Reading habits:

As I have written before, Iranian culture is rather verbal than written, hence most Iranians find it rather boring to read. They mostly prefer to *hear* words & stories than to *read* them. So the reading time is very low in my country or at least that is what I've seen.
Reading time in my home, however, had always been an important part of a day schedule. Ever since I was very young, even at the age of 3, my dad & I used to lie on my parents bed while he read out books to me & later to my sister. Books in my little world, represented warm & cozy feeling.... One of my best memories are based on the time my dad was reading "One-Leg-ogre" or "DIVE-YE-LANGOO" as we call it, to me. It is a folklore story & is one of my favorites.
As time passed by & I grew up, books became essential part of my life. My mother thought me how to use the dictionary when I was 6 & first started to read books in higher levels. & from then on, I kept checking it for my answers to everything. I never asked questions but rather find them on my own. Maybe that's why I'm so obsessed with books! I carried them everywhere & being an intense reader, I was never satisfied with the amounts of books I was reading. I always wanted more, more & more. Having very diverse interests, the books I read were about different subjects... novels, science, math, history, geography, philosophy & a lot more. I remember easily when I first read Nietzsche; I was hardly older than 10 & I kept checking my dictionary & encyclopedia but it was an amazing experience. Later when I was 17 I read the same book again & honestly I was wondering how I could have read it at that time!!!!!!
Most my friends (well except for Katherine) are not much of a reader. & that's a shame. The few of them who do read, mostly stick to novels or text-books. They are mostly *too* busy to do a serious reading & that somehow disturbs me. I love them all dearly yet I do have the right to criticize them. That's really a shame that most of the books in most Iranian families are either text-books or superficial novels. But well, I am not the one to talk to, cos maybe they do the right thing sticking to one subject rather than having a taste of everything....