare and the lady taking care of me read Grimm stories. But yes, I didn't learn to read until at school, my parents flat out refused to teach me since my Brother had learnt to read before he went to school and was awfully bored on the classes when everyone else was practicing and my parents didn't want that to happen to me too. Which resulted in long evenings spent with my Alphabet book and me proclaiming "I will never learn to read". Oh how wrong I was.

After I eventually did learn, I went through all the children's books and a very vast majority of the YA books in my local library and even in the neighboring one when I got a bit older. I have read so much since. I've kept a list of all the books (sans some school related textbooks) since 2003 until this day and can check back and wonder how on earth I read some of the books I did when I was 13, 14 and realize I didn't really understand them at all. My Mum still reads quite a lot these days, as does one of my Godmothers. My Dad does read, but he has those specific niches he's interested in. My Brother however, doesn't really read at all. Just last weekend when we were talking about something I can't recall now, he mentioned how he couldn't remember the last time he had read a book. Which I found not only a bit sad, but also very interesting. I know my cousins don't read either, and one of them even takes pride in it. /short literary history of my family

So the things I would love to discuss take us back to the original claim that a six-year-old could read a Harry Potter book. It's been a while since I went to school for the first time, but somehow I still think that while some Finnish kids could read those books before their seventh birthday, a lot of them couldn't. Somehow I still see that learning to read is something you do at school, though it is definitely changing. Which is why I want to ask, could a 6-year-old in your country read books like Harry Potters or something similar? When do kids in your home country usually learn to read and when did you learn to read yourself? And I'd also be interested in hearing how you learnt to read, with an Alphabet book or with a parent or in some other way?

As I mentioned, I've kept a list of all the books I've read in the past few years. Nowadays my yearly total comes up to around 50 books, when at best years it has been over 100. Out of curiosity I also counted all the books I've read in English (I still read majority of the books in Finnish) and came up with around 60 books. Which is a surprisingly small number, because I've had the feeling I do read most books in English these days. However, I did check how many of those 60 books I've read during the last three years and that number is 48. Which explains that feeling I've had. This brings us to the topic of how much do you read each year and what do you think reading a lot means? I went through one literary blog and almost laughed when someone stated "I read a lot, 8 to 10 books a year" because to me that equaled the books I read in two or three months. I know different people read in very different ways and many people have changed their reading ways with ebooks and tablets coming to the market. I would love to know have you changed your reading habits?

And in order to make this a post for those who do not read, I would love to get your input too. Is there some reason you don't read, because it's difficult or takes time or is simply boring? Really, I'm interested in these stories too because I admit I know nothing about a life without reading books.

I would love to hear your answers to some of these questions, or if you feel like leaving me with a short story of how you see reading, I am more than happy with that too. I just find this genuinely interesting since I know very little about how people in other countries learn to read and how they read. Yes, we give each other book recommendations, but that only means we've stumbled upon a book we liked, nothing more really.
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As a last note I would like to remind that I am sending out Christmas/holiday cards and if you didn't comment in my last post saying you'd like one, now is your time for that. I do love sending out those cards.

Comments

[baka-yu.livejournal.com]

I learned to read in school when I was short of turning 6 (I'm german, by the way, so speaking for my part of Germany) with learning the letters, then picture books and everything. I liked it from the start so I quickly evolved to reading easy books. I think roughly a year after I learned to read books, I was already on some children's crime books. Even though I am female, I never much cared for the typical girls books.
But there are some that have learned to read before and of course, parents reading to their children when they are younger. Sadly though, the last part is something that isn't practiced as much as it was because some parents simply don't want to or have the time to do that for their children. And putting them in front of the telly is so much easier. I'm always happy when I hear that parents read to their children and practise then they learn it because I think reading books is such an important thing. It helps with the general level of skill in languages (which is why I read a lot of english books nowadays as well to increase my knowledge of this language) and it helps to imagine things. I did make the observations that more often than not, people I know who read tend to have a more vivid imaginations than those who simply watch telly or something like this.

As for how much I read, it depends on how much time I have and on how much I read online. I love to read, may it be a book or a fanfiction online or a comic. The last years, I'd say my general quota was between 50-60 books per year. There was one year with a lot and one with a little less, but I think that should be the middle ground. Some of it is due to university, since I study german language and literature, but most of it is for my own private pleasure. Books are an outlet for me, a way to get into another world, another mind, for a few hours and get lost in it. I believe sometimes you can discover things that are important for yourself in books. Get a new perspective on things, learn about other cultures or people. Or just something light to let you relax after a hard day, something to make you smile.

My reading habits have changed over the years. With the internet, I got to know different types of books and discovered them for myself. I do read online as well, so that is something that has changed in the past years. Before, I only had books, which was fine, but now there's even more variations of what I read. With university and all, I can't read every day as much as I used to, at least not for my own pleasure, but I do try to take the time to read each week. Sometimes, I have a whole day reserved just to read a book now. It's something I look forward to and need. If I don't read for a longer period of time, I get downright grumpy. I have a tablet I can read on, but I prefer physical books. The weight, the feeling and smell of the paper, just having it all in your hand is as much part of the experience as is the reading itself, so I only use the tablet for those books I can't get to a prize I can afford or uni texts.

