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Lifelong Member of the Nerdy Book Club
Hi, I’m Donalyn and I’m a reader.
For most of my childhood, I felt guilty admitting I was a reader, as if I should apologize. Reading was something only nerds did, and nerds weren’t cool. I was a member of the Nerdy Book Club even then, but it was a club with only one member—me.
That’s not exactly true. In my head, the membership of the NBC was legion. But how could I explain to my school friends that I belonged to a club with Fern Arable, Claudia Kincaid, and Henry Huggins among its members?
When I was ten, I begged my mother to change my middle name, a woefully deficient “Ann” that was clearly missing a vital “e” at the end. She had never read Anne of Green Gables and didn’t understand how much I needed that “e”.
It is definitely nerdy to admit that my seventh grade (book) crush was Calvin O’Keefe from a Wrinkle in Time. Hey, Calvin, I have mousy hair and glasses, too!
Wow, I don’t think I ever told anyone that until now.
Over time, my reading community grew. I married a reader (best decision ever). We raised two daughters who like to read. I became a teacher and now spend 9 months of the year with a herd of nerdy readers in my 6th grade classroom.
I know librarians—lots of them.
I discovered scores of other nerdy readers through goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, and at my school. I have met many authors—first in their books and again in person. They are superheroes to me still, just like when I was ten.
I have found a home with my fellow Nerdy Book Club members. I have built a life around my book love and it seems to be working for me. I don’t have to apologize for being a nerdy reader anymore. I revel in it now.
Welcome to the Nerdy Book Club. I was waiting for you. I know that you were waiting for me, too.
Don’t forget to nominate your favorite 2011 books for the first annual Nerdy Book Club Best Books List.
Donalyn Miller is a 6th grade language arts teacher at Trinity Meadows Intermediate School in Keller, TX. She currently writes a blog, The Book Whisperer, for Education Week Teacher. Donalyn lives atop a dragon’s hoard of unread books and spends her spare time traveling, visiting old friends, and daydreaming in the pages.
Nerdy Book Club 
I love this post!
I wasn’t secretive about my membership in the Nerdy Book Club as a child – and I was lucky enough to have friends who accepted my quirks.I frequently was grounded – “Put that book down and go outside” (Though I then took a book out to the tree in my backyard).
I hear your crush on Calvin. God, how I loved Wrinkle in Time. The best part, though? Reading it now as an adult when I can see the amazingly deep meanings behind every word and action. I love reading this book with my fourth grade students.
Narnia was my second home. I bawled my eyes out when Peter and Susan were told they were too old to return. Major trauma – I was almost that age and it killed me to think my own imagination might be dying too. (I don’t think it ever did, though.)
My husband won my heart in high school with a bag of books. We were “just friends” (the kind of friends that everyone else knows aren’t really “just friends”). He brought in a duffle bag filled with science fiction – including the entire Dune saga. How can you resist a man like that?
My newest love? Comic books and graphic novels. Yes, I’m really late to the party. I’m a gifted resource teacher (elementary) and my students are eating up my unit on comics and graphic novels.
Thank you for formalizing our memberships in the “nerdy book club”. I think we need shirts and pins!
Maria Selke
(infrequent blogger at mariaselke.com – Maria’s Mélange – where I talk about things like teaching, parenting, and comics as well. I also started a “book of the week” for my students that I post online at http://dragonsbookoftheweek.weebly.com/ )
Since we’re sharing NerdyBookClub secrets, I’ll join in…
When I was younger, my friends never had to guess what gift I was bringing to their birthday parties. The small, rectangular package always contained a new book. Worse, it was always a book that I wanted to read. After spending time walking up and down the aisles of the local book store, I would head home with my friend’s gift in bag… race upstairs to my papasan….curl up….and read their gift. It wasn’t theirs…yet.
It would take me hours to read the book – ever so carefully turning pages to prevent wrinkles. My eyes were slits. I didn’t want to crack open the spine – that would be a tell tale sign that I had read their book – so I would gingerly hold the book open as far as I could and slowly decode that last word on the line. I felt guilty that I was reading their book before them; but not guilty enough to stop!
Count me it! I’ve been a life long member of the Nerdy Book Club–at least since I innocently told my first grade teacher that I didn’t finish the story and could I please take the book home with me? Once at home, I promptly locked myself in the bathroom and read the whole anthology from cover to cover.
