Happy Monday!
Yesterday, my youngest daughter texted me about a book she was reading. Most writers are prolific readers, but when you are working on a novel of your own, reading becomes difficult. It’s hard to turn the inner editor off. She was so happy, because for the first time in a while she sank into the book. It grabbed her and wouldn’t let go.
Sadly, the story didn’t end well, because I knew the book she was reading, and it does a stand on its ears at the end that completely ruins the whole thing. But that got me thinking about how wonderful it is to sink into a new book. There is nothing quite like it, is there?
My addiction to books began as an escape sometime in childhood. I don’t remember not being able to read. On the way to school, I would pass a children library, and at some point someone told me that I could go and get a library card and check out anything I wanted. Every couple of weeks I would show up at the library and select my stack of books. I brought a special bag just to load them all. They would let me take out 7 books at the time.
There was nothing like hauling that bag of books home. I still remember that feeling of anticipation and just simple happiness. I was 8 or 9, and that memory still makes me smile.
How did you start reading?
I also grew up reading, sometimes to escape and sometimes for what I escaped into. They let me check out fifty (fifty!) books at a time from my library. I remember literally reading every single book in the small school library in my elementary school. And not just for the free personal pan pizza:)
I don’t remember not being able to read, but my father read to me at bedtime well beyond when I could. I also don’t remember my first sci-fi/fantasy, but there were so many…C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Clarke, Unabridged Bros Grimm, Norton, Eager (Half Magic!), Thurber, and more….so many more! I used to ride my bike to the library on weekends and stay there for hours.
I started reading all the beautiful hard covered and gold edged paper of my mother’s books. The Bobbie Twins, Little Men and Little Women. Can’t remember all the others and then went to the library, what a joy. Then was addicted to Little house on the Prairie books too.
I started reading in kindergarten, Enid Blyton. But my first fantasy novel that really pulled me into the SF/F genre and all the subgenres since was Dragonsong by Anne McCaffery. I picked it up on a whim and read it and haven’t been without a book since. These days I carry a purse solely because I won’t go anywhere without my kindle. I’m pretty sure I have a copy of Dragonsong on it.
Dragonsong!!
But my first sci-fi books were Andre Norton. Beast master. Witch World.
oooooooooo me too
Me too! I still have all these in falling apart paperbacks!
Same.
Me too! I loved all the Witch World books and everything Andre Norton wrote! I also love Anne McCaffrey but started with Dragonflight!
I loved Anne’s books too and the artwork on her covers was amazing. Restoree and The Rowan were my faves. I didn’t have a TV in my house until I was in high school in the 80’s so it was all about books.
My mom says I started reading to her when I was 2. I was reading scifi and fantasy by the time I was 7, but the weird thing was if it had pages…I read it I wasn’t discriminating! I read everything from Nancy Drew, Kay Thorpe, to Andrea Norton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, CJ Cheryl, Agatha Christie, you name it I read it. My favorite genre was scifi/fantasy but there weren’t enough published each month back then to fill the craving so I read everything else. I had read everything in our town library by the time I was a young teen. Still going strong but just a book or 2 a day now rather than 7 or 8.
I was indiscriminate when it came to reading. I was reading the encyclopedia, romance harlequins, westerns (Louis L’Amour, Max Brand, Zane Grey), fairytales, science fiction, magic (fantasies by Rick Cook, David Eddings, Ru Emerson, Marcia J. Bennett, Robin W Bailey, Piers Anthony, Mayer Alan Brenner, C Dale Brittain, Glen Cook, Daniel Hood), etc…
Sigh..The cashier from our only used bookstore told me that I was their only customer who bought such wide range of genres.
+100
Me too!
Dragonsong for me too. I still have all of Anne McCaffrey’s books… mostly in hardcover.
I don’t remember a time when I didn’t read. I remember being very young, maybe 3 years old, and my father would read to me and my brother from 1001 Arabian Nights, and I wanted him to keep going every night. I know I was reading on my own before kindergarten. When I was 10 I set myself the goal of reading every book in my town’s library. And other than reference materials, I did! I finished as a junior in high school. According to the circulation librarian that was just shy of 7,000 books.
Dragonsong was one of mine too! Honestly though, I don’t remember the “first” book that got to me, but I’ve been reading for so long that it doesn’t matter anymore. My mom used to take me and my brother to our local library every week.
I’m reading Enid Blyton’s Enchanted Tree series to my kids now! Thats such a good one!
omg I also read enid blyton just in russian
Dragonsong may have been my first fantasy story as well or Alanna the first adventure (Tamora Pierce) I read before that for as long as I can remember but those are the first books i remember strongly and read again and again. Followed
soon by MZB mists of avalon and the sword and sorceress anthology and Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksenarion
Yes, yes! All of these sparked my love of fantasy too! And Katherine Kurtz.
For me, it was when my 5th grade teacher read us The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. After that I read the rest of Narnia, then went in search of more like that and found Lloyd Alexander and Tamora Pierce
That was my first engrossing book too!! I love Dragonsong, it has a very special place in my heart.
I apparently needed help reading (which I got, thank you volunteer!!) but I have no memory of it.
I only remember reading. 😁
nothing can stop me now!
I recall bringing a book to my mother and asking her to read it to me. She told me to ask my brother instead. My brother told me to read it myself. That was the beginning of my love affair with reading; it had never occurred to me before that I could read books to myself, but I found that way better than having someone read them to me. The library card followed shortly afterwards.
My mom says that I taught myself to read on a short road trip when I was 5, by reading the road signs and billboards. I never stopped, and share your love of libraries!
Every night at dinner, my mom would read stories to the family and we had books from the time we could hold them. Reading was where I could escape. I also remember riding my bike to the little store a mile away to get the latest comic book. Every week on Tuesdays riding to get the latest Richie Rich with my $.25 or $.50 from chores. Love books!
My earliest memories are reading. As soon as I was shown how letters formed words, it was all over. By the third grade I was reading books of unabridged Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and The Hobbit in the fourth. Losing myself in a good book is still the best thing ever.
Same!
I don’t remember learning to read. I remember reading circles in school where we would group read Dick and Jane readers. It was so slow that I would read ahead which caused the teacher to turn my chair so that my back was to the rest of the circle. I didn’t notice until it was time to go to the next subject.
My mother worked at the NYPL. She brought me books from her work. I didn’t go to the library. It came to me. I was a very bad student: I hated homework — it interfered with my reading!
+1 but the nuns gave me upper level reading books. Bonus points to those nuns 🙂
My cousin Kay worked in a library and for Christmas she gave the children in the family books. I remember looking at my older brother’s books wishing I could read (I received picture books). The only reason I wanted to go to school was to learn how to read. By the fourth grade I hade a college reading level. I’m 58 years old and still occasionally thank Kay for giving me a love of books.
I did the same thing. My teacher, Miss Mraz, at 58 I still remember her name, would come over and point out where the rest of the class was so I could read my part. She always let me read longer also, I think it was because I didn’t need to sound anything out.
I fell in love with reading (abt age 8) when one of my elementary school teachers read Dr Dolittle to us. I had our library cleaned out for youth by the time I was 10. I moved on to adult fantasy and still am a keen reader.
I reread my favorite books frequently. I would rather reread a good book than read a mediocre one. I used to note month & year inside the cover. I miss being able to do that with e readers.
Also can’t remember not being able to read. My mother read allsorts to me, poetry, Shakespeare sonnets, John Donne [honestly what was she thinking], Winne the pooh poems,. She had lots of books and I had the run of them. No library near us, so we borrowed…
The first book I remember falling for was Magician by Raymond e Feist, so much so that I wrote to the publisher wanting to know when the final book in the trilogy would be released… pre-internet and pre-orders… we made a special trip to get it…
love, love love books… even the bad ones, even the one I can’t abide, always the ones I loved and reread!
I got my library card when I was 4 years old. I was heavily influenced by librarians so never dog ear or break spines. Don’t even get me started on how hard it was for me to highlight textbooks.
I read all genres but sci-fi, fantasy and fantasy adjacent are my comfort books.
I am an avid reader/audiobook listener. I drive a lot for work and do many hand crafts and discovered how wonderful audiobooks are for that lifestyle about a decade ago.
I recently downsized and donated all my paperbacks and first edition hardbacks to a library for use or sale. It was hundreds of books. I haven’t completely replaced my library with ebooks but most definitely all my favorite authors are in my digital library.
I too cannot abide dog ears or breaking spines! It bothers me to the point where I refuse to lend any of my books to my partner, because I want to keep my copies neat 😂 I have read each and every book on my shelves, with the exception of the TBR of course, and they mostly still look pristine 😂
I’m becoming slightly more relaxed about it as I get older though, which is probably healthy 😉
When we downsized I also donated hundreds of books to the library. It broke my heart to give them up, but I’m happy I got to donate them. There were about 30 that I couldn’t bear to part with, so those had to stay. I just found places to put them!
Oh. So hard. I am near to needing to downsize and need to get rid of hundreds of books. I tremble at the thought.
I am having trouble downsizing my books too. I am finding it increasing difficult to read now, so they are gathering dust. I see them and think ” o! I may read them again, someday”. Or I just hold them and remember the joy of reading them. I grew up in a small town, so no library available and the school library was non existent. I would get books as gifts. I remember there was one year in school that a certain achievement reward was a book. I was so mad when I met that achievement next, and did not get a book.
My favorite reading memories were going to my grandparents house for several weeks in the summer. it was a small country town with a little library. she would take me on the first day and I would load up with 20 books (the max) and when I was finished she would take me back to pick more. Now I take my kids to that same little library on spring break or Thanksgiving break when we go down there.
I started reading for pleasure by “borrowing” my mothers romance novels. Velvet Angel by Jude Deveraux, which I was much too young to be reading that looking back. lol Afterwards I rapidly went through the rest of her cardboard box stash of books and started purchasing my own, never looking back.
Fellow Jude Deveraux mother pincher here! 😀 Sweet Liar was my jam!
The Raider and really all of the Montgomery/Target series. Just delish.
I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t read for pleasure. My first foray into SF/F as a genre happened when I was 9. I complained to my mom that I had nothing interesting to do/read. Instead of telling me to clean up my room, she gave me the first SF book she had ever read (she had probably been 19 when she read it) and told me to enjoy myself. It was Starship by Brian Aldiss and might have been a little above my head but I never stopped reading after that.
I came into the kitchen from outside to find out what was for supper. My sister, who was in first grade at the time, was sitting at the kitchen table saying words out loud. I asked our mother what she was doing and she said, “Reading. Do you want to learn?” and I said “Yes.” A couple of weeks later, I could.
My mother always said that I was sitting on her lap and she was reading to me out of a new book that had just arrived in the mail (the children’s book club in question no longer exists), and I said, “I can read that!” and proceeded to do so.
She insisted that what I remembered couldn’t possibly have happened; but I don’t recall what she remembered, so I think both of them did.
For the record, the one family joke about me that bears any resemblance to reality is that I learned to read when I was five and have never stopped.
My mom had been a teacher but quit when she had my oldest brother, so she was always a reader. My dad read, too, but he was more of a gardener so his hobby was a greenhouse. But I remember my mom taking Brother #3 and I to the library when we were kids and I remember reading books on dinosaurs. Later my brother introduced me to some books about a kid who investigated mysteries with his friends, and in that same section were Trixie Belden books. I read some Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, but Trixie Belden was my favorite.
But I still remember picking out dinosaur books at the public library.
Loved Trixie Beldon. I still have a collection of most of those books.
yes!! Trixie B!! My very good little girl was named in her honor and I use it as my nom de plume!
Also Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames. I dont remember when I started but when I was in 2nd grade the teacher wouldn’t believe I could read one. I had to stay after school and read the 1st Trixie out aloud to her then explain what I read. I then got unfettered access to the school library. When the County library finally opened I LIVED there!!!
Yes! Tricia Belden, Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames were favorites! Preceded by the Bobbsey twins! My sister and I used to have book races.
In NZ I started on Enid Blyton, mostly the Famous Five and Secret Seven books but a number of her others as well. Then discovered Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Trixie Beldan as well. Never heard of Cherry Ames – I might have some investigating to do!
Nurse in WWII solving mysteries. At least, if I remember correctly – it’s been better than 50 years since I last read one.
I wish I had kept my Trixie books. Only a handful are available via Kindle and they’re not sequential unfortunately. I might have to hit up some used bookstores to see if I can remake my collection.
Trixie Belden was the BEST! I’m so glad there’s someone else that remembers those books. I finally gave up on Nancy Drew; they all ended with Nancy doing something stupid and someone had to rescue her. Although I did have a thing for Carson Drew.
Oh, just thought to look at ebay and there’s all kinds of Trixie Belden books for sale. Hoo boy.
Trixie Beldon was the best. Those are really the first books I remember reading. Then went on to Nancy Drew, The Black Stallion, and of course Cherry Ames. Wanted to be a nurse after I started reading that series, but sadly the sight used to make me faint, so that was an option. Still addicted to mysteries.
Should have said. . .that was not an option. Sigh. What happens when you do stuff after your bedtime.
By any chance was the one series Encyclopedia Brown?
When I think about reading, I can’t remember exactly when I learned to read. I know I went to first grade (no kindergarten) already knowing how to read and my first grade teacher was annoyed because she wanted me to learn to read “the right way.”
In elementary school we would read out loud with one class member at a time reading a paragraph. I always got the shortest paragraph and I spent most of that time reading stories from the back of the book. I finished the book in a few weeks with one finger on the spot the class was reading and flipping back and forth so I never got caught.
After I finished our class literature book, I’d gaze over at the small library of books we had in the classroom and wish I could just go get another book while everyone else was reading aloud. Never happened.
I spent my elementary years reading every Boxcar Children book, then Babysitter Club, then Sweet Valley High, then Christopher Pike and RL Stein and Stephen King and Hemingway and on and on until high school and college shifted my priorities.
I remember sobbing uncontrollably in 5th grade because I read ahead in Where the Red Fern Grows and no one else but me knew what was triggering my unexpected outburst. I actually got in trouble for that one- but how can you limit a kid engrossed in such a wonderful story?
My husband and I grew close by reading Harry Potter together while long- distance dating in the early 2000s, and once again I found myself in trouble for reading ahead! Good trouble this time.
I love urban fantasy and have read dozens of series dozens of times. I love to re-read. I edit for a few authors in my free time for fun. I just love the world of literature and House Andrews is my fav.
I am the youngest of four, and every summer vacation our mother would read aloud to us and we would have big outings to the library. It was a great day when I got my first library card, too!
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t reading. when I was a child, during the summer a book mobile would come around and I would load up on books every week. My mother was also a book lover and so there were always tons of books in the house. pretty sure I was exposed to harlequin romance novels WAY before I should have been. hahaha
My father took me to the library to get grade level books. The next day I asked him when we could go get some new books? He wasn’t sure I had really read the books so he questioned me. We went to the library to get books two years above my grade level, so I’d be occupied longer.
We moved to Baltimore for my husband’s job. I was having trouble getting a teaching job. I haunted the Baltimore County libraries. They were beautiful and saved my sanity. I did get a job 6 weeks later.
I had thought of being a librarian, but I liked children and liked my kind of books.
I was the stubborn child who could read but wouldn’t. Had to go to a parent/teacher conference (4th grade) and discuss my lack of effort…bored, bored, bored. Teacher allowed me to pick a book, any book, as long as I read it. Made it through one, then another, and the rest is history. It went from please read to put down that book and do something else. Now a happy devourer of books, I refuse to give up the habit. Yes, I’m a reading junkie.
When I was 7 or 8 I took a tumble off a playground swing and landed on my stomache. There was some bruising on my stomach and I was hospitalized overnight for observation. I woke up in the middle of the night, homesick and crying. A nurse came in and put a light on and gave me the books my mom had left with me. I don’t remember the book, but I remember how familiar the pictures and words were and how they made me feel at home.
We always had books at home. From bible friends to fairy tales. As I got older, got hooked on serial comics. Waiting at the magazine stalls for the weekly issue to come out. It makes waiting for Fromanday easier.
My mother didnt finish schooling because she had to care for her younger siblings after her mom passed, because she was the oldest girl. She was 12 there were 7 younger than her and 2 older boys.
Reading was the only thing that she had for herself after everyone was in bed and chores were done.
When she had us, my 2 sibs and I, she took us to the library every Saturday. Nothing was ever off limits. I was the only one that kept the habit up. I think she realized I was addicted when I would ask her for dried oats because Black Beauty loved it and I wanted to try it 🤣. I think I was about 8. The family started giving me books for gifts after that.
I grew up reading too but it started more as a love around 11/12 age when my mom bought me a great edition of the brothers Grimm fairytales. I still remember it. My love for pnr, urban fiction and reading started then and it has only grown sooo many years later
I was a late reader. I was very far behind in primary school and was in intensive speech therapy and on many learning to read programs. One day in year 6 I found a novel of my sister’s, opened it and started to read to my self. My world was opened up. I could read, I just couldn’t read aloud due to the phonics delay. I read my first adult novel when I was 12 and haven’t stopped since. I remember I would stay up late into the night reading by the glow of my heater. I have also come to realise it was demand avoidance. I love reading but tell me I have to read a book for school and I do everything I can not to. My English teachers hated that I didn’t read the class book and would just skim read the section in class to be able to answer the questions, but would bring a new novel to class everyday to read when I finished my work. I now mostly listen to audiobooks as life is so busy which has refreshed my love of reading as it forces me to slow down and listen to each word on its own.
