After that, it was like a snowball effect. As for English class in school, I think it had 0 or at most, a very small effect on me. I think the environment at home had a much bigger impact on my reading habit than school ever did. Reading in class often felt like homework something I had to do not something I wanted to do. Yeah, I did get introduced to a few classics through school but honestly, I was already into reading way before that. For me, it started at home just being around books all the time ( my dad has a huge collection of adventure novels, such as King Solomon's Mines, Sherlock Holmes and many others. I started with that genre and later expanded to others. Now, my reading has mostly shifted to nonfiction and textbooks) and seeing my dad read. If you want a kid to love reading, I think the best way is to have books all over the house and maybe read them short stories before bed. It makes reading feel fun and normal not like a school task.
Was it a class at school that sparked your interest in reading or did the habit come from your home environment?
by Delicious_Maize9656
11 Comments
The habit came from my home environment, although my family didn’t have much education, my mum made a point on buying books for me.
We had a lot of books at home, and I just read random things at all kinds of levels. Sometimes I had no idea what I was reading, but I was never scared to try (But my parents thought it was hilarious when I tried to read political thrillers about Soviet spies when I was 10 years old 😂).
I still remember a few classics from school that I really liked, but I think I liked them because I was already reading and didn’t need to struggle that much.
Home. School would have a little chance at making me read with the teachers that made a project of us reading a book and presenting it in class. That might have helped, but the habit was already formed.
school never made me love reading, video games did, also made me love classical music. I read kids/ young teen fantasy books when I was very little but never be passionate about them, then dante’s inferno came out and I read the entire divine comedy, and i just kind of spiral from that lol.
From friend who introduced me to fantasy books (Pratchett and dragonlance) in 5th grade. Thanks bro!
Same as you OP, my parents were big readers and read stories to us every night. We had a huge family bookshelf stocked with a variety of fiction, and from about age 6-7 onward I’d just pick books off the shelf almost at random and just start reading them to see if they interested me. I found most of them too boring or difficult but there were some, like PG Wodehouse stories, that I loved.
This is how I came to read 1984 aged about 11 and it scared the shit out of me for life.
Definitely from home. My dad was a big reader, and had lots of books around the house. Mum is dyslexic, and, whilst she enjoys books, does find reading hard, but she always made time for books in our childhood. She wanted us to have the fluency she doesn’t.
English Graduate here. And post grad in management.
However, post my graduation – I noticed my inclination towards Literature, its still a slow pace.
Social media random accounts on poets, writers – came as a plus to me, where I started developing interests. And finally in 2022, I bought a dozen book from different genres for a start.
Its still a slow process but I know I have started liking books.
Same as you, my habit definitely came from home. My mom taught me to read before I entered pre-school and we always had books at home. It must be a nature+nurture thing though because no one else in my immediate family is a big reader.
School also helped as we always had classroom libraries and my elementary school library was amazing, but by then I was already well into being a bookworm.
Since I learned to read before school and read the first Harry Potter books already in first grade, none of the classes 🙃
None of these. The library did for me as a young child before I even knew English (it’s my second language). It had even an opposite effect on me during secondary school: I lost the love for reading. A couple years after secondary school I founded the love for reading again and I never stopped