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Who/What inspired your mojo?


Mac

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I have read since I can can remember. Like everyone on this site, I adore books, adore the different worlds; the different minds; the different souls. As far back as my memory can transport me, I've had my not insubstantial nose stuck in between pages of print and glue.

 

My GCSE English teacher, however, compounded my love of literature, giving me authors to sample and instilling in me my love of Shakespeare and Chaucer. Mr Dudek was my hero. Tall, passionate and wildly eccentric, he frightened most of my peers, but I practically worshipped him (hmmm...see Mac Reads 2009 for some cross-referencing and analysing of my psychological make-up here, guys - father figure alert! Father figure alert!)

 

I hold him largely responsible for my desire for peace and quiet whilst I read!

 

What's your excuse???

 

;)

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It sounds sad, but I can trace my love of reading back to a fairly lonely childhood, especially beginning in early adolescence, when my depression began. Being naturally introverted, I loved being able to live a different life in each of my books, and I saw some of my favorite characters as role models (especially those awesome girls from the Baby-Sitter's Club!). They were my friends when I didn't have many others. As I grew older, though, I really fell in love with reading and spent nearly all my spare time in my room, devouring books.

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I don't remember anyone ever inspiring me to read. However, I attribute my love of reading to being an only child, so needing to provide my own entertainment, and books were the obvious choice. My mum made sure I could read before I went to school*, and books were always a treat or reward for any time I was good and well behaved. Although my parents weren't big readers themselves, and I don't remember them ever reading to me, I also can't remember a time when there weren't shelves of books in my room, and I was always encouraged to read.

 

Therefore, I have to conclude that my mum was my inspiration to read, as she provided me with the building blocks to becoming an avid reader.

 

Having said that, like Mac, my English teacher ('O' level in my case), was one of the best teachers I ever had. I wasn't in the top set, and I was in a fairly disruptive class, but he was a great disciplinarian, he was the deputy head of the school, and he loved his subject. This meant he introduced me to some great writers, who I still love today. Although he's retired now, I still occasionally see him in the village, and he still remembers me, so I hope I made a favourable impression on him as well.

 

 

 

*Having said that, she also made sure I knew my timestables (family members say I could do my 1 - 12 times tables when I was three), and maths was always my favourite subject at school. It's just more difficult to make maths into a hobby or entertainment!

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It sounds sad, but I can trace my love of reading back to a fairly lonely childhood, especially beginning in early adolescence, when my depression began. Being naturally introverted, I loved being able to live a different life in each of my books, and I saw some of my favorite characters as role models (especially those awesome girls from the Baby-Sitter's Club!). They were my friends when I didn't have many others. As I grew older, though, I really fell in love with reading and spent nearly all my spare time in my room, devouring books.

 

I relate to this awesome post ;)

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My love of reading is all my mums fault, she always encouraged us to read and took us to the library from a young age, mainly because she couldn't afford to buy us books apart from Christmas and birthdays. As I got older I started reading the books she had kept as well as the library ones. I still love to emerse (sp?) myself in a good read. ;)

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I don't think there is a particular person or thing that inspired me to read. I do remember that as a youngster my parents would buy me the odd book now and again (I used to love The Baby Sitters Club and The Sleepover Club books). Both my parents read and when I was about 10 and we moved they used to take me and my two younger sister's to the local library every Saturday morning so I guess you could say they did encourage us to read by taking us.

 

It was only when I was 16 and started college that I got into reading big time (I was studying English I had various texts that needed to be read. I also read a few on the suggested reading list which got me reading more). My love of reading was the main reasoning behind my choosing to do English and university as I just saw it as an excuse to read all the time ;).

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My grandmother loves to read - these days she complains that she's read everything the library has to offer! - and my mother adores books, aswell. So I think part of my love for literature is genetic. ;) But, growing up, I really couldn't find anything else that made me as happy as reading did, anyway.