I appreciate the craft of writing so much more now.
My whole family are readers. As a child, as far back as I can remember, my dad took us to the library every Saturday. It was my mom’s time to herself, and we all learned to get lost in an old Carnegie library with lots of nooks and crannies. My parents never really forbade me from reading any types of books, and as the youngest, I started my sister’s favorite authors at a much younger age that she did. My parents were ahead of their time, and just asked me to bring my questions to them. Some of my favorite memories of my father are at the library or discussing books.
Like you, I always remember being able to read. I actually still remember the first book I checked out of the library for myself. I was 5 and the book was Snow White and Rose Red.
I had a stroke several years ago and while I’ve learned how to work around some of my deficits reading is difficult for me. I can manage a short story, but anything more just doesn’t stick. That’s why I appreciate the effort you put into your audio books. I can really immerse myself into the stories.
I was so mesmerized by public libraries when visiting family in the States, because we had no such things in Mexico. My American-modeled school did participate in ordering from the Scholastic Catalog in elementary school, and because they were books, I could get away with shopping up to 10 items. Wow!
Then a couple of teachers would band together and make the 5 hour drive to the States to pick up the orders and bring them back for the kids. Those were great days.
I have kept most of my children’s book collection, very useful as reference when planning baby shower gifts. But what really got me into reading “adult” books at age 12 was discovering my mom’s collection of Laura Ingalls’ Little House on the Prairie series, which I would read well into midnight on school nights. My mom had to constantly urge me to go to sleep. My lack of sleep during those crucial growth years is probably why I stayed so short at 5’2, hahaha.
I don’t remember not reading. My mother had a photo of me, between two and three yrs old, on the toilet with a comic spread on my lap. I do remember a large collection of golden books that I treasured.
It was Christmas morning. I was 4. I got a new Dr. Seuss book. Mom said she’d read it to us at bedtime. I plonked down on the floor, demanded my younger sister come sit with me and proceeded to read it out loud to her. Mom was surprised because I’d been reading to my younger sister for a while and she thought I’d just memorized the various children’s books she’d been reading to us. Not so, I was reading them. Never stopped reading all the books. LOL
My sister Molly taught me to read when I was 3 because, my mom said, she was tired of reading the same book to me over and over again. We mostly got books at the library so I had my first card at 4. My favorite day was the day my dad told me that if a book was in the card catalogue but not on the shelf I could ask the librarian to check “the stacks”. I loved (and still do) all those classic mysteries from the 20s and 30s and there they were, just waiting for me!
I still get many of the books I read from the library, although now most are ebooks. A love of reading is the best gift you can give a child.
My mom subscribed to a book club to get my twin older brothers (7 years older) to do more reading in middle school. I don’t know how many they read (not many), but I enjoyed them all. She continued that for several more years and I enjoyed my reading.
My daughter has read about 1/3 of my books when she sees one that’s “interesting” (4000+ physical and ebooks). Then she tries something outside of what she thinks is interesting and well…
I was an early reader (3) and immediately addicted. I remember one magical summer in Oklahoma where I could ride my bike to the library every morning on my way to swim practice, check out/ return/ repeat. They even let me into the adult section! I wanted to get from a-z, but only made it to h. Zane Grey slowed me down😆
I can’t remember not being able to read. I was always being told not to read at the dinner table! I haunted my local library when I was young – it was part of an old mansion house set in a park, it had big curved stone steps at the front door, with big granite columns you had to walk past, and I loved it. I used to get the maximum number of books out each week, and read a huge range of books. I remember my uncle gave me my first taste of sci-fi/space opera when he gave me the Skylark books by E E Dic Smith. He also gave me Anne McCaffrey’s Restoree, which then led me to her Perm books. Love sci-fi and fantasy, but also have a lasting addiction to Georgette Heyer. Love, love, love books ❤️
Aarghhhh! E E ‘Doc’ Smith 🙄
Restoree and then Dragonsong. Loved them
I must have been 2 or 3 when my mom started buying me books. At that time, she was working on her bachelor’s degree in psychology. I would ask her to read to me a book I picked out of my bookshelf. I had my own shelf on the bottom of my mom’s bookcase that my dad made for her. It usually was my ABC book, which I still have to this day. Sometimes she read her psych books to me even though I didn’t understand it.
Then, one day, my mom asked me to read by myself. It was called “A Child’s Book of Poems”. What got me were the illustrations in the book. They were beautiful and looked like me. I read it so much the book fell apart. Then the book was discontinued for a long while. One year when I was in Barnes and Noble, I found it again with the original illustrator, and I bought it.
When I was in second or third grade, I baffled my teacher. I could read at a high level, but my comprehension was zero. I loved to read but didn’t understand what I was reading. To help with that, my dad told me to read Shakespear out loud. He had to do the same thing, and it worked for him. It also worked for me.
I also read romance books (yep, the racy kind) when I was 9 or 10. By that time my mom literally had a library of her own. One of my favorite books I read when I was a teen was Shogun by James Clavell. Even though that book is a doorstopper and hurt my wrists, I couldn’t stop reading it. My mom kept asking me where the book was, and my answer was always “in my room. I’m reading it.” After a while, she bought me a copy to keep hers from being in my room. It was one of the first books I bought for my Nook. 😀
When I was young my grandma would take me to TCBY for frozen yogurt and then we’d go pick out a book at a local bookstore. It’s one of my favorite memories. I loved agonizing over whether I’d get a new babysitters club book or a new saddle club book. My mom used to have to check and make sure I actually went to sleep and wasn’t up all night reading. My love for it never went away.
The first book I remember reading is the Wheel on the School about young students in the Netherlands (somewhere) wanting a stork to build a nest in their town. Storks were considered good luck and their town didn’t have a stork nest. The elementary school librarian said I was too young for the book. I was in first grade and the book was in the second grade section. I devoured that book and have never forgotten it. Helen Keller and famous women biographical books were a big hit. In fourth grade I was given Little Women and decided that I would grow my hair until I could sit on it. Of course there were all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books and the Jalna books and Georgette Heyer books. Then came science fiction and fantasy books. And Detective, military and spy novels. I lived at the library, and yes, most of it was to escape. I have had a library card for as long as I can remember. I can’t imagine a life without reading ( I tried to learn Braille as a kid just in case I should ever lose my sight, unsuccessful 😔).
I started reading with my grandfather, when I was very little. It started with him reading to me, then having me read a few words, then me reading to him. Where my sisters were loud and active, I was quiet and shy, so books were my escape. My grandfather, also a bit quiet, would read in his chair while I read on the floor, and then discuss what we were looking at. Reading for him was a way to get ideas for his art, and my job was to find him vivid descriptions.
When life got tough, reading was my way to work through my emotions and get my balance back. It still is. 😀
My sister was reading a comic book and I wanted to read it too..so my mother taught me to read. I was 4 at the time. My parents would take me to the library, and I would check out the limit in books- usually science books. I didn’t discover SF&F until I was 10.
My mom introduced me to Nancy Drew and thus my voracious reading began. I grew up in a family of readers, so it was accepted that you’d spend your time and money on books. I knew every school librarian. My house and e-readers are loaded with books.
I didn’t start or even liked reading until middle school. My parents were immigrants: my dad had at most some elementary schooling and my mom is close to illiterate. So reading was not big during my childhood, and I was in ESL (english as a second language) until 2nd grade.
I don’t exactly remember when, but somewhere between 6th and 7th grade I found that reading a good book was like having a long movie playing in my head.
This also led me to get closer to my brother during that time. My brother recommended me to read Cirque du freak, which my school library had, but it only had the first couple of books. My brother was in high school and they had they had the whole series, so he would skip lunch and go to his library to check them out for me. This was probably the first book series I was really invested in.
My parents read to me at an early age and soon enough I was reading on my own and never stopped
I started in 2nd or 3rd grade. I was a huge Nancy Drew fan. Then it was Judy Blume. When I got into high school, my grandmother got me hooked on Harlequin and Silhouette romances. She had a subscription and I would read the books after she did. Bags and bags of them. She kept them all. I never found out what happened to her collection after she died. She had a copy of the first harlequin ever published.
I recall reading books when I was younger but I think the first series I loved and was very engrossed in was CS Lewis Narnia series…gobbled that up as a young tween. I LOVE “Where the Sidewalks Ends” and years later bought a version and loved re-reading. I do remember “stealing” my momma’s Harlequin books too and my Dad’s books – anything Piers Anthony and Anne Macaffrey.
I remember my mom taking me every week to the library from the time I was 8. I knew how to read already but didn’t really start reading books regularly until then. For more than 10 years, I went to that library. The librarian recognized me by voice when I called for extensions.
I was always reading, as far as I can tell. And I kept gobbling up bigger and bigger stories. We lived too far to make it to the library regular, and my school didn’t have one, so I learned to love rereading. I also gobbled up anything put in front of me (cereal box readers unite!). But my aunt would occasionally bring me a box of old text books as rural schools around us closed, so I got chunks of Ben-Hur, Rats of NIMH, and other assorted stories above my life experience level on a regular basis. Then we moved in easy biking distance to a library and the rest was history.
But I can’t write and read any more. And I have such a hard time reading anything new, because editor brain is so real!
I became hooked when we would visit my grandmother in the country and there was no TV reception and not a lot to do. She had very old books and I fell in love with the Bobbsey Twins there. They had these grand adventures and also the siblings all hung out together. I was usually being ditched by my older brothers. It created the perfect fantasy world into which to escape.
Then I discovered mysteries and went on from there. Love thinking back to all of this as there is nothing like discovering a new book series. I just handed my daughter’s boyfriend the first two Kate Daniel’s books and am so envious that he is at the beginning of such a great series.
I remember my mom reading to my sister and I – one of our favorites was a ridiculously long illustrated book (about 50 pages, with multiple paragraphs of text on each page)… like, we would request this book every night. We knew every word by heart, so if she tried to shorten storytime before bed by skipping things, we always called her on it. Sometimes, when she was really sick of it, she’d hide it, and then tell us if we kept our room neater we’d be able to find our things.
I started riding the train into Chicago by myself when I was maybe 12, because I discovered the glory of the Harold Washington Library downtown – a building that took up an entire city block, with NINE FLOORS of books and exhibits. I would spend the day there, and then go home with a large backpack stuffed full.
My dad used to tell this story.
He was reading a story to me that I’d liked and I started to read it aloud, too. He thought that I’d memorized the books, so he turned to the back of the book and I could read it.
I LOVED the book fairs at school. Rummage sales, the library when we could get to it. I had to switch to ebooks in my house, because I ran out of book storage. I read and reread my favorite books and authors.
Started with animal series. I remember Memily which had a giraffe. Then shifted to mystery, Nancy drew, and the girl with the silver eyes. First long series was David eddings the belgariad. Now it’s true crime, mystery, urban romance and paranormal. Still enjoy a romance as dessert.
My mom had taught me to read by the time I started going to preschool and that started my love of reading.
When I started elementary school in the Congo I was lucky in that it had a lower grade library on premises and also had an independent library that my mom made sure I could borrow from. I used to take home 14 books (the max allowed) once a week from the independent library and 3 books every few days from the elementary library. I eventually read pretty much everything in the elementary library and the librarian would let me select a few books of my choice to order every year (it would take *months* to get them – the agony!).
I gravitated to scifi and fantasy from the beginning. Some of the earliest books that I recall reading in the elementary library were Where the Wild Things Are, A Wrinkle in Time, some Heinlein, The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper), Lloyd Alexander, Narnia, and so on. From the independent library I read dozens of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, as well as dozens of books by Agatha Christie, all of Sherlock Holmes, and the list goes on.
To this day, I read 500+ books a year (almost 1000 at the height of Covid).
I don’t remember not being able to read. But when I was about 6, I had had my tonsils removed. Being stuck in the hospital for several days (a long time ago) with nothing to do, I started reading just about anything I could get my hands on and never stopped.
My mother taught me to read when I was almost five and I was a voracious reader after that… but around ten years old I read the Hobbit and there was no turning back. I literally finished the library in my teens and to me reading is the ultimate retreat from reality that I have sorely needed this last decade or so 🥰
I fell in love with books at a very young age, with my parents reading to me. In my 20s, I asked my parents „what was my favorite book when I turned 2?“ because I wanted to buy it for my friend’s daughter. „Charlotte‘s Web“ was my actual favorite book but apparently most kids who just turned 2 don’t have the attention span yet for chapter books with no illustrations so they gave me some other suggestions too.
I also loved science books and my actual breakthrough into reading to myself was because my mom told me I had to wait until dinner was done before she would read me the book I wanted. I didn’t want to wait, and she found me sounding my way through on my own. She didn’t like reading those books so as soon as I could work them out on my own, they were my responsibility. She (and dad) DID continue reading me fantasy and adventure and mystery, but non-fiction isn’t her thing. Dad likes fantasy and humor and history and literary fiction (which isn’t MY thing).
I did kinda drive my mom nuts in the summer because we could check out 5 books at a time and I could read 5 books in a day or two, and apparently mom had other things to do than to ferry me down to the library every couple of days. She was very happy when I was old enough to be released into the sections of the library with much longer books that took a little longer to read.
I have terrible eyes; I probably should have had glasses when I was two. I grew up in third world countries and did not have the best eye doctors. I went to summer school to learn how to read between 3rd & 4th grade. The light bulb went off! I would get stacks of the Boxcar Children books, make chocolate chip cookies and drink cokes. Life was awesome!!
In 8th grade I found the hobbit, devoured the Trilogy. It was 1977. I was devastated to find out Tolkien died in 1973. I was heart broken lol.
I’ve read every Roberta Gillis book, Louis Lamour, Nora Roberts, Elizabeth Lowell, Jayne Ann Krentz. Tom Clancy until Jack became president hahaha. Reading has brought so much joy into my life. Now my favorite writers are Ilona and Nalini Singh.
When my world is dark I can submerge myself into a book and take a break from “life”. Ilona books are my go to rereads. I count down when a new books is published and read all night long for my fast read then reread at a slower pace and see what I missed.
I love to read; I picture the stories as I read them and become immersed and I tune everything else out. I come up for air when I’ve finished the book. Joy, oh the joy of reading. It always makes me smile!
My grandfather was so patient he read me several children’s books so many times that I had them memorized. I then was able to identify the words before I was taught the alphabet and began working through other children’s books. I discovered a box of hardback Hardy Boy Mysteries in my attic when I was five and that was when the compulsion to read began.
Is your daughter reading the Iron Druid Chronicles?
Ahhhhh. Right. I adored the series right until the end, and now I don’t want to reread the books because I know how it ends!
I have a vague memory of struggling with the word “ball” and what seems like a day later I was reading “Cat In The Hat”. In third grade I read the adult version of “Oliver Twist” for a book report and my teacher accused me of not really reading it. In fifth grade a perceptive town librarian gave me an adult library card and the rest is history.
I grew up reading Babar and the golden books but it was hit and miss of a reading mood. I had to be sick or snowed inside to really focus on a book.
In the mid 80s I was babysitting for a woman that had a home library. She had a stack of Silhouette Romance (the purple covers) in a basket and told me I could read one if I wanted… 4 hours later I read most of the basket. She gave me the last 2 books (Nora Roberts) and a Danielle Steele book (Palomino) that she said she just finished and didn’t want. That was the moment I really started reading all the time. That was when the librarian knew my name when I walked in.. she would let me check out as many as I wanted because she knew I would read them.
Now I try to limit myself to about 300-325 books a year.
I also read when I was young.. Encyclopedia Brown was a much loved character. My very first romance book was Ashes in the Wind by Kathleen Woodiwiss.
The first one of Kathleen Woodiwiss I read was A Rose in Winter.
I remember A rose in Winter. 🙂
Loved it! And Savannah.
My whole family growing up were massive readers. I would see them reading and wanted to be just like them, so I worked really hard to learn. Of course, it was little kiddie books at first. But as soon as I advanced enough to read chapter books, it was rare that a book I read wasn’t about horses in some way.
Both of my parents were avid readers. I can still picture my dad sitting in his chair with a book. The first book I can remember actually sitting down and reading was The Island of the Blue Dolphin. From there I haven’t stopped reading.
I started asking my mother what everything said. She and my aunt made me flash cards for every word in a book (Hop on Pop? Fox in Socks?), and then gave me the book.
I remember the flash cards, but I don’t remember much from before I could read. I learned when I was three.
My mother was a firm believer in books. I have a picture of me at a very young age, showing my excitement when I had actually read the book myself (The Big Jump).
After that there was no stopping me.
I think children benefit from exposure and encouragement.
🙂
Riding my bike to the library and stocking up on Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Perry Mason….took home as many as I could carry, read voraciously, then repeated the process !!
My Mum was very into books and reading/telling me stories when I was very little. I loved looking at books and the pictures. I remember becoming aware that I could read and understand the words. It was a Ladybird ‘Read it Yourself’ version of Heidi. Very simple, but once I started they couldn’t stop me 😂.
My parents read to from the day I was born. Books were a regular gift and trips to the library were frequent. No matter how tight money was, there was always enough for my parents to buy me a book.
Reading was my way to stay sane. I began at age 4, watching the pages while Mom read to me in bed. By 3rd grade, it was my refuge and main pastime. I remember our local library held a reading contest one summer–I was in 4th grade. I read 40 books in 6 weeks. They included the first time I read The Hobbit.
To this day, reading saves me when life–as it will inevitably do upon occasion–turns to crap.
