I didn't read books until I was 25.
Okay, for the meticulous. Until 25 I read fully on my own at most 10 books. That's a couple books in childhood, Lukyanenko, Werber, Beigbeder and Murakami in youth (don't remember what these books are about) and an attempt to read Crime and Punishment in school. That's it. Everything else - only in brief retelling or generally "didn't read but condemn".
Around 25 years old it happened that a bunch of things coincided:
1) I was lying unable to get up and was bored
2) I recently lost my job and wanted to learn something
3) from entertainment on the bed lay an iPad
The first book I read as an adult was "Steve Jobs". I liked reading, it simultaneously took a bunch of time and gave me the opportunity to put myself above others.
Time passed and now I'm not only the chief reader and philosopher in the room, but even a writer in some sense.
With writing in my life everything was simpler: I always had something to say. I did finish school somehow: I could form an opinion about a book purely by its title.
This was the problem, add two plus two: there's a guy in class who pretends to be smart but doesn't read books and you know about it. In class there's no point asking him about something - won't answer, and if he does answer, not what "the author meant". Essays are kinda okay, five for literacy, two for content. So comes out a stable C.
Maybe not noticeable from the side, but I was a D student in school, 2 subjects didn't work for me: Russian language and literature.
By 30 years this cognitive dissonance bothered me, and I wondered: how to understand why it was like that and became different?
The conclusion I came to: an A in literature is almost always a sentence.
It often happens that the only way to be successful in this subject is to write and tell about the book what's expected of you. Not how you understood it. Not what the author meant. But what's needed.
In other words, school literature teaches you the skill of translation. Until you learn to correctly understand the sentence "describe your opinion", you won't be successful in this subject. The correct translation from Russian to Russian: "write an opinion for which you'll get an A"
In other words, in childhood it seems the idea of literature as a subject in school is an attempt to understand something. In reality, understanding school literature is possible only one way: you need to understand what's expected of you and start doing it.
If they expect you to admire Pushkin - you need to admire him. If you need to say how brave Mayakovsky was - you need to understand how to prove it.
In other words, an essay about why "War and Peace" is poorly written won't bring you an A, even if you understood this.
An A in literature is a point that people who gave up get. An A in literature is the time when you stop being a child and finally become an adult.
After an A in literature you can be taken into the army, drink alcohol and have sex. Don't know why this isn't enshrined in law.
And for those who don't believe, I propose a trick: tell another person that with one question you'll guess their grade in school literature. Give the person a task: list 5 reasons why in Dostoevsky's opinion killing the old pawnbroker woman is good.
If there's no answer, the person has an A. Because "Dostoevsky didn't have such an opinion".
For each answer subtract half a point. 2 answers - B. 4 answers - C. Check it.