“I’ve met people who associate books with pain.”
That’s very sad. Our family vacations were spent reading on the beach. The first book I stayed up all night reading was Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowed.” Of course I also ended up doing more chores because my older sister was busy reading something and I wasn’t. I had a book confiscated by my fifth grade teacher who thought it was “too mature” for me, but then my sisters and I also hid “Fear of Flying” from my mom. My daughter turned out to be a highly gifted writer. He college fiction prof. said she wrote the only piece of science fiction he ever liked. I read it and immediately thought “Bradbury.” What a blessing.
If not for greats like Bradbury and science fiction, this dyslexic — who was told he was “stupid” by his teachers — would never have learned to read.