I agree with the life turns to crap read a really good book mantra. 🙂
My mother loved to read and taught us early. I remember ’reading’ A book aloud to my father when I was 4-5 and him saying that I had memorized the book!
I loved it in 5th or 6th grade when she allowed me to ride my bike to the library by myself! I had to cross a major road! I was only allowed to take out 6 books at a time. One day the librarian approached me and told me I should sign up for the summer reading contest, but given the number of books I had already read, I was way ahead of everyone and somewhat annoyed that the books I had finished wouldn’t count!
Didn’t stop me from continuing to read!
Apparently, the first word I read was off a billboard. I asked “does that sign say [store]?” How’s that for a slice of America?!
(Shortly thereafter, my parents started more directed phonics lessons. Dad was away on a business trip when I picked it up. He didn’t believe I wasn’t just reciting until Mom pulled out Hop on Pop, which I had never seen before.)
Reading has always been fun. Like a silent, invisible film reel taking me to times and places I could never visit. I’m the reason the summer reading program had to put limits on rewards in my town. I was, apparently, a book devouring horde member from the jump!
I cant remember not reading. Library trips were best days ever. I read everything I could Get my hands on (even my mothers horror books completely inappropriate for elementary kid lol). My standard punishment was losing reading privileges.
In the 5th grade our teacher read aloud to us every day. I still remember The Witch of Blackburn Pond. I was hooked after that. Never minded being sent to my room lol. As another poster said, I will reread a book I like many times.
I adored that book! Still have a paperback copy!!
My first read was Harry the Dirty Dog by Zion. Then I moved on to lots of mystery series for kids. Around 13 or 14 I was working as a candy striper and the collection at the hospital was full of romance novels. I was bored one day and read one. I was gone. Lost. On that day I disappeared into a new (for me) kind of adult book and was forever changed.
As a kid I had a severe form of a rare eye condition. It took years to find that out and then some more years to find a doctor who took us seriously. It made learning how to read nearly impossible. Everything where I had to use my eyes (almost everywhere) was very difficult for me to learn/do. I remember many nights crying & trying to learn to read I hated reading. In a despreat attempt to make me read, my Mom promised a Happy Meal with every book I read. The first book was a story about three dogs. Suddenly new worlds opened up and I quickly became a book worm. I didn’t care about the Happy Meal anymore (which I never got btw) and evenutally I had the surgery with the only doctor in the country treating this disease.
My town had a Carnegie library. It was a wonderful old building with a brass plaque and a double old fashioned water fountain that looked like a basin! I was in the 2nd grade when I found The Magician’s Nephew and the other Narnia books there. Such a treasure! I read the various fairy tale books – Blue, Red, ect. At home we had the Collier’s Junior literature set that had many books. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have Little Golden books or comics of the classics. Sadly, the city of Decatur, IL demolished the Carnegie library in the 1960’s or early 70’s and moved the library into an empty storefront. At least it was across from my high school.
1 st book I remember reading was Harun and the sea of histories by Salman Rushdie, I still have worm feelings for it.
2nd one was the Hobbit.
My mother told me there was a continuation and that she would give it to me if I tidied my room.
I stole the 1st book of The Lord of the Rings, took me a whole week to read the 1st 100 pages, took me another week to read the rest of the trilogy.
It was a one way trip.
My best friend’s parents have an extensive library. They allowed me to borrow books at pleasure. Then I grew up, learnt to take the bus alone and went to the library.
I escaped from the gym class at school and went to the library and readed and readed.
Later came the internet.
I discovered that the series I loved were very much more advanced in English, so I learnt to read it. And the world became more wide and beautiful.
Now thanks to stubborness and internet and kindle I can read my favourite authors without waiting.
When I was a kid (age 10 to about 35) I averaged about 1 and a half hours of sleep a night. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV in the basement (and there was nothing on in the middle of the night anyways) and I didn’t like just listening to music. My parents had a giant library of books in our home. One day I picked up a copy of The Hobbit. I read that in 2 nights. Then I found the Lord of the Rings and read that in 5 nights. Ever since then on average I read a 300 – 400 page book a night.
Same. Chesterfield County public library at the corner of Broadrock rd and something. Every week I was checking out as many as they would let me. I think it started with Nzncy Drew when I was around 10 or 11 ant it was on. I’ve never let up. I am Kindle’s dream client. They get all the money.
Libraries are sacred spaces, sanctuaries, and safe havens. Books are a security to me and a physical reminder I am not alone, my emotions are not odd, my curiosity is not a burden and I am not too much of anything for anyone. A small and yet, to me, vast Carnegie library in a rural town, with one librarian and Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain was my first portal of escape. A space on the floor by a big window, surrounded by books, where else would I be if I had a choice?
I started reading first to escape a complicated home life, then because characters conflicts were often relatable leaving me feeling seen in my hardship, and finally because sometimes there situations were even harder, reminding me it could always be worse. The hope that came with inevitable resolution kept me reading.
The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey when I was maybe 8 or 9. I was reading above my age level very early.
5th grade the class read ‘Bridge to Terabitha’ and it was the first time I remember reading where I was completely engaged in the story. Jump started my love of reading.
My mom read to us – Dr. Seuss and Kipling’s “Just So Stories”. I blame “The Elephant’s Child” for all my ‘satiable curiosity’ and impertinent questions. And 60 years of voracious reading.
My mom. She always had a book in her hand and would be reading everywhere. However, I didn’t really enjoy it until she taught me to read Black Beauty one snowy winter when I was in the third grade and had been out of school due to snow for three weeks. She would put her finger on each and every word and make me sound it out. It took me three hours to finish one chapter, but after that there was no stopping me.
My grandfather began reading a picture book version of Black Beauty when I was a toddler. I still have that book. That was the treasure of my childhood. I’m not recalling what came in between that and the Hardy Boys and a similar series set in the West with horses and cowboys. That lead me to The Black Stallion and all
Walter Farley wrote. About that time my grandmother introduced me to Gene Stratton Porter and first editions of books from the 1920s. My second prized book was the one of hers with a character who had lost a hand – about tolerance and kindness. That made such an impression on me. When my husband lost an arm to cancer, that book had set me up to take the situation in stride. Those are sweet memories – thanks for the opportunity to revisit them.
I learned to read in French first! For a few months in first grade, I could read anything in French but couldn’t read anything in English apart from the stop signs I saw outside the car as my parents drove lol. Then my English teacher finally got around to teaching us how to read and then I couldn’t be stopped. I mostly still read in English since the availability of French bookstores in the US is obviously not high (there are some in NYC which is over an hour train ride away but I make a point to stop in if I’m in the area).
I spent a lot of time in the children’s room of the local library, reading a lot of Babysitters Club, Saddle Club, Pony Pals, Nancy Drew, Young Thoroughbred Collection, Pony Pals etc. I would get in trouble reading in class when I was supposed to be doing something else and I used to read at recess and ignore my friends. My mom had to lecture me about not ignoring my friends and there was a time and place to read. I used to bring books everywhere on my mom’s boring errands so at least I’d have something to do. Now I own too many books and don’t have enough bookshelves. #bookwormproblems
My mother and father were Italian immigrants. When I started school (I was an experiment bc no one I know of my age went to Junior Kindergarten except me), I would bring home my books and have my mother read to me. She was learning to read English just a bit before me with my books so we could read together. (Later, I would have to keep getting the Sunday NYT and print Mystery books from the Library to feed her obsession)
In grade school, the Bookmobile would come so we could pick books. Again, I would get the maximum allowed (I think it was 7). In the summer when it didn’t come to my school, my Dad would drive us to where it did go at another school some time away just so that we could continue to take out books.
Then, when they built the Library in our neighborhood, I think I must have gone through every book they had.
And we pass it forward to the nieces and nephews and god-kids and now, the great-nephew by always, always buying books as gifts.
I can’t remember not reading either. I was the kid who got caught reading when I was supposed to be listening to the teacher. Luckily, my mom was a reader, too, so she got it.
Got my first library card at the Bookmobile. Only problem is I couldn’t print my name small enough to get on the application. I remember reading the Three Musketeers in grade school and wondering why no one saw Lady DeWinter’s shoulder brand while they were in bed not sleeping. I was very naive. Also liberated my Mom’s books and missed a few things. One of my granddaughters is edging the same way. She saw a “cat” on a Feehan cover and had to take home the kitty book and show everyone. When she went home I took it back and got here a book on large cats.
Like you, I don’t remember not being able to read, though I didn’t learn at an unusually young age, I don’t think. I DO remember being read to by my mother (regardless of whether or not I could read for myself yet)–both picture books and chapter books. We also love the library and hauled home whole stacks. When I was eight-ish, we moved to a small town where it was reasonable for me to walk to the library by myself, and I loved doing that, spending time in the library itself and then hauling books home with me.
Both my parents and my maternal grandmother passed on their love of reading to me from day one. I consider that a tremendous gift, as reading is the one greatest pleasures in life.
Like you I don’t remember not reading. My parents-especially Mom-encouraged us. She told the story that her bedroom just had a wall scone as the light. So she would stand reading at night before bed. Reading is the best place for new ideas and escaping your world.
When I was born, I was early and my mom’s OB/GYN was on vacation. The ER doctor who handled the delivery didn’t bother to check my mom’s chart and gave her morphine which she was extremely allergic to and put her in a coma. So I came home from the hospital over a month before my mom did. During the day I was passed among various neighbors and relatives but at night after my dad picked me up he would sit in his recliner and read out loud to me anything he was reading. So from birth I was read the local newspaper, various electrician trade journals, Scientific American, the American Archaeological Society Journal and any books he happened to be reading which were generally military history, spy thriller, Sci-Fi, fantasy or military/space opera. When my mom finally came home, they both kept up this habit and they were avid readers with very different tastes. Mom read historical dramas, romance, cozy mysteries, biographies and craft/cook books. Neither of them could agree on when they noticed that I could read for myself but by the time I started kindergarten I could comfortably read most adult books with a little help from a dictionary. (They always told me if I didn’t know a word to look it up and we has an awesome unabridged dictionary that I loved) I was allowed free range to any book in the house and there were always dozens and dozens. I read the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in first grade and to this day almost 50 years later they are still my favorite books which I read every year. One of my favorite childhood memories is me laying on my grandad’s porch swing in the summer reading The Fellowship of the Ring with the buzz of honey bees and smell of fresh cut grass in the air. After my parents got older, I moved back home to help them out. It wasn’t unusual for the three of us to all be sitting in the Livingroom each reading a book, not saying a word for hours, just enjoying the silent company. After my parents died, I inherited all of their books so after adding them to mine I now have close to 1,000 books. Books have been my comfort, my escape, my pleasure, my thrill, my inspiration and now my memory. When I really miss my parents, I can pick up one of their books and sink into a world they enjoyed and it feels like they are with me again.
From the age of 8 or so books became my best friends. The ones who never let me down or abandoned me. I would draw, write horrible poetry and read read read! Yes, my local library became a much loved space not just to borrow stacks of books (I could get from the adult section and no one would tell me no) but I loved staying there and reading in silence surrounded by books. I am middle aged now and one of my favourite places is still the community library.
My father read to us every night before supper and my wonderful one-room school teacher Mr Hensel read to us every day after noon recess. My mom kept two walls of bookshelves including a full Child Craft series, a stack of antique McCalls magazines full of handcraft projects, a drawer full of cook books, and file boxes with instructions for DIY science projects. Every three weeks, the Bookmobile traveling library parked in front of the volunteer fire station and provided new books. If you wanted to be a full and interesting person, you had to read.
Like you, I don’t remember not being able to read. When I was a toddler My eyes crossed due to scarlet fever. Doctors wanted me to read as much as possible as part of my physical therapy. I had other childhood health issues so books were a welcome escape to other places.
The librarians at our public library could set their watches by my arrival to get more books! To this day, I would rather read than watch movies.
Me, too! Movies are blah….. compared to a fabulous book!
I was thinking the other day about movie adaptations that are better than the book they’re based on, and I could only come up with a handful. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is definitely the top one for me. Fight Club. And sorry everyone, but Princess Bride.
I started with the Cherry Ames books from the library. I must have been about 10 so this would have been 1966-ish. There were 27 books starting with Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. She was a Senior Nurse, Army Nurse, Chief Nurse, Flight Nurse and every other kind of nurse I never heard of. Opened my eyes to reading and to the world.
I was terrible at math, but excelled in reading, so I read every chance I got. Mostly I read on the school bus as I lived in a rural area and had a long ride each day. I was a latchkey kid as well, so I could keep reading once I made it home. I remember having all these series books like The Baby Sitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High. I even had a stamp that I used in all my books so they never got lost. So I guess, even at a young age, I was always waiting for the next book in the series. Helps me fit right in with the Horde now.
My parents read to me before I learned to read. We had those Little Golden books, of which I still have some! There was a built in wooden book shelf next to our fireplace that was filled with books. My parents had bought a set of kids stories that had a couple of stories in a book that I read multiple times. I remember my favorite was Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. They also had sets of books by Readers Digest which is how I was introduced to Dickens (though now it is sacrilegious to me to think of abridging a book!).
I remember reading Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. My grandma had these small (3″ square) little leather bound books that we inherited after she died. There were all these classics of English Literature that I devoured.
For some reason my mom never took us to the library, but I do remember the book mobile coming around.
At night I would pull up the covers over my head and read with a flashlight if I was in a particulary good part of the book!
I think my love of fantasy started with a book I found at my school library where a girl went through a door in an old house she just moved to and ended up 100 years in the past living a better life. When I was 12 my new cousin (my aunt got remarried) gave me the Hobbit for Xmas, and there was no looking back for me after that! I also remember being enthralled with the Black Stallion series which I liked much more than Black Beauty.
I’m always reading, usually have a couple of books going at one time.
HA are some of my favorite books!
I discovered “Mossflower” by Brian Jacques when I was about 9-10 (4th grade)in my school’s library and it kicked off a love of animal and fantasy books. At the same time, we had a program called Accelerated Reader, where you would read a book, take a quiz on the computer about it, and then earn points for the correct answers. Bigger/more complex books were higher points, but the average was normally around 5-20 points and there was a score board in the main hall with kids AR points.
I got to 500 points that year, and about 800 the following. They had to start making up prizes for me after 500.
Both of my parents were big sci-fi/fantasy readers, and I grew up out in the sticks with no kids around, so when I was bored, they told me to find something to do. Eventually, I started raiding their bookshelf. Been a big reader ever since!
I remember when I was real young, I’d try to read a Zane Grey or Louis Lamour and figured I was a western reader. Later it was sports stories, then Ray Bradbury started my sci fi addiction. Then my wife got me hooked on Isaac Asimov. For awhile it was Stephanie Plum. Once I read Ilona Andrews I haven’t looked back. I’m solidly in the Urban Fantasy/Space Opera camp now and don’t ever plan to leave. Except for the occasional J.D. Robb novels.
I remember one episode with my mom helping med learn to read and after that just reading, always a book in my bag.
I remeber being ill while visiting my grandmother and she went to the local library and got me Jules Vernes books – i also remember the feeling and smelt of the bedlinens -oldfashioned White cotton, with no creases because my granmother always ironed it.
The first time I didn’t lack for books on summervacation, was after i got my Kindle 😃
I have never stopped reading, not even when my children were infants -we have pictures of med breastfeeding and reading, i think it was wheel of time at that point; i never finished the series, got tired of the constant outbranching of the plot around book 11.
Same here !
Well, my reading got off to a slow start, but then I discovered superhero comic books and my reading took off! around eight, I think. I’m gen z so my first exposure to comics was Archie, bleh! also, libraries rock!
What oddly serendipitous timing for this blog entry and question; my reply in honour of my uncle.
I could read from two years old, my uncle helped me learn (he’d also sit me down to listen to the sailor’s hornpipe and stamp our feet. My grandad would hit the ceiling with a stick to shush us).
I think I wanted to look at his shiny gold embossed leather bound Charles Dickens collection (which is ironic because I find his style dry and unappealing as an adult).
My nan joined me up to the local library at three and we’d go every week.
When I started nursery school we went for our first library trip and I was greeted by all the librarians and had my own library card rather than the class shared one – it was a great status symbol at that point! (Oh how times changed)
For my secondary school scholarship interviews, a great point was always made about the books I’d read since it was considered precocious to be a ten year old who’d read My Family and Other Animals and Watership Down (my nan loved to tell the story of how I cried uncontrollably every time I read it) and collected encyclopaedias. They were less enthused by my speeches extolling Terry Pratchett!
The same uncle who had the shiny Dickens collection also had all the English and Russian classics (I think children should read whatever they want, but maybe not Solzhenitsyn), loads of encyclopaedias and maps and basically his bedroom was a library in itself. I loved sitting in his room and reading, or looking up random information to share.
More importantly he had a big picture of JRR Tolkien and an accompanying illustration from the Hobbit showing Smaug on his gold. A dragon! I’ve been in love with them ever since and horrified everyone by getting a dragon tattoo at eighteen. And I have sooo many statues!
So I started reading fantasy from a very early age. He had Asimov too, so hello SF, and he’d play Scrabble with me when he was just the right amount of drunk. And he never stopped reading new books until the day he died.
In fact we kept on reading together until five years ago today, 4th March 2019. I miss him.
Love you uncle Paul, hope that heaven has L-space.
“Love you uncle Paul, hope that heaven has L-space.”
That is so lovely, it brought me to tears. You and he were both fortunate.