[malinowy.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I only faintly remember what I originally wrote in this post, so excuse me if my comment seems somewhat disjointed.
I don't think I really went for the typical girls' books either. Okay, I did read Sweet Valley High and such as a pre-teen, but I also kind of loved the Nancy Drew books. They got repetitive after a while, but I still read at least 100 of them, probably more. Quite possibly every single one of them that my local library had.
The point about parents reading to their children is so important! My mother read to me a lot when I was a kid. Also, a was in a private daycare before I went to school and the nurse had a massive pile of storybooks (mostly the cleaned up Grimm stories) and I remember we got to pick which one she'd read to us. Sitting in her kitchen, listening to her read and looking at the pictures in the book is one of my fondest childhood memories. And really, if you don't grow up in an environment where people around you read, you're not very likely to start reading a lot yourself. If I ever have kids I'm sure as hell going to read them.

I believe sometimes you can discover things that are important for yourself in books. Get a new perspective on things, learn about other cultures or people. Or just something light to let you relax after a hard day, something to make you smile.
This is what I love about reading and probably the biggest reason why I read. Funny enough, in the recent years I've read more then I think I would. Maybe I'm spending more days off with a book (or a fic) or then I watched more TV or something like that in the past. Or maybe there simply is a lot more interesting books around right now.

I'm still very much sticking to physical books. Partly because trying to find a decent ereader in Finland is like looking for a needle in a dozen haystacks, partly because I've worked in a bookstore and there is just something about being surrounded by books every day. Some might think that seeing and having to deal with books every single day would put you off from wanting to pick up one when you get home, but it doesn't. And I hear you about getting to know different types of books because of the internet. I know such a large amount of people who read and every once in a while they recommend something I completely fall in love with.

[baka-yu.livejournal.com]

Only after I had half my answer wrote did I notice that it's an older entry, but I found the topic so interesting that I thought I just post anyway. You didn't confuse anything, so no problem at all! ;)

I was mostly going for crime and mystery books and stayed with these two categories for a very long time. By now I read almost everything as long as the book is appealing in some way, but that wasn't the case as a child. I do get to read some of these typical children's books now due to my study (part of it is specifically children's and Young Adult's books and I love this), but I haven't when I was younger simply because it didn't appeal to me. It bored me, most of the time, so I didn't touch them.
My mother used to read fairytales to us too and I bought the complete collection of the Grimm fairytales just last year because I want to re-read them! In my family there wasn't that much reading when I was starting with books, my mum read something now and again, but I know what you mean. And my school back then was very supportive of reading. There was a library bus coming to our school once a week to offer us to read books, we had book nights where the whole class slept in the school in sleeping bags and torches to read together and quietly talking to about the books and switching/recommanding things to each other. I absolutely loved those nights. It was sometimes paired with a night walk (the school was right beside a forest) and the teacher reading a story to all of us before we went to do our own reading. It was highly encouraging to read. I don't want kids, but I would advice everyone wanting/having them to read to them!

I think, for me, it's a bit of both. I manage myself specifically to have time with a book or online reading because with my life now, sometimes I need this down time with just me and a good book. As a child I've been outside a lot with friends or playing Gameboy or something and those things have changed, so that might play into it as well.

Agreed on there being something about being surrounded by books. For me, a home has to have books, I'm highly confused to be in a place where there are no books. Seeing them, touching their spines, especially with old books smelling them makes me smile and happy. Get me to a bookstore or a library and you most certainly will have a happy companion. Holding a book, feeling the pages and the weight, it's precious to me. I love beautiful volumes and buy those if I have the money and I'm extremly careful with my books because they are just something important to me and I want to keep them for a long time. So reading on the tablet I own is only the last resort if I can't find a book any other way or if it's really so expensive I just can't afford it as a physical copy.

[malinowy.livejournal.com]

It's nice that someone checks the older posts too. It's a nice reminder for me too, seeing that I've written about something like this ages ago.

I read really different kinds of stuff when I was around 12 or so, I've kept a list for years and looking back at it, I'm not sure if reading some of the crime novels I read when I was about 14 was the best idea. I still have a certain fondness for crime books, I was usually the go to person for suggestions when I was working at the bookstore.
Hah, I too bought the Fairytales of Brothers Grimm last year! However, it's still wrapped in plastic since it's one of those really gorgeous Taschen editions and IDK, maybe I should just open it and look at all the pretty pictures. And whoa, your school sounds amazing! We got the library bus at our school too, which was a bit funny since the school is about a ten minute walk from the main library, And we did have some reading challenges and kept reading diaries, but that's about it.

I find nothing weirder than people who have bookshelves and actually have everything but books in them. I too love beautiful volumes (Vintage does some gorgeous ones) and a few times I've paid more for a book just to have a prettier cover on it. And hahahaa, don't get me started on how careful I'm with my books. If I let you borrow one of mine it means I really trust you.