I knew something was up with me when I was home from school, “sick- in-bed,” as we used to call it. I believe I was nine and in the third grade. There was no such thing as a personal computer, and I certainly didn’t have a television in my room, and if I had, the only fare on offer during the day was soap operas, and maybe a few game shows. The year was 1960.

I’m guessing my mother wasn’t too concerned about entertaining me for the day. That was the job of one Nancy Drew, girl detective.

I didn’t set out to make my sick day special in any way. Reading was just what one did during the hours not taken up with playing games with my sisters and friends, riding bikes, crayoning in coloring books, and generally finding ways to keep busy on our own. I recall playing Candyland and Parcheesi with my parents, but mostly, we 1950’s kids were left to our own devices, entertainment-wise.

So I’m sick-in-bed but I don’t care; I guess I wasn’t that sick. I have Nancy Drew, along with her confederates George, Bess and Ned Nickerson. Oh, and I was fascinated by her tooling around in her “roadster,” whatever that was, since I didn’t figure out till later that a roadster was simply an old-fashioned name for a car.

A new Nancy Drew awaited. I got comfy in my bed and started to read. I read, and read, and read some more, and when the number of read pages came to surpass the number of unread ones, I had an epiphany: I could read an entire book in one day! And Daddy would be so proud when he came home from work and I announced my achievement. I hunkered down so that I could accomplish what felt like a most significant goal.

My excitement was boundless as I announced my accomplishment to my returning father, who was duly proud. It’s hard to remember back that far, but I believe I was proud of what I’d done for its own sake, not for the parental accolades. I’d read an entire book in a single day. I was now a Reader.

Fast forward to sixth grade, when the Scholastic Book Fair came to my elementary school. Knowing nothing about the author or his work, I was drawn to a collection called “O. Henry Stories.” I loved those tales of irony and suspense.

I continued to read for pleasure during the high school and college years, but there wasn’t much time for extracurricular reading.

As I was embarking on my literary journey, I became a more discerning reader. Yet for every O. Henry there was Rosamond DuJardin, who wrote romance novels aimed at teenage girls. I viewed her books as instruction manuals that would teach me – a shy and yes, bookish child – how to be a successful teenager. Also, they sometimes had kissing. I’d read the kissing sections over and over.

Upon graduating from college, I had not a single reading assignment. I enjoyed the freedom to read books of my own choosing, and determined to fill in my educational gaps by reading Othello, Twelfth Night and Moby Dick, which I did not finish due to my inability to make it past the 200 tedious pages of whale hunting. (Someone told me it is permitted to claim having read Moby Dick even if you skip the whaling. I feel like there’s an asterisk next to the title if you say “yes, I’ve read Moby Dick”, and feel some shame about your semi-truth). I took the opportunity to expand my literary horizons via my very smart roommate Laurie along with a highly literary friend (RIP Joel), both of whom introduced me to the best of contemporary fiction. I read Frederick Exley, Walker Percy, Updike, and of course the important Jewish authors Malamud, Bellow and probably my favorite author of all time, Roth.

During my thirties, forties, and fifties I was in two consecutive book groups, where the members viewed their participation as workouts for their minds, to use our intellects in ways we weren’t expected to in our work and personal lives. We read classics ( Yes, I am a person who has read War and Peace. ) We read Zadie Smith, Doris Kearns Goodwin and other historians, and Roth. My second reading of American Pastoral was a revelation. I’d read it twenty or thirty years earlier, but reading it as a parent gave me an entirely different and deeper perspective.

Those decades also marked a return to my Nancy Drew roots as I devoured the entire oeuvre of Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky and Robert Ludlum. Today’s nighttable often features the works of Joseph Finder. And of course I’ve been known to dip into the Grisham waters from time to time.

You’d think that, as a retiree with few commitments, I’d be passing the days consuming untold numbers of books, in a wide assortment of genres. If only.

I have unknowingly battled ADHD my entire life. A strange observation: I retained little of what I read. In high school, I remember telling everyone my favorite book was The Return of the Native. I definitely recall zipping through it and feeling very attached to the characters and their plights, but as soon as I finished Hardy’s masterpiece, I couldn’t have told you one thing about the book, though for some reason the names of the central characters. Eustacia Vye and Clem Yeobright stuck with me.

And here we are, at 74, struggling with age-appropriate memory lapses which are amplified by my Parkinson’s Disease. This means that I have trouble focusing on whatever I’m reading. I used to read about 30 pages an hour; now it’s more like ten, my mind skipping all over the place. I can barely concentrate, except… I do much better if the book is propulsive. It’s the Ludlum/Grisham/Finder books that restore the pleasure of discovering a read that you can’t wait to dig back into, and the perfect, peaceful way to end my waking hours.

True confession; I’m not even sure I enjoy the act of reading as much I once did. I do occasionally listen to audio books; sometimes they work for me and sometimes they don’t. I am prepared for an ever-changing me in all my multitudes- as a reader, eater, walker, and so on.

I recently added a new dimension to my reading life by becoming a mentor to the sweetest eight-year-old girl through a program called Read to a Child. Every Tuesday I spend half an hour reading to a second grader in a Boston Public School. I read and we discuss all sorts of aspects of that week’s book- vocabulary words, art work, and themes. I like to think I’m helping to nurture a lifelong reader. And it happens to have become my favorite half hour of the week.