Sometime between kindergarten & 1st grade I started reading well enough to read books. When I was a 1st grader I was chosen to read a book to the kindergarten class. I was so proud!
There’s never been a time I haven’t read for pleasure.
Mom made sure I could read before kindergarten (fun afternoon activity for us) and it just snowballed from there. I read itty bitty books until I found my dad’s Lion,Witch and the Wardrobe copy in first grade, and it just sealed my fantasy doom. I think I finished the whole series that week!
It got so bad, they took away my nightlight (Id stay up reading all night), and at one point my addiction was so bad, they wouldn’t ground me from friends as a teenager, they’d ground me from books 😂😂
my parents taught me to read at young age and then i just read everything. Including twin peaks novel at the age of 10 and Master and Margarita. When i moved to the states, i basically lived in library and would frequently take home 20 books or more of the Hardy boys. I joined the reading summer club and worked in the library during high school
Oy, that Twin Peaks: Diary of Laura Palmer should NOT have been read at the age we read it, but it was a black market item in our school and it got into 10 year-old hands too. The Master and Margarita was such a revelation! I read it, greedily, in one afternoon and walked around in a daze for 2 days not having anyone to share how absolutely cool it was 😀
Libraries have always been my haven. When I was eight we lived in a planned community build in sort of a circle. In the middle was the library. Every Saturday for 5 years I would ride my bike to the library and exchange my adventures for the week. To this day when I step deep into a library I will take a deep breath and let the smell of books fill my soul with peace and grand memories.
Now my grandchildren eagerly show me the books they found at the library. We snuggle up on the couch and we take turns reading depending on their age. I know a book has captured them when they say “again Grami again!” However, I can only read Green Eggs and Ham once.
My mother was an avid reader so instead of Dr Seuss she read me classic literature for bedtime stories. Things like Lassie, Black Beauty, Black Stallion. I can’t remember ever not being a reader. We spent summers at the lake and there was no TV and barely any radio available so I read anywhere from one to three books a day. I discovered sci-fi at 10 and a lifelong love was born.
I also cannot remember not being able to read.
My most embarrassing memory is the time I deliberately kept a library book past its due date because I realized that if I returned it that day (already after hours) I would have no library books in the house and I couldn’t do it.
By the next day I felt so guilty that I was denying another person their time with that book that I made a special trip to return it, pay my $0.25 fine and, check out a different book (or two).
In the 60s, a block away from home, was a drug store that sold comic books and that is how it started for me. I went from Archie, Superman, Fantastic 4 to finding the Narnia series. Now that I’m retired, this is what I do, read, a lot. Absolutely the best time.
I started reading at 9 years old. I got books for Christmas. Then when I got my library card it opened up the world to me. My whole family were registered and I used their cards along with my own to check out books.
my childhood memories are intentionally spotty. I know I was reading with ease by first grade and that it was an escape. we had to memorize Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken as part of handwriting. I can’t recite it now, but the feel of it stuck with me. I took the road less traveled by.
I built myself from ideas I read and thoughts I analyzed and discarded, taking what pieces I would to form who I wanted to be. I escaped into worlds. I read Pride and Prejudice in 5th or 6th grade for the heck of it one summer and it introduced me to the concept of people not being what they appeared and false value systems. it helped quite a bit with the horror that was middle school actually.
so yeah, they were my escape from the world and its little and big pains and its cruel realities and in many ways my crucible. it never really occurred to me that those characters who do really hard stuff were out of the ordinary, so I can do really hard stuff now too. face my fears, stand against power for what I believe is just, risk myself for those that need protecting, be brave… it’s a lot books.
The first time I literally couldn’t stop reading and didn’t leave a book‘s world for days on end, was when I was nine or ten: I had borrowed Tamora Pierce‘s „Alanna: The first adventure“ (well, it was the German edition „Die schwarze Stadt“ 🤓) and from that day on I was a devourer of fantasy books….
My dad, a ” blue collar” worker, read so much his nickname was Bookie. We had a little cabin for the summers about 100 miles from our home in New York City. He would come up on weekends and bring me library books and Little Lulu comics. I was about 6 years old. I’m 79 now.
My mom started reading to me at bedtime. She would read anything. I think at one point, she was reading me the TV Guide… but that seriously got me into reading, especially at bedtime, and now I’m reading to my kids!!
My mom taught me to read (and play the piano) at age 3. She grew up in poverty and was a firm believer that education was the great equalizer. She loved mysteries, and I remember reading the entire series of Nero Wolfe books multiple times. I still have all of them.
I love hearing about the Carnegie libraries. I think libraries are one of the strongest backbones of American education and they’re open to everyone. In Ohio there are a lot of small towns that can’t support a big ebook collection so there’s something called the Ohio Digital Library where you can register your library card number and rural county where you live and have access to their huge list. I think it’s a brilliant idea.
I feel sorry for Kid 2 if she didn’t like the ending. There is nothing as terrible as loving a book (or a series of books) and finding out that the ending isn’t what you hoped for (and now I’m known to skip to the end to make sure everyone doesn’t die).
We were allowed to take books home from the school library, and we had a public library that my Mom took us to. We were allowed to take out stacks and stacks of picture books. When I was old enough, I rode my bike to the library (a 6 km round trip). I would go by myself or with a friend. I love to read and I can remember the first book I had a visceral response to, Lloyd Alexander’s Taran Wanderer. I sobbed when that series ended. While I won’t always cry while reading a good book, it tells me when I’m getting invested in a story.
what started me reading was my parents would read to me and I loved the dr. seuss books. what kept me reading was that my big brother would sometimes read a book he loved to me. these two things created fond book memories so when our school did a field trip to the public library and we got our cards, it was super exciting. then the scholastic book fairs, so wonderful.
I was so young I have no memory of it. My parents said I started with Seuss at the age of two. I do remember, as a pre-teen, my grandfather mentioning that I had robbed him of the ability to read to his eldest grandchild because I wanted to read to him instead.
I’m the youngest of four so my sisters taught me how to read at around 5 before I even started preschool. I remember my first book in school.
I can’t not read. And I love it too, the feeling of being lost in a book. Changed countries in my late 20s, didn’t read for a while until I decided to venture into reading in English – with Pride and Prejudice of all books.
In first grade, five years old, I was taken to the school library and picked a book off the shelf and read it. The Borrowers Afield, by Mary Norton. No one back then limited your reading because of the book wasn’t in your lexile range. I just read it, and kept reading.
My mother would send me to my room for hours. Fine by me. I would get lost in a book, The Bobbsy Twins, Five Little Peppers, The Old Testament in five beautifully illustrated volumes.
I don’t remember being read to or being taught to read. I remember watching my mom and dad read every day. My mom read novels and romances and my dad read the newspaper front to back. I started with my mom’s books but also got books from the school library like Nancy Drew when I was young and Harlequin romances when I was in high school. I also loved the novels we read like, Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, Wuthering Heights, etc. I never remember a time I didn’t read except for times when I feel depressed. That’s how I know things are bad.
I have a sister that is 6 years older, so obviously I had to try to do everything she could do. When I was 3, I threw a fit because I couldn’t read, so my mother started teaching me. 1 million books later…I still read every single day, usually multiple books at once. And of course the ones I read over and over.
My mother bought hooked on phonics for my sister and I while we’re still in daycare and the first book I remember reading by my self was in grade school called Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher. I don’t really remember who wrote it, but I do know it started my love of Dragon’s and magic.
it started as a fun exploration until it quickly becomes my frequent destination to escape as well.
The oldest memory I have (I know for certain I was reading before this, but a lot of younger childhood memories I don’t have anymore) is reading Enid Blyton books like the Faraway Gree and the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and these Indian comics called Amar Chitra Katha about Indian mythologiues with utterly incredible art ( i used to try to copy and sketch and trace them), and Archie’s comics.
The first classic story I remember reading was a bridged version of Jane Eyre and adoring it.
I’ve never not read either. Fiction only though. My only rule is the book must have a happy ending. Evil must be vanquished. Love must be found. It’s my everything.
I don’t know what age I learned to read, but family stories say I was reading by the time I was 3. We didn’t have many books at home, so reading wasn’t very actively encouraged, but I wasn’t kept from reading either.
I loved going to the library as a kid. We’d only be allowed to take 3 books at a time though. So my sister and I would share and have 6 books a week to read, which almost got us through the week. Once she stopped going as much (when weekend jobs and boyfriends got in the way), I signed up to the library in the next town as well. And then when I was about 10 or 11, I basically finished the children’s sections in both (they weren’t big libraries), so the librarians allowed me to move on to the grown-up stuff. This was before the concept of YA was a thing 😉 So I dove straight into stuff by Dick Francis and Frederick Forsyth and the like. Then I discovered this genre called Fantasy and off I went 😉
Haven’t been to a library in years, if I’m honest, not since uni. Not because I stopped reading, but because I switched to reading in English and libraries for obvious reasons don’t carry many English books in a non English speaking country. But this post brought back some fond memories, so thank you for that 😊
My kindergarten (in the late 70s) had us working with 3-4 letter words, playing games like this bus thing where the driver got to call out words for riders to spell. If you could spell the word you got to stay on the bus (chairs set up at the front of the classroom) – else you had to go back to your seat and watch. Last rider got to become the bus driver and the game would start over again. I don’t know if I could read prior to kindergarten, but I enjoyed being the driver and certainly could read simple stories at that point.
I moved to a different school for 1st grade and my beloved teacher had a set of these weirdly shaped books… they were wider than they were tall, and quite thin. She wanted each of us to read one a week. I took home a week’s worth a night, tore through them all, and looked voraciously for what I cld please for-the-love-of-all-that’s-holy read next. Reading was escape and whole new worlds, happiness and respite.
I don’t remember learning to read either, it just always seemed to come natural to me. one day my grandmother was reading me a book, and I told her I could read it to her instead, and I did, with different voices for the characters and inflections. the book I picked up the next day was a historical romance novel that I stole from my teenage sister. I was in kindergarten.
My babysitters were the kids of teachers(so was I) and liked playing school. So they inadvertently taught me the alphabet and how to take letters and form words when I was in preschool, around 4 years old. Add to that, my mom reading to me and you get a kid who read A Bug in a Rug to her older sisters. Now I am a more eclectic reader who read Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to my older sister’s grandkids, cause you need to pass that forward.
My older brothers and sisters taught me to read before I started school, so I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. I read to escape and refined it to an art to the point where if I am reading, to this day I will not hear what’s going on around me. People literally have to yell at me or shake me to pull me out of the book. I read anything and everything, but I remember mostly Enid Blyton’s Famous Five.
I remember getting into Walter Farley because I loved horses and he had written so many Black Stallion books. I had a long bus ride and could read on the bus to and from school. Then I moved onto Brian Jacques and the Redwall series.
I grew up reading with a reading family so I had aunts, uncles, and my parents making suggestions and always giving me books. I was one of the kids who read under blankets by flashlight way after bed time and I loved getting to explore new worlds.
Like you, I don’t remember not being able to read. But I can tell you the book that really started it all was a gift of The Black Stallion from my godmother – I think I was in first grade (so 6 or 7). From there I devoured all of the Black Stallion books and mom took me to the library where I was introduced to the librarian and I was off to the races as it were. Since Mom was into Sci Fi and epic fantasy that was kind of where I was led and started with age appropriate stuff (mostly LOL). I was reading War of the Worlds, Lord of the Rings and Dragon Riders of Pern by the time I was 12 or 13.
I am from a very rural town. We didn’t have Cable TV until I was 16 so reading was really my escape from an early age and still absolutely is today. I had slowed down quite a bit, but once I got a travel job I got very much back into reading rather than watching TV for evening entertainment – and passing time on 5 hour cross country flights.
I honestly can’t remember a time that I didn’t have a love of reading and books. In the baby book my mother created for me there is a page for favorite toy and on it she wrote “books.” I grew up in a very rural area where it took 30 minutes to drive to town and on Saturday’s my Dad only worked half a day. As a young child (7 or so) I would ride to town with him on Saturday to the Co-op farm supply store where he worked and then walk about a mile to the town court square where the library was located (next to the jail). I would spend an hour or so with Miss Edith the elderly librarian, browsing the shelves, and talking about books. I would check out the limit of books (5 I think) and walk back to the Co-op , climb in the truck and read until it was time to go home. I practiced this ritual every week for years in all types of weather. I remember getting terribly upset if I had to miss a week because I would run out of new reading material before I could get back to the library the next week. In elementary and high schools I always worked in the Library and would arrange my schedule to make sure I could be a library aid. Books, libraries, and librarians are all such happy, comforting memories for me.
Is anyone else curious as to what book Kid 2 was reading such that it sucked her in? I’d be willing to give it a shot, even if the ending isn’t so great.
I don’t remember how I got into reading because I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember. My dad would read Narnia, LotR and other fantasy series to me and I’d read them on my own as well. My grandmother had books of fairy tales from other countries that I loved to read. Joan Aiken once stayed at my grandparents’ house, and they then purchased all of her books, which I subsequently read several times. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or movies, or play video games, so books were my escape.
Got sucked into reading during weekly library visits in the summer every year. I have never looked back.
I don’t remember not reading. I do remember getting grounded from going to the library. (I made a C in reading bc I was too busy reading Stephen King to do the poetry assignments…they were dumb poems).
I am Dyslexic. Something I did not know until my kids were diagnosed with it. I was held back in the 3rd grade do to reading issues. I cried and cried. I didn’t realize at the time how brave my Mom was for holding me back nor how much it helped me. That came later. Anywho I had to help out in the Library my 7th grade year. That is when I read my first Nancy Drew book. Next thing I know I had read them all. I had no idea a person could get lost in a book. Something just clicked. Something I didn’t know was even missing until then. I have never looked back.
Congratulations on persevering through dyslexia. My oldest nephew didn’t learn to read until he was 12. But to help my parents would read adult books to him or get him books on tape. By the time he mastered the mechanics of reading he had been experiencing literature for years. He’s now a nurse practitioner.
My mother read to me at least from day one. Then I learned the alphabet and its sounds. Put it all together, and I was reading at 3 1/2! I honestly do not remember NOT being able to read.
I have noticed all the library freaks in this thread. I never got the library habit; I grew up in a small town (1500 people, IIRC), and our library at home had more books, and more variety than the public library in town. Ditto my small Catholic grade school. So we always hit a bookstore, Mother and I, when going clothes shopping etc.
This worked well because I was NOT the kind of kid to sit quietly without a book while she clothes shopped for either of us. Give me a book and I behaved. I hated shopping. Still do…I think my hearing range at that age (and well into adulthood) was high enough to hear the ultrasonics used for security, and I would get headaches when shopping from the annoying noise.
I think I’ve read my whole life, and still do. I have lovely memories of my mom reading The Secret Garden to my sister and me when I was 10. Books are still so important to me, and both my girls are avid readers, too.
I still buy reprint copies of The Color Kittens or The Tawny Scrawny Lion to go with baby gifts. Little Golden Books were inexpensive in the 1950’s and you could find them in lots of places!
I love reading new books that from the first chapter become unputdownable! That is what happens every single time with any of your books ❤️
I think I learned reading because I wanted to do the same things as my older sister, and she loved books. Or maybe because I wanted to read the bedtime stories, not just listen to my mom!
Then in the summer of second grade my best friend told me that our school had a library, and from then on I went once or twice a week to borrow books, because they allowed me 3 books tops (but usually only one at a time)
Books are so amazing!
I also don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. We lived on a farm so a library wasn’t often available. My parents enrolled me in a book of the week program for a whole summer. it was so exciting to know that tomorrow there would be a new book. such a happy summer
I still remember the library in our neighbourhood where I could borrow books going through the shelves. I loved Enid Blyton then because there were just that many books – in german teanslation.
When I learned English in school I discovered that my parents had lots of Agatha Christie nooks (my detective story Phase by then)- just in English. So I started the first one with a dictionary in reach and discovered that was way more fun than translated books. Branched out into SciFi and Fantasy from there and spent lots of sleepless nights reading (still do that on Release nights).
Thanks for thst subject, brought back many good Memoiren.
I don’t remember the absolute start, as I’ve always loved stories, but I do remember my first novel – Miracle of Marcelino (Spanish: Marcelino, pan y vino). It was a thin paperback book and it took me a whole afternoon to finish it. I was only a kiddo. Normaly I would have to help with younger siblings or housechores, but my Mom left me to read it in our kitchen in peace. My butt hurt from long sitting 😀
I remember the emotions, all the feelings it evoked, deep and brutal. For one afternoon I’ve got to be someone else somewhere else. There was something sacred about it, to be with Marcelino and share his story.
There was no way back and I don’t mind.
My mother stared us reading. we too went to the library and checked out the maximum allowable returning the next week for more. My mother grew up poor in a family that did not prioritize education. She did not learn about libraries until she was 12 and started jr high. The elementary school she attended was tiny and did not have a library. she was shocked to learn she was allowed to take these books home and return them for more books. And then she learned there was a public library that she could have visited years ago.
I was fortunate. I don’t remember a day in my life with no books in it. sometimes the selection was small or boring but there were always books. At my paternal grandparents house the books were limited to Louis L’Amour and historical romances such as Barbara Cartland I’m unsure how suitable these are for an 8yr old but it didn’t stop me from reading them. Horde members must be fed 😆
I honestly don’t remember how I started reading. My mom was a reader (Dad became one later in life) and there were always books around. I read one of her Johanna Lindsey books when I was 12-ish and have been a romance reader since (before that it was biographies and children’s’ books.)