I can relate to climbing my favorite pine tree in the back corner of the yard with a book in hand (or clenched between my teeth). Now I’m more likely to stretch out in the hammock on the back porch with my book. I still read two or three or more books at a time and keep a book handy where ever I am. I didn’t have to struggle with adding an e to Ann, but once I grew up, I died my hair red to be like my favorite redheads–Anne Shirley and Caddie Woodlawn.
Now I entice new members to join the nerdy book club as they come through my 8th grade language arts class. I love it when I student tells me, “I like to read now.”
I was a teacher’s pet. I remember my second grade year sitting in a circle taking turns reading aloud, and being nervous that I would get a word wrong. In third grade we had some fancy (for back then) projected reading helper that I thought was the coolest thing ever. In fourth grade, I remember my young teacher reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer aloud to us in class, and how we students were all transported to another time and place. By then, I was allowed to visit the library on my own and check out books as an advanced reader.
In fourth grade I also began playing an instrument, the flute, and so started the other love of my life. Like reading, music just came naturally to me. I was supremely self-motivated by it’s creativity and endless resources of learning.
Fast forward to college. I was a music education/performance major, but another vivid memory is reading Sophie’s Choice while lying on my couch in my apartment, totally transfixed. It was an indulgent pleasure that was a break from the intensive school study of music. When it came to the end of my degree studies and time for student teaching, I had found a part-time job in a bookstore to make ends meet. Why not? I had always loved books, so that was a no-brainer. Little did I know that it would be the beginning of my career.
At that store I met sales reps who traveled to sell the new books coming out from the major publishers. After I graduated and went home, I took a job at the big local department store chain, while I decided my next career move. I took my teacher’s certification test for music K-12, but I’d been in school my entire life, and I was desperate to be independent. When the department store found out I had bookstore experience they put me right in the book department on the day after Thanksgiving. There I met the store wide book buyer with a national reputation. She took me aside and told me that if I stayed in the book business for 6 months or 6 years, she would mentor me and it would be the best experience I would ever have. I stayed, and she did and it was a once in a lifetime experience. Even then though, the retail business was in transition. Big department stores were phasing out all their specialty departments and book departments were becoming obsolete. Big dollar returns were expected from square footage allotments, and books didn’t have a high enough price tag or made enough turns for exceptional profitability.
From there I went to an independent bookstore, where I learned more about bookselling and book buying. I was tapped by one of those original sales reps from my college days when there was an opening for a publisher’s rep job. I took it. I was all of 24 and I was working for a big NY publishing company. That was twenty-seven years ago.
Today I am an independent publisher’s rep, meaning that we are our own company of representatives. A group of reps, representing a group of publishers. I don’t think it could be any more appropriate that my ultimate career choice was an innate love of reading that even predated my inner musician. I am still that musician. I married a musician and my son is a musician. They are readers, too. So we all have both things in common. There was a time when I imagined that I could never marry anyone other than a musician, because how would they understand me otherwise? When I read about how we nerds recognize each other, I’m right there with you. My husband thinks the same way.
I am privileged to have a career in bookselling and publishing. I have met many wonderful people spanning all segments of the industry. I have traveled extensively doing it. I managed to eke out a family and a family life while doing it and continue to learn and grow and read and find new books and wonderful authors. Sometimes I get to practice my flute, too.
I’m glad you aren’t apologizing! There are so many times I hear adults apologize for what they are reading when I ask them what they are reading. It’s usually adults, kids seem to get that books are cool no matter what, but there’s something about adults. They apologize for “reading candy” or “ridiculous crime novels”. There should never be any reason to apologize for reading…well, unless you’re reading when you are supposed to folding laundry or doing dishes and your spouse finds you cozied up for a book. But even then I say laundry and dishes can wait, they aren’t going anywhere!
OK, I admit it… I have to ‘fess up. I’m a total book nerd. Always have been. Always will be. At the age of 5, I painstakingly wrote my name in the front cover of all of my books (with pen!) and guarded my library carefully. It warms my heart that 30+ years later, I still have a few of these books and relish in sharing them with my 4 year old who is just beginning to read. Oh, how we smile when we read “Claude the Dog” or Ezra Jack Keats’ “Dreams” with my name spelled with a backwards B in the front!
