Thursday, May 03, 2012

Booking Through Siblings

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Do you have siblings? Do they like to read?

My mother had my brother nine months after she married my dad; my sister, 15 months later. I didn't come along until 15 years after my sister.

My brother, who died when I was 16, took after my dad and loved to read. By the time I was paying attention to what he read, he'd become obsessed with religion, and spent every free moment on the Bible or other religious material expounding on the Bible. I can remember him becoming quite upset with me when I suggested he read Franny and Zooey--totally the wrong kind of thing to be reading, in his eyes.

In hindsight, it's easy for everyone to see he was an untreated bipolar, and I still wonder how his life would have turned out if he'd had the proper meds. Would we have read the same books or continued down separate reading paths?

My sister, on the other hand, took after my mother, and has never been much of a reader. Part of this, no doubt, is because she has dyslexia, although, of course, no one figured this out while she was in school. She did, however, manage to read and love East of Eden, and endured her teacher's ridiculous notion that East of Eden was a dirty book that she ought not to have read.

In general, though, she finds books, and blogging about them, very dull.


Booking Through Thursday

7 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear about your brother.
    My siblings and I have different reading habits too.

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  2. My brother doesn't read a lot, and what he does read is mostly nonfiction. He grew up in a house with lots of books and reading, but he's always been our token non-academic.

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  3. I have a brother who likes to read, but he reads really slowly and I don't think he has much time for it. My sister reads but she's the busiest person I know. But she loves Jane Austen, I wish she'd join the Jane Austen society and come to the annual meeting with me and my mom in the fall!

    My husband isn't much of a reader either but my two girls are like me, hooked on books. My youngest just bought herself a Kindle and she's not even 11!

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  4. My brother didn't like to read when he was growing up. Now he likes a series of adventure books by a 19th century author who is heavy on the moralizing. R.M. Ballantyne.

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  5. My brother (age 40) boasts that he's not read a book since leaving school! Sister is an avid reader and Kindle devotee unlike me who prefers real books.

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  6. I have 8 older sisters and I'm really the only big reader in my family. A few of my sisters read but not like me. My mother was the power reader but as she has gotten older she doesn't read nearly as much. I used to wish my sisters read more so we could trade books and discuss the ones we've read.

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  7. While my sister reads, our taste is very different. She runs towards Danielle Steel and I go more for Hemingway. Go figure...our Mom loved Readers Digest condensed books..no time I guess

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