I remember being told that I couldn’t have read all the books I claimed on my summer reading list at the local library until the librarian quizzed me on them; I was probably seven or so. I also remember the library had unlimited check-outs until about then, then they put limits on how many I could check out in a single visit.
My mom says I taught myself to read. I don’t remember learning to read. We traveled and the first things I remember reading were menus. Our house didn’t have books, so I was thrilled when I discovered libraries. I finished reading the World Book Encyclopedia during second grade and also I got my library card. I skipped the kids section and went straight to adult books. At first the librarians didn’t want to let me check out the books. I would end up reading the books outloud to them and they stopped hassling me. I bought paperback books with my allowance and literally had a book on me at all times. Yeah, ebooks. Hundreds of books on my phone just waiting for me.
Heh. When I was allowed grown-up books at the library at 10 or 11 after I finished the kids section, I remember there was a new librarian at some point who objected to my selection. Her colleague interfered and told her “no, it’s okay, _she_ is allowed”, in a tone conveying both matter of factness and mild discombobulation 😂
I always read, life long reader with different phases. I laugh now remembering how I used to get in trouble for bringing books to the dinner table. My mom would say “you don’t want to be a part of this family” and my response would get me sent back to my room with my books. Imagine in this age, getting mad at your kid for reading?? I know it was about manners etc at the table but still!! My daughter hates to read and it makes me sad…
Found Alanna the First Adventure by Tamora Pierce in the book shelf of my Grade 3 class then the obsession with reading took over.
I was sick a lot as a child with my asthma and there was only so much TV back then. Books took me places and allowed me to have adventures no matter what my health was doing!
I don’t remember not constantly reading. Growing up in a small town, I’d check out a book in the morning from the school library and sometimes be done the next day, reading between classes, on the school bus, and after lights out, holding the book up to the window to catch the neighbor’s porch light. UNTIL the 7th grade. At lunch, the school librarian called me in and asked me to show her my newly checked-out “Dandelion Wine” by Ray Bradbury. It wasn’t in the pile of books I was carrying with me. “It must be in my locker,” I said and ran to get it. Not there. I went back and told her I must have left it in class and I would go and look for it. Silently, she pulled the book out from behind her desk and opened it to show the first 20 pages ripped and torn. I was responsible, she said and must pay for the book. She gave me a note to take home to my parents about the damage and what I owed. My mother was incensed that they did not seek out the real culprit and branded her book-loving daughter a desecrator of books. She paid the $20 but forbade me from checking out books from the school library; they didn’t deserve to have me as a patron. That likely propelled me much sooner into my parents’ huge trove of paperbacks. I read all of their Hornblower novels, Ann McCaffery, Larry Niven, and snuck some Johanna Lindsey too (sheiks!!!). The second-hand bookstore was my mecca. Andre Norton. James H. Schmidt. Piers Anthony. Dick Francis. When I got to high school, the library was once again my second home, where I could retreat to a carrel and read. But I still remember that sick feeling seeing that torn-up book. And I never have read Dandelion Wine.
I started reading at about 5…..and still remember. Over years I read everything i could get my hands on at our school library. I read Beowolf at 11…found it at the Carnegie library in Pittsburgh…and loved it. Only learned later that i shouldn’t have been able to understand it.
I started reading by not reading and barely passing reading in school. Then my father gave me a book about a boy searching for a pet. And I haven’t stopped reading since. Had that book for many years finally passed it on. I know every library in a ten mile radius. Cause when I want a book I don’t want to wait for the library loan system to send it.
There was a basement with a large box of books in a house we moved into when I was in the 3rd grade. Bobsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Jane Eyre and more.
I was smart. I’d finish all my work and be sitting there looking around so my 3rd grade teacher would let me go to the library. The librarian likes me because I would straighten up the shelves while looking for something to read, so she started letting me do lunch in there and coming in after school. By 6th grade myom would let me ride my bike the couple miles to the big public library and I had a little case that would hold about 10 paperback books. I went every couple days… and worked in the school libraries until I graduated. They were my happy place.
I had a teacher reading “Charlottes web” a partial chapter at a time. I went to the library, checked out Charlotte’s Web and worked my way through the book. I was dyslexic, so it took me a while, but once I started reading, I haven’t stopped. My punishment for doing poor behavior as a child was they would take my library card I was a very well-behaved child I didn’t want to lose my library card.
Once I could read, my dad would take me to the library every Monday. (It was his only day off). I started out getting 6 or 7 books at a time, but pushed it to a dozen over the next few months. Small town, same librarian. I may started with Dr. Suess and other age appropriate books but moved quickly to more advanced books.
I started reading when I was 7 years old. I wanted to start earlier but my school kept telling me I was too young to start learning to read. Then my family moved and a family friend (who became my godmother), sat down and taught me the basics within a couple hours. I read 3 short stories that day and the love affair with books was born… I was reading at college levels by the time I was 12 and still read every chance I get in my 40s. I love reading and will never stop
I started reading in 1st grade and have never stopped. As a child and early teen, I read to escape from where I was. as an adult, I read for pleasure, work, and knowledge.
Smut! All the smut! My aunt would get me paper grocery bags of romance novels from garage sales and I would devour them!
I have no memory of not being able to read. I was not read to as a child. I know that when I got to first grade I was given a reading group to guide. I had never gone to kindergarten.
Somehow I must have learned to read on my own. I know that it has always been escapism for me. Both of my parents were physically abusive to me. I guess maybe I learned as a way to save myself when my grandmother wasn’t around to save me
kindergarten.
I was reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, complete and unabridged, in 2nd grade. My grade school reading levels did not reflect my compression because their books were boring.
once I discovered libraries I discovered mythology, which naturally lead to fantasy.
And here I am.
I was an early and voracious reader. Some of my earliest memories are of curling up with a fat copy of Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree and losing myself in an adventure with Silky and Moonface. As I got a bit older, my mother had odd ideas about appropriate reading – the classics were good but popular literature would rot my brain. So Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe and Homer were fine for a 9 year old but Nancy Drew was not. It’s probably why as an adult, children’s literature forms so much of my comfort reading!
Bobbsey Twins from the library next to my elementary school. A little older I transitioned into Nancy Drew and spent my chore money to buy them. I still have the entire set in yellow jackets.
The Bookmobile came around our neighborhood. I started reading at a pretty young age with the help of Sesame Street, Mr Rogers Neighborhood and the Electric Company. I remember reading A Wrinkle in Time around the age of five. I needed my mom with me the first few times to get the books.
I loved that Bookmobile, it brought the world to me. They even had records you could borrow. That library card was my golden ticket. My mom was very young when she had us and was left being a single parent. We were poor and didn’t have a car or money for books.
Elementary school library, when they had real books and wonderful librarians. I read lots of everything, but what sticks in my mind were the Time Life books on history and biology.
Frankly I can’t remember when I started reading. Seems like I always did.
First books from “Bibliothèque Rose” then “Verte” – that was started in 1852 , when Louis Hachette proposed his first books for children in France- .
I also regurlay read legends and mythologies stories from Britanny, Celtia, Greece, Roma. For example, I got, when I was 11, for christmas “Le voyage d’Ulysse par G. Chappon”, so Ulysses’ travels (Homer).
Romance books were always there (started by borrowing mom’s books). Then I discovered Anne McCaffrey, Lois McMaster Bujold, and never looked back.
Books are my drug 😍! Sleep is overrated when you have a great book in your hand😊 .
My mom loved to read so every Saturday she would take my brother and I to the library. I remember wanting so many books that my mom would have to check out a few for me under her name.
My home life was lonely as a child. In elementary school, I used books to go to far away lands and have wonderful adventures….of course with happy endings. As I got a little older, a neighbor introduced me to Harlequin Romance. My parents would get me a new Nancy Drew or Hardy Boy mystery as a reward for good grades. I truly can’t remember ever not reading. It is such a magical way to be part of something special and exciting. I love your mix of Sci-Fi, romance and mystery all rolled into exciting and different places! Thank you so much for sharing your talents with the rest of the world!
I can remember a time I didn’t read. My first memory of books is my father reading me the Black Stallion books and my mom reading me Little House on the Prairy. I started my own reading journey with Box Car Children. My mom would give me a dollar for finishing a book. Sure the money was the incentive but I got to a point where I was devouring books, mostly horse books. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I got into SciFy, fantasy and so on. I still like my horse books but now I like the fantasy and dragon as well.
I was the youngest child in my family. I started reading at about 3. I would sit with my siblings when they read out loud as part of their homework. They were a few years older.
By the time I was in kindergarten I was reading at a second grade level. I bought my first book through scholastic book ordering service. I still have that book.
By the time I was in 4th grade I had finished all the reading levels and was assigned to check out library books and write reports.
My love of reading has never waned.
I got grounded a lot. The only thing I was allowed to do while grounded was either read or sleep. Reading saved me from countless boring hours staring at my ceiling.
I don’t remember not reading. My mother says I would sit quietly looking at books before I learned how to read. Reading is both my escape from the world and key to the world.
I don’t remember not reading. I remember in 2nd grade being very disappointed because the school librarian wouldn’t let me check out books that were above my grade, because they’d be “too hard.” She didn’t understand that the book I wanted to check out was part of a series of books, most of which I had at home and had already read.
Books have been my faithful friends and boon companions for all my life, nearly 70 years now. Many times, closer than friends, family, and loved ones.
Major and minor characters, and the authors responsible for them, have provided me beacons that confirm that I am not alone, despite the fact that ultimately, I’m sitting in the dark staring at the campfire in the clearing, screwing up my courage to creep in and shyly interact with those sitting in the warmth and light.
I’ll sign off with my interwebs nickname, but the email address is real.
Heh. I am the child of two avid readers. I do not remember *not* being able to read. My poor beleaguered mother (who taught Grade 2) apparently taught me when I was approximately three. I then turned around and immediately taught my younger brother (who was two-and-a-bit). She hadn’t intended to teach me (she provided the tiny child board books (A is for apple!) mostly so I could look at pictures. It was more that she wanted us adequately prepared for school when we ultimately started it, and then it turns out that she could get WHOLE MINUTES OF QUIET by providing us with reading material. Which is a godsend to a woman with two active very young children.
This act of poor judgment resulted in my mildly ADHD brother and I both being profoundly bored in school for the first several years (when the curriculum is mostly focused on basic literacy, which we had down cold before kindergarten). My brother and I were (separately, each in our own grade) hell on wheels when bored. They finally (after many, many, many disciplinary meetings) just let us read whenever we were bored. Problem solved!
Although, it did spawn an ancillary issue wherein the school librarian kept getting concerned with *what* we were reading (which was “every-damn-thing” regardless of age level or actual appropriateness). My mother steadfastly refused to give a crap about the content of our reading. Her opinion was if we were confused, we would ask about it and receive an explanation. If we weren’t, then we were unlikely to be bothered by it. If we freaked ourselves out reading Stephen King late at night, we had learned a valuable life lesson. She was of the (correct!) opinion that reading even sexually explicit materials wouldn’t scar us for life (although Lady Chatterly’s Lover at 10 did cause a lot of dictionary usage and some tilted head confusion in young me).
I think my reading addiction started with Where the Sidewalk Ends. Maybe first grade? So many happy memories!
I think I was around 4, remember being thrilled I could “read” I, me, no, etc.
My mom read to us, my grandmother would make up stories about the people in the houses we passed on our walks. Around age 6, I was home sick and there was nothing on TV (pre-cable, kids!). I raided my family’s one bookshelf and was hooked.
By second grade I read “A Wrinkle in Time”. I also liked picture books about ballerinas and Edith the Lonely Doll. I snowballed as a reader: Nancy Drew, Wizard of Oz, Five Children and It, Half Magic, Roald Dahl, Zilpha Keatly Snyder, Lloyd Alexander, Ben Bova, Dido Twite, Susan Cooper, the Andrew Lang fairy tale books … I used to read them out loud, some of the characters were that alive to me. I would tailor reading and travel, so they dovetailed. It was awesome! It’s harder for me to get lost in a book now, because I am a single, working parent with worsening eyesight. Enter audio books!
My mom taught me to read at such a young age, I don’t remember it. After I started teaching my oldest to read, she found little books that she made for me to learn with, and it turns out I must have retained the lessons subconsciously, because I used almost the exact same method! I fell in love with Shel Silverstein and Eric Carle in kindergarten; I loved the imagery and creativity. My mom also had several Nancy Drew books from her youth, and I read them until they started to fall apart, and also a big red tome of Fairy Tale collections that’s still on my shelf.
One of my best friend’s mom owned a bookshop…she gave us big discounts and when she didn’t have the book I was looking for, she’d find and buy it for me.
When I was really young, my mom read to us all the time. Picture books, but also things like The Little House on the Prairie series.
I remember reading the Rosamond Du Jardin (likely misspelling her name) books when I was in elementary school (particularly the stories of the twin sisters and their escapades— romance for the grade-school set with heroines who were in high school). After that I was always reading. Biographies of famous women and fiction (mostly with female protagonists if given a choice). We also made weekly treks to the library and we all (mom, my brother, and I) checked out our own stack. There were always books at home, always, and I never remember a time when I was not a reader.
Wow, loved reading about everyone’s memories and favorite books! My first favorite books were The Tawny Scrawny Lion and The Monster at the End of this Book. I remember the first book I could read on my own was Rosie the Hen Went for a Walk. It has gorgeous illustrations in the entire book is one sentence. These are still my favorite books to give to young children as gifts.
My older sister had a hard time learning to read, in hindsight she was probably dyslexic. To encourage us to read my dad would give us a penny a page. I discovered that the book Are You My Mother had lots of pages and I read it multiple times to earn money. Dad caught on pretty quickly, but I never stopped reading.
I started reading in middle school the Anne McCaffery dragon series. Then moved onto Narnia and I was hooked.
I don’t remember being taught to read, just always could. I spent my summers with my grandparents in a one stop light town in Eastern NC which, lucky for me, had a wonderful library. By the time I was 10 or so, I had read all the books in the children’s section at least once. Miz Ruth, the Librarian, gave me secret permission to check-out books from the adult section. I was enthralled, “traveling” into the foreign country of grown ups with all their weird hang ups. Never looked back.
Don’t remember not loving books. We had very little money as a child, but the public library was on the way from school to my dad’s office. And the preferred gift was always a book.
At four years old, my Dad taught me my letters and read to me almost every night. By the time I started kindergarten I was already reading second grade level books and hated to be read to. In the first grade I was bored with the books that were on offer and would raise my hand for a bathroom break and just go home. (We lived across the street). By the time I was in the seventh grade I had discovered Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis LaMore, Agatha Christie, Dickens, and I always had a book in my hand. When forced to “go play outside “, I would climb a tree and read there. The library was my best friend. Now in my 70’s I am reading a little bit of everything. I have 2000 books on my nook, and revisit old friends often. My daughter in law says I’m an easy guest. Just give me a corner to read and I’m happy.
My brother and I had a blue plastic crate, and during the summers we would check out 15 books each, devour them in 1-2 weeks (because fun was a very specific idea and had very specific boundaries in a household with Asian immigrant parents), and rinse and repeat. I grew up on Tamora Pierce, Gail Carson Levine, Garth Nix, Sarah Dessen.
But when I first enrolled in kindergarten I didn’t know any English, so it was a very rapidly immersive experience. I still remember Ella Enchanted as the first full big-girl book I ever read. I would read it, only comprehend some of it, lose it, then find it again, and I found myself understanding more and more of the words as I read, lost, and found it again and again until one day I could fully understand the whole book and enjoy it for all its magic!
my mom did the bedtime reading thing… but not every night and I distinctly remember her reading a version of Belerophon and Pegasus …I think age 5 or 6. it’s not a kids picture book version but a young readers. well, mom only did part of the story and then didn’t read the next night and I couldn’t wait. so, I finished it myself. she was impressed that I got long words.
My parents were, and still are, fervent readers. I don’t remember not being able to read. I vaguely remember the Golden Books but the first books to stick in my mind (and get me into re-reading) were Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. I’d devoured them, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden and other age-appropriate books by 10 and then started on my Mother’s Harlequins and Mills & Boon – much to her horror. She gave me Dad’s Wilbur Smith and Alistair MacLeans. I’m not sure what my first foray into SF&F was but Frank Herbert’s Dune was an annual re-read in my teens, less frequently nowadays (loving the recent movies).
I used to say I’d read the back of the cereal packet if there’s nothing else around. But honestly I’d be lost without books. Everything else in life is judged by how much reading time I’m giving up. I’m self employed- if I take a day of it’s a days lost earnings. But for HA new releases (excluding serialised) I’ve been known to take a day off. Totally worth it.
Mom was a single mom in the 60’s. Had a job, couldn’t pick 12 yr old me up from school if I was sick. Permission to walk home. Instead I would seriously go to the library instead and sit and read until time to make it home. Frank Baum OZ books. All of them. I even remember the shelf they sat on beside this big leather chair. Librarian never said a word to anyone. Those books are DARK, let me tell you. Lol
I have always loved books. My first book memory of reading by myself was Red Fish Blue Fish – pre-kindergarten. In first grade, I would wait in the local library by my school until my mom got off work. When I was older, I read everything – fiction, nonfiction, comic books. I would climb a tree to read so my sisters wouldn’t bug me. I still read everyday.
I got hooked on both science fiction and historical fiction from the same visit to the school library a few weeks after I turned 10.
‘Storm over Warlock’ may very well be the worst book Andre Norton ever wrote, but that doesn’t make it bad, and it got me hooked on SF.
