Reading is Magic: Rediscovering Literary Narnia

A few years ago I interviewed for a job at a library. I didn’t get the job, and that was OK for a number of reasons. But one of the best parts of the interview was when the library director asked me,

“Why do you want to work here?”

I said,

The director smiled and said,

“We think so too.”

Since I was a child, reading has been a central part of my life. I don’t remember learning to read. I remember asking for harder books in first and second grade. I remember plowing through the easy ones even when I was older just because they were fun.

My favorite way to spend a summer day was to head to our little local library and come home with a stack of books, then finish them within the week.

The excitement that came from realizing a favorite book was just the first of a series. Of discovering a new author by accident and seeing a whole shelf of books yet ahead of me. Rereading old favorites as comfortably as pulling on a favorite sweater.

In the seventh grade we could borrow books from the shelf in our classroom and I read nearly all of them. Popular series were passed around the classroom like secrets. I’m sure our teacher smiled all the while at our barely contained excitement.

It’s safe to say I was a little nerdy, but I’m not a bit sorry. As an adult, it hasn’t been a full vacation unless I’ve had the time to finish a book.

I find myself wondering if it’s really worth it, if I’m reading the right books or if I’m reading up to my potential.

I remember being in the third grade and my mother complaining that I was reading Encyclopedia Brown, which was well below my reading level at the time. But I enjoyed them, especially the ones where I had forgotten the solutions to the mysteries.

Sometimes I am still that little girl, embarrassed at the stack of Christian regency novels on my shelf and my Kindle full of westerns (a genre I never would have considered in the past).

I feel sheepish at my accidental discovery of Naomi Novik and her fantasy/alternate history series that lasted through nearly all nine books before I got off track. (I swear I’m going to get to those last two books next when I finish my current fiction in progress).

I was an English major for goodness sake, I should be reading the rest of the Bronte sisters or James Joyce. (For the record, I hate James Joyce. One of the only authors I avoided during my British Literature classes in college).

Except I don’t want to. At least not right now.

We do choose what we devote our time to, but some things are just a slog and it’s OK to be an adult and decide we just don’t want to right now.

I need to rediscover the magic. I’ve been checking out library books again, instead of settling for whatever is free or cheap on Kindle.

The wardrobe may be closed, but I’ve found my way back to Narnia by another road, and soon I am pulled in again, where anything seems not just possible but probable. Where time stands still and my heart ceases to age. When the end comes, I am pleased yet sad and I close the covers with a melancholy sigh, already dreaming of the next one.

As I sit reading in the tub, Spotify begins to play a beautifully arranged instrumental version of Reading Rainbow and I realize that I’ll never outgrown this love, unless I want to. This first love of my mind before I knew there were other options is mine as long as I embrace it.

I must stand aside from my everyday to visit and yet it gives my days more meaning. It offers more than it takes and I hope I don’t forget this when my hours feel too full for another adventure on those pages.