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My Da was an avid reader and I read a lot, so I got it from my Da. I also had a teacher at school who really encouraged my reading and my creative writing, she saw a lot of potential in me. ;)

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I've been a reader for as long as I can remember, in fact I have a Enid Blyton book that was given to me for xmas in '94 (I would have been 7 then) and I had been reading for a long while by then. Even though my mum never read I was always given books by various family members, and as I grew into my young teens and went to live with my gran, she would often take me to the big library in town so I could get heaping piles of books to keep me company and then I started going with a friend that was a reader, so it's just one of those things that's always been a part of my life which is really weird as there's not many readers in my family.

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As far as I remember our house has always been full of books and as kids our parents always read to us, children's books but also personal favourites such as The little Prince, told us stories (my mum had an awesome story vase, in which rested two dragons, one red and one blue :D) and took us to the library... So by the time we started school, we were all dying to learn to read.

 

I've also had some great teachers, particularly one last year who held an english class based on several american novels around the theme of september the 11... We spent hours discussing and analyzing them through the light of different themes... I'd say that's what brought me back to full on reading and inspired me to join this forum ;)

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My parents don't read at all, but they used to buy my brother and I plenty of books. They used to read to us occasionally and they sometimes took us to the library.

 

I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. ;)

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I've read since I was very young.. I'm not really sure what 'inspired' me to read, but I think more than anything, it just sort of came naturally to me. I learned to read easily, and much quicker than most of my peers, so it just sort of came naturally to me read, and reading a lot just followed suit. ;)

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I used to read a lot when I was younger, say up until I was around 15.

 

Then I didn't read seriously again until this year. Shamefully, it was the Twilight series that re-triggered my reading mojo.

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I fell in love with reading on my own. My mom was always telling my sister and I to go read instead of watching TV or playing games. One day I took her advice and I really got into books. I would go the library and take books out. When I got older I enjoyed my English and Social Studies classes and read lots of books through school reading. Now I am able to buy books and I find it to be an escape from the chaos that is my life ;)

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Both my parents and both my brothers read a lot. When I was younger I'd go to my dad and ask him to recommend books. We used to have these huge bookshelves and he'd take books out and tell me about them and in the end make a pile for me to read.

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I just fell in love with words at an early age both the written and the spoken, they became a part of me.

 

Books and reading have always been my constant. They were my friends in a friendless school and my companions away from tormenting siblings. They showed me worlds and people and situations that I could never have experienced without them. My moral compass developed under their tutelage, as did my vocabulary and my curiosity.

 

As an adult they became my way of making sense of a chaotic world. They hug me at my loneliest, comfort me when my heart aches and make me laugh when I am caught at my bleakest.

 

There are many things I could live without, reading isn't one of them!

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I think it's always really wonderful to see people expressing their passions about literature ^^

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My love of reading is all my mums fault, she always encouraged us to read and took us to the library from a young age, mainly because she couldn't afford to buy us books apart from Christmas and birthdays. As I got older I started reading the books she had kept as well as the library ones. I still love to emerse (sp?) myself in a good read. Posted by Madcow

 

Same here. In the days of black and white Television, OMG say my kids you had black and white TV!!!, My Mum took all of us to libraries and art galleries for entertainment. That was in Glasgow and there is a lot to see and do in the city that cost nothing...We were very poor then...awww

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Oh, many people are to blame in manifold ways! In chronological order, the main culprits are:

 

My mum: for bringing me up in a house lined with books, reading to me in bed until way past the socially acceptable age, and taking me regularly to libraries and bookshops from the tenderest age. Spending so much time in a pub called The Shakespeare back when she was around my age explains a lot, too.

 

Bernard Beatty, my close reading professor during my first year at Liverpool uni: wrapped in tweed and bow-tie, sitting in his small office overtaken by teapots and portraits of Lord Byron with posh Port and McVitie's mince pies at the ready, he instructed me in the art of writing the Shakespearean sonnet in order to understand and appreciate it.

 

Jill Rudd, my medieval literature professor in year two, whose passionate diagrams explaining the goings on of Malorian legend made King Arthur and all his knights jump off the near-indecipherable page.