To this day, I have not figured out how a gawdawful sex and sensation potboiler like ‘Magnus the Magnificant’ ended up in a grade school library; but I found it, and have been reading historical fiction ever since.
According to my mom, I taught myself to read. The parochial school my family attended used a phonics program, and also taught us to speed read. There was a special projector that showed the words, with a moving block going along the lines so you had to read the words that weren’t blacked out. They would gradually speed it up, and by fourth grade I was reading 400wpm.
They also used laminated stories color coded for levels of difficulty. You had to read and answer questions before you could move on to the next one. I moved up the levels rapidly and ran out of colors pretty quickly.
And we won the reading lottery, because the bookmobile parked at the end of our block every other week. I graduated from Nancy Drew and Marguerite Henry to Andre Norton and Ray Bradbury to Georgette Heyer and Gerald Durrell there on the bookmobile. If it wasn’t crowded, I’d sit there crosslegged on the carpet and read right there until they had to leave. Pure heaven.
yep reading is my happy place a new book a reread a series yay
Both my parents were librarians. They read to us every night. I have vague memories of being about 3 and ‘reading’ to my baby brother. Pretty sure I had just memorized the books rather than recognizing the words. I was a proficient reader by the time I started kindergarten and was reading Brooks and Heinlein at 9.
In 4th grade our teacher ready the first Harry Potter out loud. He did funny voices for each character. He made a book feel alive for the first time. I asked my parents if I could get the next book. And of course they accommodated. It sparked my love of reading and I never looked back.
I don’t remember exactly when I got hooked on reading, but I remember walking up the Westover library every week of summer break and coming home with an armload of books since elementary school days 😁
I was in infant school and one of the other children could read a newspaper and I couldn’t. I was mortified and demanded to learn to read.
About four years later I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and I spent a whole year in bed. I had a teacher who used to come in once a week and by the end of that year I was reading adult books. I love reading. We have thousands of books as well as accounts with Kindle and Kobo
I like you don’t remember when I started reading. Discovered the library and I took out 8 books at a time. Then I started working there sheving books. Even married a library assistant ftom there (we never worked together.) Now after a hiatus I am reading every day.
My love of reading really started in grade 4, over 50 years ago. We had to do a book report and my book was “Little Joe” (I think that was the name). I chose the book from the school library because it was about a dog. I cried, laughed, and was basically overwhelmed with all these feelings. My mom used to say she couldn’t get me to read anything and, that after grade 4, she couldn’t get me to stop😁 I’ve read hundreds of books, in four different languages, and the power they have to transport me to another place and time never fails to overwhelm me. I’m in awe of all writers who have the talent to create other worlds and wonderful characters. I’m especially grateful to IA who never fail in doing exactly this. During my dad’s illness/death, my mom’s illness/death and now during my sister’s battle with breast cancer, your books have provided me with an escape. Thank you 🙏
I think I started reading by being read-to. Sure mom and dad, and grandmothers, but also my older sisters. I still have the Peter Pan book (with Disney illustrations) in which they taught me how to write my name … still has those awkwardly formed all-capital letters with backward R all throughout tat book.
Later I remember those book-fairs where you were given an order list to take home from elementary school, and you could order paperback books. I would have so many marked that I wanted, and my mom would have to rein me back to only 2-3 books to order. Didn’t really discover library until Junior High …
I was actually late to reading – didn’t really get into it until 4th – maybe 5th ? Grade. My family is full of readers and we’d go to the family lake house during weekends, summers, and winters and I’d annoy everyone (I am the youngest) asking to play a game. One year, my eldest brother threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t sit down and read something. I picked up Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery and went… silent. I think they tiptoed around me for days, afraid to startle the suddenly quiet creature lost in a story. I remember leaving it an uncle’s car once and my eldest sister went racing off to intercept him from going too far in order to bring me back the book!
Fast forward to highschool and I’d skip the English class to sit in a local park and …. Read! As long as I got A’s my parents struggled to get too fussed. Clearly it runs in the family, as my eldest missed the period in 4th grade after lunch because she was sitting outside under a tree, having fallen into a book and lost track of time. I couldn’t find it in myself to crtique her, and to be fair, her teachers didn’t try real hard to either …
grew up sneaking in books. my parents were first gen immigrants who didn’t hold much value in a woman reading or learning skills beyond home-making. nothing wrong with homemaking, but yea… i fell in love with charlottes web and my english teachers’ encouragement to be more, and haven’t stopped since.
I taught myself to read before kindergarten, and have been reading ever since. I never used to reread books, but some major life traumas and illnesses, I teach for old “friends” in times of stress.
Ah, this makes me cry, my dear mother took time out of her exhausting work on the farm to read to me until I could read for myself. My greatest joy was being given my first real book, of my very own. It was Christmas, I was 9, and the book was Little Women. I read it all day while it snowed and my mother fixed our Christmas dinner. Takes me back 70 years.
Simply can’t remember not reading – I think my English teacher mom taught me when I was 3 or 4. Apart from her taking us to the local library every Saturday, we were allowed to delve into most of the parental paperbacks from fairly early on. Plus grandma gave us all the children’s classics and collections of folktales. The first fantasy novel that truly entranced was The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin.
I have always liked to read, the places and the fantasy, or the historical, the mystery…it relaxes the mind and the soul
Like you I don’t remember not being able to read. My parents tell me that my older sister would come home from nursery school and prekindergarten and teach me the lessons that she had learned that day. So I suppose she taught me (she and Sesame Street).
I lived in the country so no public library but my parents and grandparents gave us plenty of books.
And starting school was nirvana. The school library was my favorite place in the world! I read voraciously. (Still do)
I now have access to a wonderful local virtual library. Unfortunately, I live in a state that doesn’t support the library system like it deserves so I always worry about if the chronic underfunding will cause a permanent problem.
Vote in every election and support every increase in library funding, please. It means the world to so many people of all ages and backgrounds.
And buy books whenever possible. They make wonderful gifts. Without supporting authors they cannot continue to write the wonderful stories that sustain us.
I have loved reading since I learned how. I read my first Bobbsey Twins book between first and second grade. I think I mostly read the and-s and the-s because when I’m reread it a few years later, I had missed a lot of the story. I never stopped reading.
I remember learning to read before kindergarten, and I my parents would read awesome chapter books like the Hobbit and Watership down before bed—my dad would do awesome voices. So I loved books, but I fell in love with reading books myself in second grade! The first time I got lost in a book and tuned out the world, I was reading a magic tree house chapter book, and I never heard my teacher say that silent reading was over, until the teacher spoke to me again and said silent reading had been over for 20 minutes
Sitting on my dad’s lap, looking at the Sunday funnies. 🙂
I remember reading around 6-7 years of age. This was right around the time my parents separated and we didn’t have a TV or any other entertainment, so books were cherished friends. I used to read ‘life’s like that’ and ‘laughter is the best medicine’ sections from Reader’s digest magazines and chuckle along, even though I couldn’t have possibly understood the humour at that age. I remember reading the sections of ‘increase your word power’ and my Mum used to quiz me on the meanings and encouraging me to use the word in a sentence, i even had a tiny pocket dictionary to figure out the tough ones! The lending library was a magical place and I would be dying to go back multiple times a week. I wasn’t allowed comics, because my Mum thought the language was too colloquial and as English was the third language that I learned, it was important to get the basics right before i could branch out into comics…..it may have also had to do something with me being a fast reader and I needed tombs to occupy my time and reduce the trips to the library. Alistair Maclean’s were my first big girl books , around 10- 11 years of age. I still love his book Circus and the hero Bruno!
I have always read because when I was young and ill all I was allowed to do was read. Reading the hobbit changed my life. After I finished the hobbit I wanted to read the lord of the rings but was too young to borrow from the adult library so I got myself a casual job working in the adult library. Then I borrowed the books from them and kept the job until I had read the complete series before quitting. Now C J Cherryh, David Weber, Eric Flint, Anne Bishop, Alanea Alder and Sharon Lee amongst others rock my world and I worry about leaving this world before my favourite series’s finish.
Our tiny town didn’t have library, so my mom would take us across the river to the “city” library when I had music lessons. I was allowed to take 10 books out. A year or two later I was allowed to bike across a different bridge to our other neighboring town, by myself, to get books. I was 11 when we moved away from there, so 8 to 11 years old? I haven’t quit since!
My parents were heavy-duty readers. I remember from the time I was little I wanted to know what was so interesting. I started reading as soon as I could. My father’s told me once, “I don’t care what you read, just read.” For years all I read where mysteries and spy novels. Then my husband introduced me to Anne McCaffrey. Such a great introduction to fantasy. These days I read several different genres and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I have no idea how I started reading; I could read at four, which is as far back as I can remember. My library was better than yours. They let me take out EIGHT books at a time. 🙂
Of course, I often took out books that I had already read. I don’t know how many times I read “Who Built the Highway?”
I’ve always loved reading but my first memory I have of being obsessed with a book harkens back to first grade when I stumbled upon and checked out Fritz and the Beautiful Horses by Jan Brett. I DESIRED THIS BOOK WITH ALL OF MY SIX YEAR OLD HEART but it was a library book and never appeared in the book orders or book fair (my only real source of new books at the time) so I checked out the book 6 weeks in a row and painstakingly copied out each word, struggling to draw some of the pictures. It was a right mess. My mom searched and search, given the same resources, but also could not obtain the book. She went to my elementary librarian (Mrs. Summers, I still remember) and asked about how to find or purchase the story. The librarian, who had no real suggestions, gave the book to my mom to give to me for Christmas. Basically life changing!
wow, what a cute story. wonder if you still have that book
I do! I also buy copies and give to some of the young’ins in my life. The story and the art really holds up! 🙂
Apparently, my first sentence was “Read me book.” I was maybe 18 months. By the time I was 5, my parents would jokingly explain to new babysitters that “this one would sleep with her books if we let her.” (Which I do now, because who’s going to stop me? bwhahaha)
The book I requested read most when I was a tiny sprout was a Little Golden Book called “The Rabbit Is Next”, about a little girl who waits her turn at the vet.
The book I remember being read the most was The Hobbit, which was one of my dad’s favorites.
The first book I fell in love with reading was The Velveteen Rabbit. I have wanted to write ever since he wanted to be Real.
Heh. My kid’s second word was “book” (the first one was “more”, which applied to books as well as other things 😂) and I am inordinately proud of that 😉
Comic books around the age of 9. Archie. Betty and Veronica. Etc. Went on to Marvel and D.C. superhero comics in my young teens. Then historical romance books in my late teens. Then present day romance. Finally made it to paranormal fiction about 25 years ago. Reading is my “comfort food”.
Apparently the best way to keep me quiet was to put a newspaper in my playpen. I would “read” it and something must have stuck because I could read when I went to school aged 4. I remember being punished because I didn’t want to read the phonetic books, but the proper books on the top shelf. In common with the other commentators here,I too adored the library and even now my happy place is a well stocked library.
At the risk of dating myself, the earliest books I remember reading for the fun of reading were the original Hardy Boys series, then Nancy Drew, and later the Dana Girls. I found them at home one day when I was in second or third grade (I never did find out how they came to be available at home) and distinctly remember bringing them to school to read during class because I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. Have had a love affair with reading ever since.
I started “reading” with beauty and the beast : I was 4 or 5 at the time and friends of my parent bought the disney book for me. I didn’t know how to read but I asked avery adult that day to read the story to me and I committed to memory what they told me so I could “read” to myself. Afterward I started deciphering by myself and when bedtime came I would read before sleep (and would learn to quickly shut the light when my parents came near my bedroom as to not get scolded for being up so late :P)
I remember changing schools and them using ITA to teach reading and me hating it as I could already read, when I was about 6.
I used to keep a small collection of books in the bathroom (maybe it was the only quiet place in the house).
I used to use both mine and my sister’s library cards so I could get more books out, and frequently started reading on my walk home. One half term week I read 24 books.
I started with Enid Blyton, like others here, then discovered science fiction in the children’s library (John Christopher’s Tripods) and moved into adult science fiction and fantasy.
I was about 4 the day the letters in the book just made sense (Nicholas Thomas and his tail that was crooked with questions). I never stopped reading and still read a book every day or so. I hate it when the library doesn’t have any more books for me – so thank you writers!
I have most of the Pern books as well, plus most of the House Andrews books. Unless I rabidly hate a book, it joins my library permanently.
Whenever I moved to a new town, one of the first places to check myself into was the town library.
When I moved into boarding accommodation during my studies the only place my body could relax was the library. On a subliminal level, books make me feel happy.
There was a bookmobile, and I remember walking there to climb up the stairs and pick up copies of books. I remember getting Jane Eyre, and reading it. Oh, and horses. The Black Stallion and the Red Fury. Black Beauty. I was 10 or so, I guess.
Then there was the Jr. High library where I discovered Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton. Little Fuzzy and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. I devoured every science fiction novel I could find.
My mother made the conscious decision to encourage me to read when I was very young. She read to me in the cradle, and I progressed quickly through my early years. The library was my favorite place in the whole world. To this day, while my friends and co-workers are watching things on their phone like YouTube and TikTok, you’ll find me reading a book on same said tech.
I struggled to read, I’m dyslexic. I was annoying my older brother and he mocked me that I couldn’t read, I said I could, he bet me I couldn’t finish this book, he pulled one of my dad’s David eddings off the shelf. my stubbornness kicked in and I bare knuckled it page by page, line by line, and somewhere I got lost in the story and I’ve never looked back. I was ten.
I was reading right back as long as can I remember. I have my baby books still. My favourite was Enid Blyton, The Faraway Tree and such. Then in the early 70s fantasy books from the library, the Book of Princesses, Book of Witches, etc, haven’t been able to discover who wrote those most annoyingly because there were many “Book of [insert fantasy creature]”. Then as a teenager reading my mum’s books, Catherine Gaskin, Victoria Holt, and from a lady I used to buy secondhand books at a market she told me about Georgette Heyer. I loved when ebooks came, I found so many new authors I’d never heard of before. One of the things I hate about the explosion of ebooks is I can’t find books to read. I know there’s thousands I would sink into, but how to find the good ones amongst all the millions of them? So many wasted dollars buying crap, even with great reviews on Goodreads. I used to get recommendations from Goodreads friends etc before ebooks, but now everyone reads all over the place or disappeared and I can’t find anything. It’s pure luck or just buying writers you already love. I know they’re there, but how to find them? I do a lot of rereads now just so I can get my fix of a good book. I call my rereading my comfort reading. I can’t tell you how many times I reread the Kate books.
Please tell me what is you fav Georgette Heyer book? 🙂
Mine is The Grand Sophie.
I love that one too! She is just so awesome! And Frederica and her “Baluchistan hound” 😂
Frederica and Venetia, but I don’t start people on those. The Grand Sophy, The Unknown Ajax, and Friday’s Child are more likely to grab new readers I suspect.
My Grandmother taught me to read when I was 4. Family legend says that they just HAD to teach me to read because it was the only way to have some peace and quiet (I was very active and mischievous child). I never stopped reading. I always brought a book to a kindergarten (and used to curl in my locker with a book, because that way nobody bothered me, because they could not find me). I read under my desk at school. I still remember the smell of the bookcase in my grandma room, it was the only one with glass doors and a lock and all my favourite books were in there. I remember seeing a “Hobbot” on the “for swap” shelves of a bookshop (it was the Soviet thing, rare books that one couldn’t purchase but could swap for other rare books). I had absolutely no idea at the time what “Hobbit’ is, who is the JRRT or anything at all on the subject, but I knew immediately that I had to have this book. I plead with my mother and miraculously we had something to swap for it and well, I never stopped loving LotR. I’ve read through school library and a city library as well. I remember hunting for books, writing letters to the publishers about possibly buying directly from them some books that weren’t on sale in my town and reading everywhere (I still do).
When I moved from Russia to Israel more than 20 years ago, I took with me some clothes, my PC and about 45 kg (a 100 pounds) of books.
Now, though I only read from kindle, we still have a library and I still occasionally purchase paper books. Because without books its not a home, its a living space.
When I was very young, my little sister was sick (leukemia, but she is fine now) and I missed school a lot to be “hospital-schooled” with the other sick kids and their siblings, while my sister was doing her treatments. So at 6, I had a really hard time reading. At 7, when I went back to school more often (when my sister was getting better and having less treatment), they put me in a special class with other kids, who were also having difficulties reading. When I finally managed to read properly, that’s where it started for me: the pleasure of reading and discovering new worlds, and I never stopped reading since then. It took away loneliness and sadness, and I often hid in the school library, to escape the world I lived in. One of the first books I remember reading was “The eye of the wolf” by Daniel Pennac. A really beautiful story of hardships and connection between different creatures. It is a kids book, but it will always stay with me in my heart and memories.
I barely remember learning to read Fun with Dick and Jane and Dr. Seuss. My mom read with my sister and I every night. She made sure that we contributed to telling the story. We graduated to her Nancy Drew books from her childhood. I used the card catalog at the local library to search Mysterious when I ran out of their Nancy Drews. I found Mysterious Island by Verne which I was too young to check out so I went daily to read it after school and got hooked on Science Fiction.
Én 12 éves koromban olvastam el az első könyvet egyedül, ez Herman Wouk Zendülés a Caine hadihajon volt. Azóta folyamatosan olvasok, sajnos csak magyarul és oroszul, mert csak ezt a két nyelvet ismerem.
