by Kimberly O'Connor
On Sunday night, I finished Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans and wept for a solid 15 minutes, so long my husband put down his own book to get me a box of Kleenex and a glass of water. I sniffed for a while, hugging the book. Then, because that extra hour of daylight savings time made it too early to go to bed, I put the book aside and picked up another.
Read. Read. Read all that you can. We’ve all heard it from every writing teacher we’ve 
ever had: If you want to be a writer, you have to read. I grew up reading all the time, usually when I was supposed to be doing something else. I read during math class, in the school cafeteria, in the bathtub, after bedtime. I read at the dinner table. If I was sent outside to play, I took a book.
In college, though, my reading began to shift from pleasure to obligatory task. I loved many of the books I read as an English major, but I had to read them. It felt different, less fun. When I became an English teacher, reading felt like even more of a chore. I was reading books so I could teach them, and I had better get my characters and themes straight before I got in front of the classroom. As I got older and busier, I read for pleasure less and less.
When I entered my MFA program, things got worse. Once I discovered I was supposed to be publishing my work in lit mags, I realized I was supposed to be reading them too, a prospect that filled me with anxiety. Which ones should I read? How would I get them? I read the occasional journal fitfully, feeling like I was never doing enough.
Having a baby made reading even more of a challenge. I wanted to read, and I had plenty of books: I checked them out from the library and bought them from the bookstore and received them as gifts. But my habits were sporadic. I’d finish a whole novel in two days, ignoring things like making dinner to read. And then I wouldn’t read again for another three months, too exhausted by the ever-rising tide of parenting tasks to commit to entering the new worlds of the books gathering dust on the shelves.
But now the baby is older (she’s six), I am no longer a high school English teacher, and life is more manageable. More and more, I find myself coming back to reading. I’ve started dispersing books to all corners of my house. A stack in the bathroom, a stack in the kitchen, a stack in the car. I find myself reading while I stir pasta. I read instead of washing dishes and while I’m waiting for my daughter to put on her shoes. Once again, I read in the bathtub until the water turns too cold to stay in any longer.
And in the pages of whatever I pick up, I connect. With The Book of Unknown Americans, I met a whole apartment building full of people I would have never known otherwise. I learned where most American mushrooms are grown and got a chilling glimpse of the hard work of harvesting them. I remembered, with heartbreak, forbidden teenage love. In all those lit journals, I’m introduced to countless new writers—Leah Lax, for example, who I felt like I personally discovered last summer only to find out she’s actually pretty famous. I find old friends too, like when I realized that the latest Crab Orchard Review contains poems from not one, but two friends from my MFA program.
In elementary school, my favorite part of the day was Drop Everything and Read—DEAR, they called it. Though I loved it, it seemed redundant, since I was reading pretty much all day anyway. Now it seems like fabulous advice, and I am trying to do it much more often.
This post is part of our annual Lit Matters series, in which writers and readers express why supporting and elevating literary arts—the mission of Lighthouse Writers Workshop— is important to them. If you agree, consider supporting Lighthouse on Colorado Gives Day. Mark your calendar for December 8 or schedule your gift now. Thank you!
Kimberly O'Connor is Lighthouse's Young Writers Program Director. Her poetry has most recently appeared in the Colorado Independent and on the Denver Poetry Map.
