Bianca Rosu

September 25, 2019

Over the years, my interest and awareness regarding reading have varied from time to time. I remember that every time I would go and visit my grandparents in the summer vacation, who lived in the countryside, I would have my grandmother reading us, me and my sister, bedtime stories, stories that most of the time would be very frightening, making me and my sister not to able to sleep at night thinking what if those stories were true. But all this excitement for reading died little by little once I start elementary school. Being a kid that grew up in Romania, during Communism, where everything was limited, from food to access to information, our education system was also very different from the western countries.

Most of our teachers were very experienced and knowledgeable. Because I was living in an era were getting a job was a long process that needed so much education and diplomas, becoming a teacher was not easy.

So even though generations have passed, when I start elementary school we would still have to read many unnecessary books, exactly like they did, following the same system that they had. Every semester was a torture. I remember in the beginning of Romanian classes, my teacher giving us the list of the books that we had to read along the semester. An endless list that I would get bored just reading it, let alone opening and reading each book.

I was actually lucky having my sister in the same school, being just one year older than me, we would have to read the same books. Having this passion for reading, she would spend most of her time reading them and then making summaries while I was playing outside with my friends. Then when the time would come, I would just take her summaries, read them and make my own summary after hers. I thought I was smart, but to be honest, I was lazy, and also I would prefer actually to solve a lot of math problems than reading a book.

So reading was not at all one of my daily activities anymore, until this day when my sister had lost the summary of this book called Otilia’s Enigma, by George Calinescu.

George Calinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies. He is still considered one of the most important Romanian literary critics of all time, alongside many others, he is one of the outstanding figures of Romanian literature in the 20th century.

Even though I never liked reading, I was a responsible student and I would always do my homework on time no matter what, so I found myself in the situation that I have to read this book. I remember preparing myself to read it. We were in the middle of winter and after everybody finished with my mom’s delicious dinner, they all went to the living room to watch this movie that my dad had found. Was our house’s tradition for every Sunday on the cold weather. But I remained in the kitchen, by the fireplace that was still burning some of the wood left. I still remember the smell of chicken soup that my mom made that day and the smoke from the fireplace, was so cozy and warm, perfect moment to start reading the book. Believe it or not, once I started reading, I couldn’t let it go. I wouldn’t go out anymore like I use to, I would stay late in the night just to finish one more chapter and find out what was up to Otilia. This book was full of mystery and very unpredictable. Otilia’s Enigma novel was created in the Balzac style, which is a style that uses the technique of describing in detail the characters and their environment. The author uses this technique to describe its classical typologies of people like the miser, the hypochondriac or the jealous type and then fits them in a conjucture of those times, more exactly, Romania in the 20th century. So literally when you read this book, behind all those words, you can just picture a draw with all the fine lines and details.

I kept reading it day after day until I finished it. I have reached one of my records with this book, reading a three hundred page book in just one week was a surprise even for my mom. By the time I finished reading the novel, I realized that this was a life lesson to me. It actually opened my eyes and showed me how the real world looks like when you become an adult. Made me be more realistic in the society that I was living in at that time.

I discovered later on that the reason why I didn’t like reading was because of the genre. All those books that I have to read at school were just not my taste, but this book was definitely the one that made it clear what kind of books I liked. Nowadays, I still don’t read as much as I want to, I am still searching for that kind of book that once made me happy and totally changed my perspective towards reading.