Margo
from the. extra book on my grade school classroom
Wee called the school library. I attended a Catholic school for first grade so I spent grade school thinking I was the best reader in my class.
The book that kicked off my fantasy addiction was the picture book of the movie The Dark Crystal – I was riveted by the creatures and magic and drama and adventure. At the time we were living overseas and the school library was a narrow cupboard-style room, and I don’t remember anything else that interested 8yo me. The local library had lots of Enid Blyton (expat population were largely British and Australian). I know I was reading Anne McCaffery by the time I hit high school 🙂
As I child I missed a large amount of schooling as I was unwell. However, my mother gave me a book called” I can jump puddles” (a story about a child with polo). I never stopped reading after that
Reading was my escape. The quiet one out of six children, it was where I found an adventure, where I could for once be the main character where I had amazing friends, travels and adventure. That path began about 60 years ago. My son called me the book eater, now he calls me; the great book devourer, after I showed him my tee shirt..hahahahaha. I wear it every now and then with great enjoyment. I need to get another shirt though and maybe a sweatshirt too as winter is getting too cold for these old bones. 🙂
When I was 4 and my sister was 5, she was in Kindergarten. Whatever she brought home I learned. By the time I got to Kindergarten, I was bored because I had learned all the lessons already! The teacher gave me whatever I wanted to read as long as I stopped pestering everyone else because of the boredom!
This would have been 1964 or so. No idea what I was reading just that I had books to read.
When I was a teenager, YA books didn’t exist so my mom let me read whatever she brought home. Everything from Danielle Steele to Robert Ludlum and Stephen King.
Only book that ever really freaked me out was Helter Skelter.
I don’t remember seeing my parents reading- EVER! My dad grew up in rural Ireland & apart from the newspaper in later life I never saw him with a book in his hand. I know mum was a prolific reader as a teen & I have a book of poems she wrote her self & also cut out & stuck in ( a lot of Helen Steiner Rice). I DO remember my aunt giving me books as presents for birthdays & Christmas though & seeing her with books as well. Mum did introduce me to the library❤️& I continue to use it to this day. There was a story I was told that while on holiday on the Norfolk B-roads on a boat Mum opened the door to the toilet & there was me, on the loo with a book & apparently I said ‘this is the life’ lololololol.
My mother often read to us growing up and then as we learnt to read she would make sure we had access to books we enjoyed, mostly through the library. We’d have quiet evenings reading and I always got books as gifts for birthday and Christmas. They’re still my favourite gifts to receive.
Once I was older mum and I would read the same series and discuss our theories etc.
Reading has always been ingrained into my daily routine. I love to read to escape and also to feel closer to mum and wonder what her thoughts would be on a book.
I taught myself to read by age 6 as my older sister was fed up reading me the same Grimm’s Fairy Tales. My family read all the time so I can’t remember not reading. As kids, we had reading marathons with neighborhood kids (lots of kids) and we’d share our comic books, library books, and books from our households. My parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest monthly children’s reading club and every month we’d get a hardcover and their series of short-stories collection. We also had a selection of the classics and several encyclopedia collections (remember those?). The librarians saw us several times a week and knew us all by name. Good times reading! Reading is and has always been my favorite hobby.
We moved a great deal when I was a child so I started reading as a way to pass the time. The first thing I did was to find the library in each town. I wanted my daughter to love books also so I read to her when she was very young. She did the same with her children.
What I am reading is 30 scientific journal articles a week for my research assistant job that is paying for my education, several textbook chapters on qualitative research and measurement, and 15 additional scientific journal articles for my classes.
What I want to read is the hundreds of books that I’ve accumulated in the last 10 years I’ve been 1) finishing my BSN, 2) finishing my MSN, 3) being a working nurse during a pandemic, 4) starting my PhD in nursing research.
All is not lost, it is spring break and the university is closed, my next assignment isn’t due until the end of the month, and I have a 7-hour car trip to a nursing conference at the end of the week. My goal is to read 2 books on the trip.
What am I writing is an entirely different matter? I write 5 days a week on my operating room nursing blog, five major papers per class per semester, with 3 25-page papers in May for my preliminary exams. What I want to write is the secret agency called Gabriel’s Gate.
My father instilled the love for books in both me and my younger brother. Being illiterate himself, he discovered his love for literature in his early twenties and I remember him fondly with a book in his hands on his spare time. He always pushed us to read more. Always included a few books among the Christmas presents.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t read, even when my reading workload for school was overwhelming, I would find the time to read “just for the pleasure” and not out of obligation. It’s my escape from real life, my entertainment and a way to keep improving as a person.
I was 9 and someone gave me a book for my birthday: le prince de Central Park by Evan H Rhodes. I remember it to this day. It was the beginning for me. After that, I’ve never stopped reading.
had to do a book report. so i picked a random book in the library called Belgarath the sorceror. then found out it was a prequel. the had to reread the aeries to get all the references. the i did that to his other books. been reading a series since.
Mom and Dad were big on reading. I started very young and was surrounded by books and getting a new book was a treat. When I was 12-13, my tastes changed. As a teenager, I read Johanna Lindsey, Rebecca Brandywine and Dean Koontz. I used to get in trouble at school for reading in class. Reading is one of my joys!
Family story is that I got too impatient with the one chapter of Harry Potter my parents would read to me before bed time… As I had just started school I then learned reading a lot quicker than expected in order to finish the book myself. And that’s the story of how my parents never read Harry Potter 😀
I don’t remember when I started reading, or the specific age I got my library card. I just remember the feeling of elation and pride when I got it. I still have the old, mangled thing around here somewhere. Could never bring myself to throw it out.
First book I read was “My Golden Pony” and second book hooked me – “Old Yeller”. Been reading almost non-stop since. My current record is reading 634 days straight and still going strong.
My parents moved to Virgin Gorda in the Virgin Islands during my middle school years and there was no cable. We only had one vhs tape of the movie ‘scream’. I was so bored I turned to books and the first one I picked up was “The Meg”by Steve Alten. I loved it, been addicted ever since. It probably also wasn’t the best book to read while living on a tiny island lol.
I’ve loved books and reading all of my life. One of the earliest pictures I have of myself was sitting on my grandmother’s couch with a sales circular in my lap, trying to read it. I was two years old. I read nearly everything my mother read-her tastes were romance and true crime. (Helter Skelter was not a good read for an 11 year old, but it was a big book!) I was a library addict , and like many of you, read everything in our elementary school library. I read every word on the cereal boxes in the morning. By sixth grade, I was reading at college level. My tastes ran to SF when I found Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, and fantasy followed shortly thereafter. I worked in a bookstore, and it was the best job ever. I loved the books and the customers, and I still miss that job!
That was me as a kid! Have been a voracious reader as long as I can remember. Used to devour books. In fact, my mother once said, she never had to worry about me during the Summer Holidays, as I used to curl up in a corner and read my Life away! Still the same. I do not possess a TV! All I need is books.
OMG! I felt the same way about the library & did the same thing. I could escape & live other lives in books. I started reading when I was 4 years old. I was motivated by nosiness. I didn’t like not knowing what the adults were spelling around me & I didn’t like feeling left out. I also attended Montessori school at that age so between school & my parents & being nosey, my love of books was born. Reading books under the covers with a flash light after bedtime was a normal childhood behavior for me.
I had too much “boisterous imagination” as my aunt had called it. I was always climbing trees, sword fighting my cousin (Sorry rory) and encountering dragons in the garden. My aunt gave me Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials when I was about 10/11 and said it would be an adventure but on a page…then bam…I became a reader 😅
One of my earliest memories of reading is from around 4-5 years old; I was sick and was reading an illustrated edition of Treasure Island in bed to comfort myself.
Also, my mother used to read The Lord of the Rings to my sister and me at bedtime when we were young. Since she worked full time, she was tired and only read a few pages each night; at some point I got impatient and wanted to read ahead 🙂
After that, I read practically everything I could get my hands on, but I still love scifi/fantasy the most.
My parents were big readers and I learned to read in kindergarten. My mother took us to the library faithfully and everyone brought home books. I would get in trouble at school because I was reading books too “hard” for my grade level. It didn’t matter, it opened up a new world.
In 4th grade I was a slow reader.
At the suggestion of my teacher, my Mom took me to a bookstore and we picked out a book called The Happy Hollisters, it was the first book in a mystery series, and I haven’t stopped reading since. I love books, in fictional genres, and I thank that teacher who pushed me in the right direction! In that one summer I went through the series The Hollisters, to Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, and Anne of Green Gables, Margaret Sutton, Zane Grey… and I’ve never stopped reading. Many thanks to all authors with their fertile imaginations!
I can’t remember not being an avid reader. My mom read allot, and she would take all 4 of us to the Library on Saturday to return books and get new ones. As a child of the 60s and 70s, there were allot of generic books for kids. However, when I hit 15 and got my first job, I used to buy the discount historical romance novels at the store every payday and read whenever I was not doing something else. Then I took “College Bound Reading” my junior year of high school and my world opened up. It never stopped.
14 years old and case of Mononucleosis started my affair with books. 3 days into my confinement to bed,I was bored and whining. My mother brought me a sandwhich and a pile of books from a local free book exchange at the laundromat. I picked the biggest one from the pile, Rich man, Poor man by Irwin Shaw. I started reading and didnt stop. I streched that illness as long as I could and read the whole book in a week. Then I started on the rest until I got to my first Harliquin Romance, the affair was sealed with that outback hottie and his housekeeper.
My book love affair began around 5 grade. I think it was Beverly Clearly’s Fifteen. I’ve been an avid reader ever since. I even remember my mom taking my books as a punishment because reading was my favorite thing to do. Now, as an adult it is my favorite escape. I’ve even gotten 2 book related tattoos.
My love of reading began before I could read in southern Appalachian western NC. Wenlived with extended family, and my great aunts and uncles were always telling and reading stories. I remember telling Mom how disappointed I was on my very first day of school because the teacher hadn’t taught me how to read. It didn’t take long, and the first book I fell in love with was a Superman comic. (Still proudly own that fetish 😉 My love of sci-fi and fantasy stems from there and continues to this day. Falling into a new book, finding an author you can’t wait to devour…escapism doesn’t get ANY better than that!
Luckily my parents were forward thinking. I grew up with a home full of books and was introduced to the library before kindergarten. My mother used to laugh and say I was born with a library card. She had to make extra trips – twice and sometimes three times a week to allow me to return books and get another armload full because they only allowed me to take seven at a time.
My husband admits that originally he was a little surprised at how much I set aside in my budget for book purchases. To me it was right beside food, electricity and rent. I simply do not understand people who do not READ, not just for knowledge but for sheer entertainment and joy…. even though one of them is my brother.
Mom read to me from the beginning. We went to the library regularly. I always loved books. In 3rd grade, the librarian at school told me I could only check out 2 books/week. I told her I’d finish them before a week. She said if I brought them back before the week was out, she’d let me have more. I brought them both back the next day. She quizzed me on them – thinking I hadn’t read them. I had. She gave up and let me check out however many I wanted. Now my bookshelves are all full and my kindle has over 5000 books.
I learned to read at an early age, before I was five. Our dad would read to us every evening. We’d all crawl into one of our beds and he would read a chapter or two from a book. I still read a great deal.
I just wanted to add that in elementary school I set my bed on fire because I was reading. My night light attachment was broken so I set it on the mattress and was reading for hours . It was a very good adventure and why was I going to stop ? My sibling in our room ran screaming to wake up the parents while I continued to read …..the bed was just smoking – it was not in flames until my dad actually got to our room. He threw the bed out on the front lawn and called the fire dept. I don’t remember the book but I finished it.
I don’t know when I started reading, I do know that I started reading my parents books in the second grade. They never censored. In the sixth grade I discovered the library. I would take the bus to downtown Dallas and the main public library and fill a large paper grocery bag with books. I would then take them back on the bus and sometimes walk a couple of miles with the books, stopping along the way when I got tired to read for a while.
One time the check out person at the library asked me what I was going to with all of those books and I looked at her in surprise and said very seriously that I was going to read them. On weeks ends I would go thru about 7 or 8.
I started my love affair with reading quite young. I never played with Barbies, I played with horse figurines! 😁 I started with My Friend Flicka and then into Black Beauty and the Black Stallion books. I read them all. I then read found fantasy with animals…McCaffrey and Lackey. At some point I found Asimov, Heinlein, Norton and Herbert and never looked back. The worlds these writers created was so amazing, while my wasn’t…so amazing. As I got older I looked for something with romance in it, too. So here I am!
My mother was a big reader and I wanted to know what was in the books she read so my sister taught me to read before I entered school. Probably it was a way to make me quite as I was quite the talker when I was little. We were poor for most of my life but getting my stack of books from the library made me feel so rich!
My mother would read to me every night. Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, All Creatures Great and Small, pretty much anything with animals. Then as I got older she had me read a chapter then she’d read a chapter. Then I would read to her. Then I started reading on my own. I can still remember my first romance novel and it was straight romance. Caroline was the title and I have no idea who the author was. Then I got into Barbara Cartland, then Harlequin Romances. I was a subscriber of those for years. Was a huge fan of Suzanne Brockmann and her Seal Teams and Kristen Ashleys’ Rock Chicks. I started with Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy with a free story I stumbled on by Shayla Blacks. Doomsday Brethren and I still haven’t forgiven her for never finishing the series and with the exception of Rock Chick books I haven’t read another romance book since then. There was a comment by JR Ward in a Doomsday Brethren book so I started with her Black Dagger Brotherhood. I was looking for new authors as these guys are just too “in your face sex” for me. I don’t mind sex in a book but I really don’t need two pages describing a guy’s parts and half the chapter of explicit doing the deed. Someone recommended a website that had an “if you like this author, try these” and Ilona Andrews and Shelly Laurensten were listed. I’ve never looked back. I still buy any new Shelly books and I do a reread of those every few years. I’ve done 5 KD rereads since Sept. of last year and I’m just finishing up Hidden Legacy then I’m heading back to KD. My other favorites is JD Robb and the In Deat series. That will be my next read after I do KD again. And that is my history of reading.
My father was an avid reader when I was growing up, and I picked up the habit and never put it down. We read so much that my mother got jealous of the books. 😂
Carrie-
were a house of readers, but in my house it was my mom who was the machine. when I saw the movie ‘Short Circuit’ where the robot is devouring books saying ‘need input’, that was my mom.
She would take out the max books from the library , I think it was 7 fiction, 7 non fiction, and would be back again next week. I realized as an adult that was her escape, she was one of the most intelligent people I have ran into, I mean brilliant , and it wasn’t a happy life ( she graduated high school at like 14 in NYC in the early 40s, finished 90 credits of electrical engineering in a year& a half , and then basically had an emotional break she never really recovered from).
Given a chance she could talk about anything at a level ppl knowledgeable about the area would be impressed. I am glad books were there for her, as they are often for other people facing things in life:)
My reading started when I was about 7 years old. It was an escape from the bullying in school. My dad had a stroke when I was 5 and he started taking me and my sister to the library as a cheap way to keep two young kids entertained. My limit was 1, then 3 then 10 books. I remember packing a suit case full of books when my parents sent me to my grandparents house for 2 weeks one summer. I wasn’t sure which books I would want to read next.
In second grade, my Catholic school scheduled weekly library time, and we were allowed to browse at will. I found a Nancy Drew book and devoured it in no time, and from that point on was never without a book to read. I even got in trouble for reading during recess instead of playing with the other children — “It’s antisocial, dear!” the nuns told me. That failed to dissuade me, and of course I later learned by way of my habit that I wasn’t being *antisocial*, I was/am an *introvert* 🙂
My parents always read to my sister and myself, and I still love Go Dog Go and the Crows of Pearblossom (A. Huxley). I still remember the first word I officially learned to read – look, in the 1st grade. That was it – I was hooked and have never stopped reading.
At fourteen I was in high school in Scotland and the books we had to read for English were Shakespeare and Chaucer. They didn’t do it for me. Then we had to read To Kill a Mockingbird and I was hooked, I remember staying up until 2 am as I couldn’t stop. I’ve been an avid reader since then.
I grew up in a house of readers, so there were books at home and regular trips to the big county library near our house. I do remember learning to read, first they used a phonetic alphabet called ITA ( I suspect it was a varient of the IPA, international phonetic alphabet), there were books written in it, then switching to regular alphabet in 2nd grade. I remember sounding out street signs and learning ‘knolls’ isn’t ‘ke- nolls’ lol.
Besides getting a library card, one thing I remember distinctly was picking up a copy of Herman Wouk’s ‘The Caine Mutiny’ and trying to read it..it probably weighed as much as I did ! all my parents said was I wouldn’t understand large parts of it, and they were right, but that little pip squeak said ‘,that’s okay, I will understand more the next time I read it’..and over the years I did , picking up more and more over the years. It taught me something about books, that when you read books they can exist on many levels, that can change how you look at it over time.
My reading then as now was eclectic, I loved science fiction, both novels and short stories,.and would read anthologies of SF short stories, yet I also fell in love with Charlotte’s Web , don’t know how many times I read it and cried at the end. ( that’s okay, as an adult my wife and I saw ‘The Snowman’ animated movie and bawled our eyes out at the end).
It took me places I couldn’t go, made me think, and also took away ,especially when I hit my teens, the loneliness I often felt, bc I could read books where I could see myself in that world.
It is funny, maybe because I only write for my own enjoyment,when I read a book I can get lost in it. The only thing my amateur writer’s side brings out is appreciating how an author weaves the web they do, and marvel how they keep their universe straight.
