Reading books

In the waiting room of the Labtest Browns Bay waiting for my name to be called up to collect some blood sample for my health checkup, I saw a mother with her son, a toddler waiting, too. Each of them held a book in their hands reading quietly. The toddler seems to be very sociable that he stared at me with a trace of smile on his face. I smiled back. Having sensed my friendliness, he wobbled toward me pointing at a picture in his book to show me, seemed like trying to tell me what it was. I was amazed by his being very interested in books and his sociability. His mother smiled and looked at him. I asked the mother "your baby is very fond of reading, how have you trained him to be a book lover?" She said "I read books for him before he goes to the bed." "Ah! that's why." I extolled.

I'm not a good reader and that is why I admire people who enjoys reading. This reminds me of the summer vocation of my first year of senior high high school. one of the homeworks assigned to us for the summer vocation was reading a book titled "dream in the red mansion" and writing a short conversation about what you have learned from reading that book. I remembered that Chinese classical fiction we were asked to read was more than 400 pages. The story was about a heavily pampered only son of that family and his cousin, Lin Dai-yu. It is one of the most favorite books among Chinese reads. I tried to read them all, but because I was not so interested in reading that I had only finished about one third of that book. When that summer vocation was coming to an end, we were supposed to return to school to get ourselves prepared for the resumption of school before the official start of the new semister. I asked some of my classmates about how well had they done the assignment of reading that classical fiction, and a couple of them excitedly told me they loved it, and not just the that, they read two or even three times of it. At that moment, I admired them very much and felt ashamed for my reading capability.

There is another type of reader who cannot live without something to read. Once I was engaged in a chat with a group of my colleagues talking on the subject of reading. One of my colleagues said that her husband was a strong reader. Her husband has to have something to read. When he is not busy with anything then he is always in search of something to read. If the community newspaper is the only thing he can get at that time, he reads it without skipping any single word. And he does even read every one of the advertisements in the classified pages. it will be very cool for me to be like him.

I admired book lovers. I know there are lots of profound book readers. They are able to be completely absorbed in the reading for hours or even a non-stop whole day. Some of them can finish reading of a heavy book in a few minutes with perfect comprehension. My web search for the fastest reader tells me the Howard Berg is the fastest reader in the Guinness Book of World Records. His reading speed is 25000 words per minute. Comparing to mine, the number of words he can finish in a minute will take me two days at least. How can he do that, and why can't I?

People who love reading are usually quiet, calm and confident. Their school performances are unexceptionally outstanding. A family friend came to visit us with their two daughters of year 4 and 6 in the primary school. Both of them disappeared soon after greetings. I found them sitting on the floor side by side with my old Reader's Digest in each of their hands reading by the book shelf, totally absorbed in the books. When I switched our conversation to the topic about their children's strong reading capacity, I was told both of the two girls were of the top students in the school.