In which I eat my words (and other people’s)

I’m a pretty voracious reader. 

Perhaps I have always been.  I know that I read a lot as a kid (references available upon request).  But it all kicked into high gear when I was about fourteen.  For my birthday that year a friend of mine gave me two Agatha Christie mysteries.  I had heard of Christie, I think, but I’d never read any or seen any adaptations on TV.  But I thought, “huh, I like mysteries.” 

I read those books straight, without breaks, and without stopping between them.  And I was seriously hooked.

Soon Agatha Christie became forbidden books.  My parents had to ban them during school weeks, because I would absolutely not do anything but read them.  I wouldn’t stop for dinner or homework or bedtime or school.  I would just read until I found out who done it.  (It was never who I thought it was.  Even after I had considered every suspect.  I always got it wrong.)

Then when I moved to Vienna my relationship with words intensified even further.  See when I first moved here, I didn’t know where to find cheap books in English, I didn’t know where to buy English newspapers (and I didn’t have a television or a computer that would play dvds).  So I was pretty starved for words.  Starved for language.  When I did come across something written in English – an advertisement, an imported copy of Cat Fancy left at a café, anything – I just ate it up.  And I don’t mean dainty nibbling with a knife and fork, I mean tearing it apart with my bare hands and devouring it, sentences smeared all over my face and participles dangling off my chin.

And much like anyone who’s ever gone through a period of poverty or want, I have never forgotten that time.