A Lifetime of Losing (and Finding) Myself in Literature

By Sheila Curry Oakes    |   Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - Off the Shelf There are books that you skim along the surface, you enjoy them, you finish them, but they don’t take hold of you. Then there are the others where you plunge, no questions asked, into another world. When you emerge, called to dinner for the 10th time, jolted to your stop on the subway, you aren’t sure if you are in Narnia or on the N train. When the book ends, it’s like awakening from a dream where the world around you feels like it’s the make believe. It’s disorienting. I’m always eager to dive back in. I discovered the powerful pull of words and books when I was very young. I don’t remember not being able to read Although, once  when I was 5 or 6, I had trouble deciphering the words in The Story of Babar the Little Elephant  because the type was in script. Since I couldn’t read it, I thought it was in French. A few weeks later, I broke the code and whenever I went to my grandmother’s house I would read about Babar, Celeste, and Zephir the monkey. Books weren’t as readily available to me then as they are in today’s world. I had limited options: The bookshelves at home or the local library. In the first town I lived in the local library (The Perrot Memorial Library) was small, with a marble entryway. The greatest thing about that library was, once you had taken out your books, you could go sit under a willow tree by a stream and read them. It was heaven. ” –... READ FULL POST