Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

ROSALEE VAN STELTEN–WOMEN WHO LOVE TO READ

WOMEN WHO LOVE TO READ Rosalee van Stelten

Before I understood the written word, I would scan comic books loaned to me by a very young uncle, and turn their pages whenever he turned his. I had to give a good imitation of reading or he snatched the books away. For some reason, he never demanded I prove my proficiency.

My first reading experience was in grade one. When the clusters of letters suddenly held meaning for me, I was so enchanted I laboriously copied a favourite poem at home and made coloured illustrations for it. I can still recite it, in its entirety.

My mother gave me my love of verse. She didn’t read to us when we were young–no books–but recited adventurous and scary poems at bedtime, including “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The hackles still rise at the back of my neck when I recall, “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward….”

The first book I remember owning was “365 Bedtime Stories,” a Christmas gift. We slept four to a room: three girls in the bed, and my brother in a cot. I did the reading. The stories were brief, so when they were over I would make something up. One saga, of a wise old grandfather clock, went on for months.

After I discovered the public library, I read wherever I could find a corner to curl in, and devoured everything from Nancy Drew mysteries to L.M. Montgomery’s Prince Edward Island tales. My mother’s friend had married Lucy Maud’s half-brother and we inherited a desk that the famous author once sat at to sign books. The desk is gone but the magic of it, its ink-stained drop leaf, its nooks and crannies, are with me still. I also read biographies and Emily Carr’s “Book of Small” was a lasting influence.

The first adult story I remember, given to me by my mother when I was about eleven, was “The Happy Prince” by Oscar Wilde. I read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” from the same anthology. About that time, she showed me a magazine article: “The Bitch of Buchenwald” about Ilse Koch, an infamous overseer at a Nazi concentration camp. It told of her cruelty and pictured an item from her collection of prisoners’ skin tattoos. My mother wanted me to know the horrors of the Holocaust. Although I was a child, war was a vivid reality to me. My father was overseas for several years and fought in the Italian campaign.

When I was a teen in the fifties, I was a fan of Thomas B. Costain’s historical fiction, Lloyd C. Douglas’s romantic novels, and nature stories by Sir Charles G.D. Roberts. After I joined the Navy, I read all of the Hornblower series and Jan de Hartog’s seafaring stories. In adulthood, my favourite authors became Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro, not only for their storytelling skills but also for their strong sense of place.

The earliest book of poetry I remember is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verse.” I still own a small, leather-bound copy. Poetry by Robert Frost is another favourite, and P.K. Page.

I cannot imagine being without a book and usually have two or three on the go. Right now I am reading The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson and World Poetry, an anthology of verse from antiquity to our time. Next up is Lady Franklin’s Revenge by Ken McGoogan.

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Rosalee van Stelten was a secretary, a petty officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, and president of a cattle management company. A widely published free-lance writer, her book Pattern of Genes is available from Frontenac House. She is at work on a manuscript about her Navy experiences, the highlight of which was service on HMY Britannia during the Royal Tour of Canada,1959. A Calgarian for many years, and widowed, she remarried and lives in Victoria.

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Copyright © 2007, Rosalee van Stelten
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