my love, and strugle with books.

don't faint, i'm updating twice in one month! this post came to me saturday afternoon, well part of it did, the other part is still taking shape. So, this might end up being a 2 parter. in fact if i can get my thoughts together it will be. SO the topic for this entry is books. Not what I'm reading, but how my love of books began. When I turned 6 i started kindergarden, and not only did i have to interact with sighted classmates and try to keep up, but I also had to learn how to read and stay on grade level.So i started learning braille, and I did fairly well at it. I was a good student, on a b honor role you name it till about 5th grade, then something changed.well, ok, thats not exactly true, the warning signs happened in about 3rd grade, when i would have spelling words i had to memorize and would be tested on them later. I had the braille copy, and mom had the print copy. every night was a struggle, aftger the rest of my homework was done, she would make me study those stupid words, then she would ask me how to spell them.I would sit here and pretend to be studying while i was really thinking about how quick i could get in my room and to my headphones so i could crank up faith hill, i think that was my artest of choice during those years.Anyway, to summarize, I was and still am a horrible speller, something wasn't registering in my brain, i still get there their and they're mixed up when i'm writing, well not they're but the other 2. Of course till half way through 5th grade my only way of reading was braille, they just kept throwing braille at me, here read this, and i didn't know any different. We did whats called an excelerated reader program that year, where you would read a book then take a test on it on the computer. Finaly, someone got the bright idea to introduce me to audio books, and that was it. I took off, reading everything I could get my hands on.Every week, we'd go to the library at school and i'd get another book, and would finish it and be tested on it. Let me tell you how in love i was with books, sometime that year I got the diary of ann frank, i didn't understand a lot of it, and boy was it long, but i finished it. I loved the places I could go just by putting a tape into a machine. Of course i wasn't interested in school stuff, I didn't care about science, but i did care about literature, I got excited when we would have to read novels, and I was able to answer most of the questions the teacher gave, but the rest of the subjects, please, just let me read and leave me alone. in fact, thats why my grades suffered so bad later because my textbooks wernt in audio format, and by the time I started getting them in that format I was past the point of caring. technology has developed in such a way that i can now read multiple books on my iphone. I use an app called read2go, it was very expensive, like 20 bucks, but it was well worth it. I get my reading material from www.bookshare.org. my only request when people suggest books to me is that it have a story line to it, i cannot read a book just with facts, something has to happen, i need a story. I know some of you are wondering well ok, if you have to have a story how do you read the bible? To be perfectly honest, its very hard. While the bible in itself is a story, I have a very hard time with it, but, every morning and every night I do a devotional, and it tells me what scripture to look at after it gives me something to ponder.I can't just open up the bible and read it I have to have some goal, some scripture i'm looking for. and. a lot of times I miss it because while i'm trying to pay attention my mind goes somewhere else. my senior year I was tested for being learning disabled. My reading was not up to grade level, in fact I can't exactly remember what they said it was, but i'm not stupid I knew it was low because every time i would have to read out loud in class i was always very slow. Even at the school for the blind, everyone read like sighted people and I struggled and had to sound out words. I took the act about the time i was being tested for being LD, and to tell you how bad it was my score was a 10.When i read braille everything just jumbles together and I don't get anything out of it, I do much better retaining information if i have audio, but still don't expect me to be able to tell you what happened at what point in the book. a lot of times I still forget who people are in a story, sometimes it comes back to me but sometimes not, actualy its not people its events that give me trouble. A lot of times I just go with it because i don't remember exactly what happened. now, the good news in all of this, I'm still gonna keep reading, this has not dampered my interest, I love going places with just a click of a button. I hope this has interested somebody.