A Life Through Reading

I am in the process of sorting things, clearing things out, and I found this post that I wrote for my reading group blog a while ago, and I thought I would reproduce it here.

                                        My mother reading - this photograph was taken when she was in medical school.

My mother is sitting in an armchair by the stove in our home in Athens. I am six or seven years old, sitting on a stool at her feet and I am listening to her reading to me 'Les Malheurs de Sophie' by the Comtesse de Segur - she is reading it in French. I love the stories by the Comtesse de Segur, and my mother has read them all to me. In this particular story, Sophie has had a package delivered and is so excited she cannot wait to have it opened. A beautiful, wax doll is unwrapped and I am as excited as Sophie, at the same time wondering what a wax doll looks like: it is a mystery, but oh such an intriguing one.

The second major landmark in my reading is a few years later, I am 14-15. The reading is still in French, but I can do it myself now even though my mother guides my reading and we talk about the books and poems I have read. I am obsessed with French literature, poetry in particular. I have discovered Baudelaie and Rimbaud and what a discovery their poems are! Baudelaire appeals to my adolescent angst and Rimbaud helps me soar to unimaginable heights. My love of Rimbaud has never left me and when at University I find a fellow admirer in my friend John, who is a writer and poet himself now, and when John  goes to France he brings me a photograph of the young Rimbaud - it still hangs in our sitting room today.

This is also the time of my political awakening and I am very interested in the Greek Civil War. I feel proud that one of my mother's brothers joined the partisans: he was their messenger, going from camp to camp on his skis delivering messages. When captured by the government forces he is sent to one of the arid Greek islands where partisans are sent on exile. There is one particular novel that I enjoy at that time, called 'Abyss Street, 0 number' about the conditions on these arid islands that I lend it to one of my school friends. She returns it the next day saying that her father forbids her to read it because it has swearwords in it. I am puzzled, but now I understand that it must have been the political content of the book that he disapproved of.  Another favourite is Z by Vassilis Vassilikos.

The next major landmark in my reading is when I become a feminist in my early twenties and I start devouring everything that women have written on the subject: Mary Woolstonecraft, Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, Robin Morgan, Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Marge Piercy. I love them all - it is like a door has opened and everything makes sense now.

The other major reading at that time is my discovery of the English 19th century novel. The favourite is Jane Eyre, and I read this novel once a year throughout my twenties, but I devour them all: Elisabeth Gaskell, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy. I get totally immersed in the Victorian period, and by then I am living in England so I start collecting antiques and visiting houses and museums to feed my fascination.

By this time I am at university studying Sociology and I very quickly know what it is I want to specialise in, namely Marxist theory and in particular, the work of French philosopher Louis Althusser and of Nikos Poulantzas, who is also based in France. I choose the courses I take carefully so that I can study their work and my French comes in handy here, as I am able to read some of Poulantzas' books that have not been translated into English yet.

The next great love is Margaret Atwood who I discover in my late thirties, and this is the beginning of my reading contemporary literature which is what I mainly enjoy to this day. My voracious reading of literature comes in very handy when I start teaching, as the majority of what I teach, with the exception of A Level Sociology, is English Language and Literature for GCSE and A Level students. All of this time, I continuously re-train myself in literature.

When I stop teaching I start to indulge my other interest which is art. I take two evening courses at Warwick University, and indulge this love by reading a lot about art and by the  writing of this blog. At present, my main interest is modern art, same as in literature. This reaches further, the antiques are all sold or given to charity shops, and I am into modern, modern, modern. This can be seen in my choice of ceramics, another passion, which are all contemporary, as seen in the posts I post.

These are the major landmarks of my life of reading and they have helped shape who I am.