The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma

I love reading books about other books. Of course, those types of novels only cause my to-be-read pile to grow, but I really like seeing the magic that books work on other people. I don't know a lot of people that enjoy reading in my own, day-to-day life, so seeing others describe which books have influenced them makes me feel less alone. They let me know that somewhere out there in the universe, people like me exist. I own lots of "best of" type books that exist purely to list reading recommendations. I also have lots of online lists of recommendations saved to try and read from later. It's basically an obsession at this point. My life mainly consists of reading books, reading articles about books, reading books about books, talking about books, shopping for books, and (occasionally) eating and sleeping.

So, when I spotted Alice Ozma's The Reading Promise at my school's book fair a few years ago, I was instantly intrigued. This memoir promised to be about Ozma's impressive feat of  reading out loud every night with her father from the ages of 9 to 18. I was interested to see what her favorite novels were, compare them with the books I loved as a kid, and see how the stories she shared with her dad strengthened the bond between them. I bought the book and stuck it on my shelf, then ended up never getting around to reading it. With my Clear the Shelves and True Books challenges underway, I decided it was finally time to give The Reading Promise a shot.

The novel begins with Ozma recounting a bit of her childhood and explaining how she started her reading project. Her father was an elementary school librarian and they would read together already on most nights, but one evening, the idea of a reading streak entered Ozma's head. She proposed reading out loud together for 100 night in a row to her dad, and he readily agreed. Once that milestone was reached, Ozma extended the challenge to be 1,000 nights of reading in a row. Once that milestone was reached, the pair just kept on going all the way until she graduated from high school and left for college. The pair never missed a night and ended up reading all sorts of novels together, from old favorites like The Wizard of Oz, to newer selections like The Harry Potter series.

All of this reading forms the background to a series of vignettes about Ozma's life, with events such as her parents' divorce, her grandparents' deaths, her sister leaving for college, and other typical family milestones taking center stage. Her writing flows nicely and is easy to read, and her humorous anecdotes make the pages go by quickly. This is a relatively short read, and an enjoyable way to spend a few afternoons.

What this novel is not, unfortunately, is a book about books. The reading streak is consistently pushed to the background in favor of other family stories that have very little connection to the novels Ozma and her father make their way through. While the books and reading are always there, they aren't a significant part of the story. Few actual titles or opinions about books are even mentioned. What The Reading Promise truly is is a memoir about the life of a very young woman who hasn't undergone anything especially interesting in her life aside from achieving an unusually close relationship with her father. While her writing is nice and her stories are sweet and sometimes touching, this book isn't at all what the cover suggests it will be.

At the end of the novel, Ozma includes a partial list of the novels she read with her father during their streak. I was glad to see this element, but disappointed that it was so incomplete. Ozma explains that they has no idea while they were reading that their project would stretch on so long, so they didn't write down all of the books as they were going. That's completely understandable, but what we're left with is a rather short list that is composed of mostly Judy Blume, J.K. Rowling, L. Frank Baum, Beverly Cleary, and Donald J. Sobol (of Encyclopedia Brown fame). I was hoping for some lesser-known recommendations.

Unfortunately, The Reading Promise just wasn't what I wanted it to be. Based on the cover and summary on the back, I don't feel like I had unreasonable expectations for it. This was described as "the heartwarming, true story of a young woman, her single father, and the power of books." Most of that is true--just not the part of about the books. Books were there, but they did not hold as prominent a place in the story as I was expecting. Ozma's vignettes about her childhood and her dad are undoubtedly charming, but this is not really about reading. Ultimately, I was left wanting more from this one.


Challenge Tally:
True Books 2018: 7/18 + 2 bonus books
Clear the Shelves 2018: 10 books donated


Total Books Read in 2018: 20