"School did so much to suck the joy out of reading that reading was simply out of the question for a good five year chunk of my life." This is quite a curious

"School did so much to suck the joy out of reading that reading was simply out of the question for a good five year chunk of my life." This is quite a curious thing to say, and I'm taking it quite literally: assuming this is true, how is it that you know so much? Have you "made up" for your lost time after high school? Or were you actually learning, but latently? If the former, that's pretty amazing efficiency. If the latter, what part of school do you think it was that caused this?