 

Michael Davies, the Shakespeare professor in my final year, who took a vague inclination towards Shakespeare and turned it into a blazing fire!!!

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As lots of people seem to attest, my Mum was also partly responsible for my reading passion. However, this wasn't by the usual device of reading bedtime stories to me. It's sort of a long story but when my family moved house when I was 7, my siblings and I continued to go to the same school; we now just had to drive the few miles into the next village. Anyway, my Mum had this habit of either being late and/or, on picking us up from school, promptly parking up at the Co-op to do an hour-long grocery shop. So I spent a lot of time in the public library over the road (rather than catching hypothermia sitting on a wall waiting or getting bored in a baking car) ;)

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I never really needed anyone to encourage me to read, it's always come naturally. My Mum is a big reader, and my Dad was, too. I think they instilled the idea in me that if you're bored, well, you go read a book.

 

I guess I should also blame credit my sisters, as they taught me to read :lol:. They are 15 years older than me and used to babysit me all the time. I guess one day they just got bored with reading to me and decided to teach me the alphabet, then to sound out words and before we knew it, I was reading.

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I don't remember a time when I didn't enjoy reading. I was encouraged from being tiny by my bookworm Mum and I could read quite well before I started school - I was always several reading levels above my age group. I pretty much devoured books from the very beginning. :lol:

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There were a number of drivers, I think.

 

As a very young boy I lived in a house full of books, thanks to my fairly academic parents. So I always read a bit. I think I started reading full books when I found my dad's old Biggles books, and was reading them, but almost nothing else. Really limited.

 

Then my sister, I think, was reading some Daphne du Maurier, and my competetive instincts said "I can't let my older sister be reading full novels and me not", so I asked my mum for some novels. And that got me on to Sherlock Holmes.

 

In my early teenage years I'd hide in my room away from everyone and just read. I was really unsociable, actually.

 

Mostly, to be honest, my mum was the main driver - but I think for Christmas when I was about 14 or so my Aunt bought a JG Ballard novel which I was completely hooked by, and that got me interested in much more diverse range of novels than I'd ever been into before.

 

Since then, though, the best source has been my mum - she's seen what kind of stuff I was interested in, and even to this day, she finds me books I never knew about and which are fantastic and which are just slightly shifted along from what I am comfortable reading. She's been fantastic at inspiring and, more to the point, guiding me on to more diverse and more interesting literature.

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My mummy.

 

When I was tiny she had a book of 365 stories, and she read one to me each night. She used to bring me to the library, or, more often, she would bring my brother and I books. She went once a week for herself, so she always changed ours then too. My brother, being three years older, got to a point where he could take out three and I could only take out two, so mum used to take out a third for me on her card :lol:

 

As I got older, I started going myself. It was never something that emphasis was put on - it was just a thing I grew up with, but I'm glad I did.

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Like many of your here I cannot remember a time when I didn't read or obsess over books.

 

I remember in primary school excelling faster than my friends with the biff, chip and kipper books and being told I could read anything I wanted from the library but was a little sad to leave them behind and whenever the bookfair came to school I was totally there, maybe even the first person there :D My teacher Mrs O'Rouke used to read to us alot in class which I loved every second of. :D Whatever book she was reading to us I wanted to buy and read along side class. I loved writing my own stories in my rough book in primary school and secondary english, something I haven't done for a while.

My mum has always surrounded me with books, either buying them for me or letting me read hers. She would take me to the library constantly when younger and I remember borrowing alot of childrens poetry books and trying to read while walking down the street like Belle from beauty and the beast so she called me Belle for a while. :)

One of my favourite memories is the day my mum returned from working at the local secondary school with big black bags full of books the school library no longer wanted :lol: I'm still getting through them now. As a child I would just look at my bookcase full of books and smile at them then tip the bookcase over spilling all the books over the floor and then reorganise them. :lol: Overall it's my mums fault i'm addicted!

 

I used to try and get my brother interested in books by reading to him at night as we shared a room when younger, I still read passages to him now and he says 'oh right cool' :P

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