When we go to first grade and maybe before, we learn to read. It is not the same thing to learn to write but clearly reading requires somebody or something doing some sort of writing or printing if we are going to have something to read. Between school, library and smartphones, we get lots of reading done, not to mention signs and labels and ads and such.
I knew that I enjoyed getting into a book and eventually I started a course called Personal Reading for Professional Development. It was a review that graduate, experienced teachers could use to think back over their reading lives. The only assignment was to make a list of the books they had ever read, from the Pokey Little Puppy and the Little Engine that Could to the last James Patterson thriller. Graduate teachers often have completed their master's degrees and have been reading since they were about 7 years old. The students could usually make lists of 300 books or more, often three times more.
A teacher is often aware of basic learnings and skills and experiences they are responsible for giving students. In today's multi-media world, they may use field trips, films, projects requiring multiple students working together as well as lectures, student and guest presentations as well as textbooks and other printed sources. I think it is worth the time and effort to ask yourself what books have mattered in your life. I have two lists online, one from 1983 https://sites.google.com/d/1Mj_h2EbWEE7UefuJVfDBUQei7JHcthi1/p/1Yd0teDOh-hkVw4MYnJgOOBJIhPALnvGy/edit
And one from 2011
https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/recent-reading-2011
Naturally, I was often asked what authors have mattered to me. My usual answer is "C.S. Lewis" and "Jacques Barzun". Of course, they are deceased now but their books were excellent for me and basically still are. There are many other authors, books and subjects that have mattered. "Walden" for instance and "The #1 Ladies Detective Agency" and "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry". I read aloud to Lynn most every night and "A Gentleman in Moscow", the nutty novels of Peter DeVries and "The 3lb Universe" came to mind as memorable. There is no guarantee that we recall everything we have read or that we would like something now that we read in the past. I used to ask students who assured me that they had read the assignment, "Ok, what is the next word after "Fisher" on p. 26?" Of course, they were outraged by such a question. I couldn't answer that question myself.
