On Reading a Series, Reading Snobbery and Binge Reading

I often come across parents who complain that their children read only Geronimo Stilton, or only Wimpy Kid. Or only Dork Diaries, or … what else? If social media had existed when I was a child, parents would probably have been fretting about children reading only Enid Blyton–except for the fact that snobbery around the act of reading is a real thing. It is considered far more acceptable to read Enid Blyton (never mind the gender stereotypes and racism–we turned out okay, right?) than to read Geronimo Stilton. Here’s why I think that’s so.

• Enid Blyton was British. On the whole, there was (is?) derision of everything but the Queen’s English. Only proper English, thank you very much, no Americanisms, and definitely no slang.
• Morals. Yes, parents are obsessed with reading being educational. (I know, not all parents. I know. My parents, for instance, weren’t.) Good girls and boys do well in Enid Blyton’s stories. Bad boys and girls learn their lesson.
• Facts. Yes, Enid Blyton can teach you the difference between moths and butterflies. She can teach you how to recognize male and female sparrows. She explains the differences between mushrooms and toadstools. What more do we want from literature, right?
• Fewer illustrations. Strange as this may sound, I do know parents who don’t like Tom Gates and The Thirteen-Story Treehouse because there are too many pictures. Fewer pictures=more text=value for money/proper education.

Even so, given time and the pressure of social media, I’m sure parents of children who read just Enid Blyton would have been at their wits’ end when children refused to “graduate” to other writers. Of course, they would. Because reading is supposed to be educational. The purpose of reading is to improve the mind. And how can you do that if you keep reading the same things? When will you grow up?

From that worldview stems the snobbery around reading. But reading for pleasure is different. It comes from a space that is familiar, well-loved, warm and cosy. I don’t go and make new friends every day. It’s the same with reading. I don’t go hunt for new, unfamiliar books every day.

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I was much less of a reader than my mother and my sister, primarily because I was one of those kids who devoured a single writer at a time. Towards the end of a series, I would slow down because I was not comfortable taking the plunge and reading something new, until I was assured that I would enjoy the next read as much.

When I began reading Secret Seven, I had to read all of them, but I knew there were other series that I was likely to enjoy, so I was comfortable. I read Famous Five, Five Find-Outers and Dog, The Adventurous Four, St. Clare’s, Malory Towers … I loved Enid Blyton because she wrote series. All that effort, getting to know the characters, becoming familiar with the setting, all of that, was worth it because I knew I would not finish a book only to have nothing to do with those people ever again.

As I devoured series after series, feeling the pain of finishing each one, I realised that I could read other books by the same writer. That created a sense of familiarity too! So, I read everything by Enid Blyton–and then ran out again.

One series I read that I felt no one else in the world seemed to be reading was Little Sister by Allan Frewin Jones. How much we hunted for those books! We went to store after store in every city we visited. We still didn’t manage to get the whole set, but I loved Stacy so much!

Books by Roald Dahl were expensive, but again, he wrote many books and I enjoyed the familiar madness he created. I borrowed a few, collected a few through birthday presents and then finished reading all those. What next?

William didn’t work for me. I didn’t understand what I read; I found him dirty and silly. I’m not sure I remember the details, but I remember thinking of him as a mean little boy. I wanted nothing to do with him.

And each time I finished reading a series, I floundered. I didn’t want to read a standalone book – never. I was willing to venture into the unfamiliar only if it was worth it. If I knew that I could spend more time with those people I met and learned to care for, I was willing to read. If not, I didn’t want to make the effort.

This, to me, is the reason children read their beloved Thea Stiltons and all the rest. And when they’re derided, pushed to read something new when they’re not yet ready, it’s a difficult moment, like any new experience in life. Especially if they think they’re going to be mocked for what they read, they feel the need to read Agatha Christie or Jeffrey Archer, for that’s “proper” reading, right? It’s respectable reading–which they neither understand nor enjoy.

Growing up in a family of readers, I had the luxury of choice. While my sister read Anne Fine and Joan Aiken, I read Dick King-Smith and Michael Morpurgo. I always read writers who wrote many books, all of which were guaranteed to be accessible to me the moment I needed them. In my teens, I was willing to try new writers who wrote standalone books, provided they wrote many of those. So I went on to read all the Georgette Heyers, all the Mary Stewarts, dozens of Dick Francis …

A few years ago, when I consciously started reading children’s literature again because I enjoyed it so much and no longer felt pressured to read literary fiction, I read Lari Don, Bartimaeus, Cat Royal … Of course, there were series that worked for me and others that didn’t. But for those that worked, ah! I tore my way through book after book, all the while wondering what I would do when the series ended.

Yes, this is binge reading. There’s a certain kind of guilt that goes with reading just one more book–yes, for me, sometimes it is just one more book, not just one more page or one more chapter–and that guilt is, I suppose similar to those who binge-watch a web series.

That’s why when people seem all admiring about how much I read, I feel like saying, “Um, wow! You watch so much television!” It is sometimes exactly the same. Snobbery in reading is so much more derisive than in video watching. People are far less scathing of those who watch mindless videos than those who read mindless books. I know people who wrap their books in newspaper if they’re ashamed of reading them in public. All the while, other people watch entertaining videos on social media.

Sometimes I read trash. Sometimes I read to show support. Sometimes I read for no reason at all. Reading is fun. That’s all there is to that. I read for fun.