Although I was probably never (ok, NEVER) described as a good “student,” a spark for reading had been lit at an early age, and there was no way anyone or anything could extinguish that fire. I may not have been reading what was “required,” but I was always reading, often at times that I wasn’t supposed to be. As I moved from “Amelia Bedelia” to “Ramona Quimby…” to “Forever” to Jackie Collin’s “Lucky” from elementary school to high school (I am the black sheep of the book nerds, I know), I never forgot one thing… books take you places that are different from your everyday life… different good and different bad… and both are important places to visit at times if we are to become a peaceful, compassionate, and intelligent society.
Thanks for staring this group. I am proud to call myself a book nerd!
I was never a secret book nerd but I was secret about what I was reading a lot of the time. I think I was afraid of what people would say and I didn’t want others to criticize or make fun of what I was reading. What I was reading was special to me and I didn’t want someone else picking on it. I didn’t want to defend what I was reading. Even with friends of mine that were readers too. For me reading was special and I just wanted to escape within the pages of the book and with the characters in the story. It took a long time before I found people that were like minded about what I loved to read and could share books on a different level.
Thanks for starting the Nerdy Book Club.
Love this…especially the idea that it feels like you’re the only one – when you’re not so alone after all. I was there, too… Just way up north. (I bet if you listened really carefully, you’d have heard me turning pages and sighing, though.)
Exactly! And you, Kate are one of my author-teacher superheroes!
Love your post. I think the thing that I love the most was, “Welcome to the Nerdy Book Club. I was waiting for you. I know that you were waiting for me, too.” That is exactly how I felt after meeting so many of you at All Write, and then again at NCTE. Like I had found this group of people that were just like me. I think this book club was one of the best ideas yet!
I’m a book nerd too and have loved reading all the book nerd secrets we all have. I bet there are a lot of us who wear glasses now because we read too much under the covers with the secret flashlight after lights out.
I’m proud to be a book nerd and my daughter has adjusted to the fact that she was named after an important place in my favorite novel.
This summer I drug my cousin through Salem, MA and the house of Seven Gables in the drenching, pouring rain because I had to tour Hawthorne’s house.
Yes, this is the best club I could ever be part of. Thank you to all of you who are my new “nerdy book friends”!
Julie
@Mrs_Hembree
Books are my life literally but reading did not come easily. I was an Air Force brat who moved a lot and by the third grade I was nearly hopelessly behind in my reading ability. I had an awesome teacher that year: Mrs. Anderson who allowed me to come to school early and stay late and she tutored a group of us in the same situation. She also read aloud every day and we were transported into the life of a small brown bear from darkest Peru – Paddington. It was then that I found the two loves of my life books and reading and got my very first public library card. Books were a huge part of my life – I even became a teacher hoping I could be like Mrs. Anderson. Fast forward and I was frustrated by the school librarian where I worked – I asked if he were to ever leave could I have the job and headed back to school to train for my dream job. My administrator was true to their word and I have been a school librarian for over 20 years. My philosophy is you can never have too many books or read too much. Fortunately my family understands my addiction and puts up with frequent trips to bookstores, the piles of books around my house and the sacks of books that go with me on every road trip. The Nerdy Book Club is a perfect fit for me and I can’t wait to see what new adventures await.
I’m actually tearing up. It’s so awesome to belong to a community of readers. My friends have accepted my ways, somewhat. They always invite me and my latest book over. They understand my need to sneak away and read. They actually seem proud of me at times. And, finally, I’m proud of myself! Hound Dog True.
I am STILL the nerdy reader in a high school English department. My colleagues always ask me what to read. My students even ask me if I sleep, because they think all I do is read. Apparently, I am known for the phrase “this is one of my favorite books.” Now they all yell in unison: “they are ALL your favorite books!” I wear my nerdy reader badge proudly, as do my husband, one of my kids and some of my fabulous students. I have to go read now.
Donalyn,
It is somewhat bittersweet to read posts like this, because I have not been a lifelong member of the Nerdy Book Club and at times I feel I missed out on a big part of my life. Unfortunately for me reading until high school was pretty much SRA boxes and assigned books. Thank goodness I had a very nerdilicious hs english teacher that invited us to read tons of great books of our choice. Then that was followed by finding some great college friends (including one who took a year off school and worked nights at a 24 hour convenience store so he could just read … how awesome would that be).
Still trying to make up for my “lost years”,
Tony
No matter how many times I read it, post STILL makes me feel like I’ve come home. I’m so grateful to be a reader & to have raised readers, one in particular who is just like her mother. It feels wonderful to stand up & proclaim myself as a reader, because like so many, being a reader was my secret identity when I was younger. #Nerdy&Proud
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