This Reading Life

I've always been fascinated by Graham Greene's childhood memories. He talked of reading HR Haggard and other exotic adventure stories, and later found he had chosen a similar life for himself.

There are many books that I remember from childhood; Enid Blyton, The Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, but my very first love was The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse. I was too young to be able to read it for myself but it was read to me at the end of each day at nursery school. I loved the LWH for its pluck and courage as well as its vulnerability. When I was older and could read for myself it was one of the first books I got out of the library. Comics were my daily reading for years. Back then there were many titles to choose from but for me, aged six, there was only one comic, Lion & Thunder.

My older cousin got one each week and at some random stage in the future they would be passed onto me, along with clothes and toys. This resulted in me always being slightly behind in a storyline, and drastically behind in fashion. There was a particularly gruesome time in the mid seventies when I was still being handed down flares and bellbottoms while everyone else was in drainpipes.

There were many great things about the weekly comics that are lost to modern day readers. Their large format meant that they were perfect for reading on the floor. Indeed that seemed the only way to read them, preferably more than one at a time so you could jump from instalment to instalment of your favourite without having to scan through other less interesting stories. Lion & Thunder was based on adventure, humour, and war, all with a streak of weirdness.

The Adam Eterno strip had a sorcerer's apprentice cursed to fall through time righting wrongs, indestructible except for weapons made of gold. Strange tales of diabolical Germans who invented mad machines and created monsters to fight the war. My favourites changed from month to month but one that has always haunted me was Janus Stark.

He was a Victorian escapologist, always wriggling through impossible spaces, secret passages, even gun barrels, a kind of rubbery Sherlock Holmes. The journey through London sewers searching for a man whom could reanimate Egyptian mummies is forever engraved on my reading memory. The sharp black and white images were perfect for conveying the eerie mood while never slowing you down too much detail.

Comics were social, they could be passed around, you could read them with friends and they had nothing to do with the reading we did at school. Later comics such as Action delighted us by being rebellious and violent, and most importantly they rarely had children as main characters. Who wanted to read about a child's life? It was adults who led the lives of danger and adventure.

The Death Game 1999 is a particular favourite

Comics were social and illicit. No one would accuse you of being a 'book worm' for reading them. Like most children I read and reread my favourite books and comics and I'm still amazed at how I can remember whole storylines of books and comics from nearly three decades ago while I have difficulty remembering the plots of books I read last week I recaptured some of that when I began reader-centred work with West Sussex library service. I was assigned the task of running a book group in various day centres in the county. I found that the normal book group format didn't work.. Many of the clients were non-readers, some that were had visual impairments or simply found it difficult to hold a book. The format we evolved was that I would read extracts to the group and then they would comment on them and relate them to their own experiences. Sometimes they would bring their own choice of books, sometimes they would rely on me to bring something interesting. In the course of this I found myself rereading Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie - a book that had completely passed me by when I had to read it at school. Reading extracts outloud and laughing and chatting about the pieces in day centre after daycentre gave me back something of that intense relationship with reading that I had had as a child. Whilst working on the Seahomes project this shared way of reading was a way to unlock possibilities. I'd been visiting one of the homes for a number of weeks. The care workers assumed that I would be working with the young people that were doing best at school. This excluded one boy in particular, John, who I was told had 'learning difficulties' and 'couldn't read'. John was a very effusive kid. He was always the first to greet me when I arrived. He would search through the box of books for his two interests, fishing and Star Wars, snatch these and then disappear to his bedroom for half an hour. Throughout the months of my visits to the home, John barely spoke and refused to read anything non-Star Wars/fishing related. The only Star Wars books he was interested in were the graphic novels. He had an extensive knowledge of the Star Wars via films that he watched over and over again on video. As I worked with other young people I would always try to bring in John but he remained on the fringe, always keen to look at the books but shy of any conversation.

Later in the year many of the young people had moved on and more and more it was John and one other boy that were there when I visited. I began reading out extracts of books that I enjoyed. The boys would often seem to ignore me, talk over my reading at times, and then oddly interrupt me to comment on what I had just read. Still, you would never have John down as a talker and his world was very much still closed off. A couple of weeks of reading outloud and this became a focal point of the visits. I became determined to find a way to know if John really could read adequately, or was just following stories and characters he knew off by heart.

Close to the end of my visits I brought in some new Star Wars books, they were aimed at children a bit younger than John and had illustrations opposite each page of text. I thought these would make the bridge for him. He asked me to read to him, and not just him but to the whole group of care workers and young people. I picked up the new Star Wars book I'd brought and was immediately told off by John. He handed me a SW graphic novel. I'd never read a graphic novel outloud. I wasn't sure you could.

I fumbled a bit at first. It was like reading a play. I had to fill in all the noises, occasionally point to a picture, and John would to help me on the pronunciation of some of the bizarre character names. It was going well, I was enjoying it and so was everyone else. John watched carefully over my shoulder. After 15mins I called a halt for a cup of tea. I put down the book and told John he could carry on with it later expecting him to vanish to his bedroom. Instead he picked up the book and began to read, and he read perfectly. It was a joy to see the wonder on the care workers' faces and the confidence in John's voice.

Unlike Graham Greene, reading exotic adventure stories didn't send me off around the world but my childhood love of comics and their nature continued to effect me as an adult.