Actually, the only critical eye I ever had was in the Hidden Legacy series where Alessandro uses his Alfa to jump a huge gap in the road and lands in one piece, which anyone who has ever owned an Alfa would laugh at ( it would look like the Blues Brother mobile when it gets to the Dailey building an expires).
There are pictures of a toddler me holding a book. When I started school, students didn’t learn to read until they were in first grade. I do remember going from not reading to reading everything in sight. I found that I hated to read out loud as I had to slow down.
I remember when I was very small, my Dad would read to my brothers, sisters, and I every night before bed. He used different silly voices for each character…it was so much fun!
I also remember looking forward to 14 hour car trips every summer to visit family in another state. My parents always packed a big bag of brand new books for each of us, and we weren’t allowed to look at them until we were in the car. It was glorious!
The first books I remember reading (other than Dr. Seuss) are The Little Prince (Antoine d’Saint Exupery) and Tolkien’s trilogy. I wanted to give the little Prince hugs and tell him his flower would be okay, and I wanted to join the hobbits on their magnificent adventure!
Books have remained my best friends, my endless golden ticket when I need a trip elsewhere, and one of my greatest joys in life. Many, many, many thanks to HA for all of their lovely gifts to the BDH, helping to feed our very ravenous (and appreciative) reading appetites! 🥰💕💕💕💕
Oh, how I understand you. I learned to read in Grade 1 and from that moment on any book I could get my hands on, I read it. I managed to read every single book in the school library and since my dad also had many books, I read them too. Seeing my interest, my dad bought me several encyclopaedias which I read so many times that I memorized them. You can imagine that I aced everything in school. By the time I was in Grade three, when the teacher would tell us something that wasn’t correct, I’d raise my hand and say “Miss that’s not the way it is” and I would correct her. The first time she didn’t take it too well so I went home, brought an encyclopaedia with me and showed her how she was mistaken. By the end of the year any time she’d open her mouth she’s check me out to see if I approved of what she was saying.
I read on family car vacations, instead of listening to my annoying brother and mother describe the scenery. Nothing better than getting lost in someone else’s adventure! Told my mom all her fault as she always gave me a book in the car! I don’t remember a time of not loving to read. My oldest daughter is a librarian(Media something or another) but she still loves the smell and feel of a book like I do! Side note…..
Kansas City Public Library. As noted on that site, these 25-foot-high representations of 22 different books (set between glass-enclosed stairwells made to look like bookends) are known as the “Community Bookshelf” and do indeed line one wall of Central Library’s parking garage in downtown Kansas City. I could not post the picture but check it out!
I have no idea when I started reading and I do not hail from a family of book lovers (my father would fall asleep after trying to read one page). All I know is that I have always loved reading. I remember reading with a flashlight under the covers after my parents would put me to sleep. I loved being pulled into another world and I was the kid that could be in a noisy, crowded room and still read. The school librarians were my best friends and would put aside new books for me. I now live in a house filled with books and am happily married to a fellow book lover.
I couldn’t read or write going into kindergarten. Many of the kids could read even at the start. They had all gone to preschool. I wasn’t able to because we couldn’t afford it and my mom didn’t try teaching me to read because she thought that would be the school’s job when I was old enough to go. I hated not being able to read. I worked incredibly hard at learning. By 2nd grade I was reading white dragon of pern, and the lord of the ring’s series. I remember going to the library and asking if I could get a book that wasn’t in the kid’s section. The librarian said it was fine but that I would probably prefer the books in the kid’s section. When I picked the white dragon, she tried so so many times to talk me out of it, but I told her I would have it finished before I had to return it. I did finish it. It took me the entire month to do it, but I did, and I never went back to the kids’ section again after that. I definitely read to escape my childhood was not good for many reasons.
I too do not remember a time when I did not read. I think my father helped me learn to read by reading the paper to me and I took off running from there. I once had to prove to a librarian that I was capable of reading and understanding a book she thought was above my grade level. I read her selected passage and told her what it said. She let me have the book and never questioned me again. Summer was the best when I could check out a stack, read them in a few days and go back and check out more. Reading has always been my “happy place” and my escape when my anxiety peaked or things got too much to handle.
I grew up reading and my fondest memory is of going t0o the library with my Mother, when I was a teenager. She liked mysteries and at the time, I liked Westerns. We would swap books. Thank you so very much for bringing back that memory.
My first 2 books I owned were the Three Bears and the Little Engine that Could. I would have people read those to me all the time. In time, I knew the story so well that I was reading the books to people. I was reading by the time I was 4 to 4 1/2.
When I was in high school, my mother got some film developed and she handed me a picture and said this was why she hated me reading when I was supposed to help with housework. I was engrossed in a book and I never knew she took that picture. LOL My mother was as bad about reading; it’s probably where I got my addiction.
I think that is why I became a Librarian. I want to help other people find their escape the way I found mine.
I received a Bobbsey Twins book for my sixth or seventh birthday, fell in love with reading and never stopped.
My 1st book after One Fish, Two Fish ect.. was Tarzan of the Apes & When Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. I was hooked. I was in 3rd grade. My Mom would pick up books at the 2nd hand store. I still read at least 2 books a week. Dune was my first fantsy book. Love to read, even read cookbooks! Finding a new series or the next in a series I like, is better then Christmas!
My older brother always read the comics page of the newspaper spread out on the floor. I learned to read upside down from the other side of the paper because he didn’t like anybody reading over his shoulder. I read everything I could get my hands on. But my very first introduction to sf was The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree. Talk about opening a door! My favorite children’s sf was The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key. So much so, I still have a copy of it to this day!
I am still a prolific reader of all genres, although fantasy/sf is still my go-to on any random day.
I feel for the commenter above who had to downsize her collection; the biggest challenge of our marriage came BEFORE our wedding day, when I had to donate about 1000 books to make room for his collection! That we are still together almost 32 years later is a blessing I appreciate every day. But it couldn’t have happened if I hadn’t bit the bullet and cycled through my books. In fact, though, that taught me an important lesson about sharing the love (of books) rather than staying a complete hoarder, which I had been up to that point.
I can’t remember when I couldn’t read. My Father & Grandmother would read to me every day. I know I was 4 when I would select my own book & read. My Dad had a very large selection of books from childhood to adult. Drove my Mom (a non reader) nuts. Was way ahead of my freinds in school. My Dad had to sign off at the local library that I was NOT to be restricted to the childrens picture book section (very boring books, at least to me) same at school. I’ve cut back in recent years & donated a lot of my 80 years of collecting. Still have about 9000 books left & 918 books on my E reader, so it’s not too bad being housebound. TG you can now borrow library books in E format.
Happy reading EV1
Ilona can’t wait for your next book. Any chance of another Kinsmen book or short story??
Hugs & prayers
Kathy
Unfortunately, books were not a thing when I was growing up. I got the reading bug the summer I was 16. I was staying with my cousin and no one was home and I was bored. I checked out the books at his desk; all science textbooks (biochem major) except for Heinlein’s Stranger in the Strange Land. Oh, my! I started reading sci fi, then read a fantasy (McCaffrey Dragonbooks)… then branched out over the years to thrillers, romance of all flavors, biographies, histories… really anything that catches my fancy. I started later in life, but have made up for it in the sheer number of books read… I still read 4 to 5 books a week! And I’m closer to 70 now than is comfortable!
Reading was a escape from childhood sexual abuse that allowed me to escape the memories and to fantasy about different worlds. The abuse was not in my family but a husband of my mother’s friend. At 8 years old, I could escape to the library and then to books I found there. Books are still my escape from stressors. I read everything and enjoy many different jardons and authors. Hope everybody out there have a good day and year
I could read early, and I remember going to the library, but my love of books began in the fourth grade when I broke my leg. So I wouldn’t be bored, my mom brought home three books and I remember them all. One of them was the first three Nancy Drew books combined. I was hooked. I started my first novel at 12, about a girl named Marianne and her two best friends (I had two best friends like Nancy Drew), who solved mysteries. I never finished it, but the punctuation was perfect. I’m now a copy editor.
I got started with reading very young too, and have been a regular and proud library user my entire life.
In first grade, I began stuttering. I had a weekly in-school speech therapy session, but I didn’t willingly talk as much anymore because of the challenges I was having. Also at that time my father began an at-home program with me, focused on reading and comprehension, and speed-reading. I remember spending a lot of time with him, and it was so enjoyable — we both loved reading. At some point, my stuttering almost disappeared but I am aware even today that I utilize every day some of the speech techniques I learned as a child to avoid stuttering.
I read a lot as a child, child/young adult fiction, but biographies and Boy’s Life and National Geographic and Reader’s Digest too, all the Agatha Christies and Erle Stanley Gardners, even Barbara Cartland and regency romances — really, anything that was around that wasn’t too grown-up for my taste. (My folks allowed me freedom to read). I was responsible for our family library, and I would organize it and reshelve things — we had 100s of books 🙂 Still, going to the library as a child was a priority for me, and luckily also for my parents — I could ride my bike to the local (small) library but to get to the larger library someone would have to drive me. There was an ice cream shop near by, so it was doubly lovely errand to run.
As an adult, I continue to read regularly/daily; reading is interwoven in my life. I bookmark upcoming releases, regularly read about new books and seek out new authors and reread favorite books. There’s nothing like finding an author new to me, that I love.
Coincidentally (ha!), I married into a family of book-lovers. My husband’s father, and mine, were the kind of men who always carried a paperback with them wherever they went. Love this memory!
My superpower is reading — thanks, Pop!
I don’t remember when I started reading – I remember being read to, having my own books. I do remember my first visits to the library. The dizzying wonder of a building filled with BOOKS! Happy, Happy day!! Getting a library card and finding out I could get 30 books at a time; bring them back AND Get More!! (sigh) I read all the books in my elementary school library. Favorite places to read – up a pecan tree at my grandparents farm, a lawn chair in my back yard or in our living room with my parents while music played on the stereo.
Before I could read I would “read the pictures” to my younger sister. We were probably 3 and 2. I would go through a children’s picture book and make up stories. My stories must have been captivating because my sister hit me on the head with a hard plastic toy once when I refused. Blood was shed. Later, in elementary school I read everything in the children’s section of our local public library. I began recommending books to the librarians. I moved on to the main library downtown always checking out the maximum number of books. Books were my friends, my love, my religion. I would mourn the end of a good book. The Narnia Chronicles C.S. Lewis. The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. The Velveteen Rabbit. Anne McCaffrey’s dragon books. The Queen’s Blessing and To Kill a King by Madeleine Pollard. As a teen I read Tolkien but also romance and sci-fi and mysteries. My appetite for experiencing books was demanding. Books made me fall in love, be on the right side against evil, fight battles, travel the world, the universe, and time. My husband will sometimes find me crying over a book. The loss is so real. Or laughing which is wonderful and delicious. My siblings all read. We recommend books and delight when there is a series because the story continues and we can live in that world longer. I introduced them to your books and they are lapping them up but savoring too. We all get excited to find a new book.
I started reading out of the telephone book! It used to have a lot of adds and logos in it. I would help my gma look up numbers because English was her second language and I had “young” eyes so I could read the print more easily. I carried that thing around and would play work or school while everyone else besides my gma or I was at work or school. When I started kindergarten we had a school library that we got to visit once a week with our class or any recess.
I had trouble learning to read (they discovered in first grade that I needed glasses). My dad made a tape recording of me crying because they kept making me try to learn to read. Once I learned though, it was “watch out world!” 😂 I read everything I could get my hands on (Enid Blyton, Eleanor Cameron and the “Mr. Bass” series, Nancy Drew, Trixie Beldon, Andre Norton, horse stories like Wildwing, Black Beauty and Island of the Lost Horses, and so much more).
My Mom read to me while I was in the womb! 🙂 I know I became an avid reader when I was 12 and I’ve never stopped. I have more books in my home that any other thing. And, yes, there is nothing better than finding a book that grabs you from the beginning and doesn’t let go until the end. That’s why I have a few authors whose books I reread/relisten to more than once – because they always grab me!
Our new suburb didn’t have a library, but we had a bookmobile. My mother was a reader and we would go and load up on books. Somehow I skipped children’s books and went straight to adult novels. I remember when I was in my 20s I discovered the Little House books and really enjoyed them.
The first thing I remember reading was a comic that was given to me in hospital age 5 and it had a free daisy bracelet with it. Enid Blyton books were a firm fav and the library was well used . We were a family of readers and got comics every week Judy, Bunty ,Mandy and as we got older Jackie. As I got older about 13 and ran out of something to read one day I started reading my mum’s comics the Red Letter , Family Secrets? these were short romance type stories printed in the UK and that started me on Mills and Boons age 15 and dad’s Rover in a pinch that started me on cowboy stories like JT Edson.
Now I still read Nora Roberts and have all of hers and all of Ilona’s and I keep finding new authors but keep reading Ilona’s and a few others again and again and enjoy them just as much as the first time.
I now use my Kobo to buy books although I prefer a real book (they don’t run out of power) but space is a problem and while I would have book shelves everywhere hubby would not be happy and he would find out how much I really spend every month but as long as my fav authors write books I will buy them.
Ilona Andrews thank you for so many hours of wonderful reading.
We were visiting my grandparents and my grandpa took me on a walk. We stopped along the way in front of a building. We approached, and as my grandpa opened the door to the public library he turned to me and said “Jacqueline Elizabeth…this is all for you”. I was probably around five… my love affair with books began in that moment.
Exactly the same, though the library was harder to reach and I stank at returning the books.
I grew up reading as well and happily remember the weekly use of my library card. However, my most satisfying memory is of used book stores. Searching the stacks on the shelves, floors, and tables and paying 50 cents or a dollar per book. I was so sad last year to have to give away the last 4 very large boxes of physical books. I’ve gone completely to my Kindle these days as we no longer have the space.
I always had books around me and reading has always been my one true love. Strangely enough I started with Enid Blyton and John Finnemore’s Teddy Lester books, discovered the library and then jumped into Mills and Boon romances and that was it for me. I devoured any and everything. It led me to what I am today, someone with very eclectic tastes in books
I joined the library aged 3…you just had to be able to write your name…so that was it, I still love books more than ‘real’ life.
I have some comfort blanket though…Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsong and Dragonsinger in particular. Robin McKinley The Blue Sword and The Hero and the crown…been re-read so many times.
I read with my own kids, but since adulthood they prefer films and TV series, which I think is sad….with the book you get so much more involved in thinking of the characters in your own way…all mine have English accents, lol.
My parents would read to me every night, pretty much no matter what. I was so lucky there- they would read to me even if they had read the same book over and over for multiple nights in a row. I figured it out from there, and I think I was about 4 when my parents found me reading out loud to myself in my room. After that, they bought me all kinds of books- I had a whole shelf of the “Illustrated Classics” (kid versions of classic books like the Count of Monte Cristo, Robinson Crusoe, Black Beauty, Great Expectations, etc. Thinking back on it, I have to laugh at how NOT kid-friendly some of the titles really are.) I was always able to get books from the book fairs that came to our school, or from the quarterly book order forms. And of course, there was the Book-It program where I earned many free personal pizzas for reading.
My parents were avid readers, my dad only read historical ones and my mom mostly romance, sci-fy, fantasy. I start really reading book everyday when I was 11 and have only stop in my life when I had my kids (about the first 2 years for each of them). This is one of my great joy in life
I forgot to say that my maternal grandparents had a big collection of comic books/graphic novels so as soon as I was able to read, every Sunday I would read anything they had. My mother got us library cards when we were 10 years old and I would read mostly comic books/graphic novels . I started reading the books without images at 11.
I learned to read when I was 2 or 3 by reading the back of cereal boxes. Before I began grade school, I read the entire set (20 books) of Book of Knowledge which came with the set of Encyclopedia Brittanica my mom bought for us. The grade school I went had a branch of the county library in the school and I read every biography available and books on every state in the USA. My favorite books as a child were the Tom Swift series. I was so glad when I got my first Kindle as I no longer had to pack a suitcase for the books my wife and I wanted to read on vacation.
I grew up in rural KY and one of my best memories is of receiving books during the summer in the mail. Getting mail in your name was a big deal and getting a book in the mail was even bigger…especially when you are six years old!! Books were my refuge in my middle school and high school years when my family moved, and I had no friends in our new neighborhood. Books have been my family and my refuge in difficult times and are my abiding love as I age.
My parents introduced me to books, reading to me from infancy. They tell me that I desperately wanted to learn to read as a small child. I learned to sound out three-letter words before I started school, but no matter how hard I tried I just could not get past that until my brain grew up a bit. By age 7, though, I was reading chapter books, and I’ve been a voracious reader ever since.
Ok, may I ask what is the title of the book your daughter was reading?
My cousin Kay worked in a library and for Christmas she gave the children in the family books. I remember looking at my older brother’s books wishing I could read (I received picture books). The only reason I wanted to go to school was to learn how to read. By the fourth grade I hade a college reading level. I’m 58 years old and still occasionally thank Kay for giving me a love of books.
I started at age 3. I loved Dr Seuss and mom hated Dr Seuss with a passion. after the umpteenth time I asked for her to read Green Eggs and Ham, she snapped, “read it yourself”, so I did. I remember in kindergarten my teacher couldn’t read to us one day due to laryngitis, and all the kids were disappointed, so I grabbed the book, sat down, and read from James and the Giant Peach. I was the class hero for that moment
my parents are prolific readers, and i grew up seeing them read all the time. both mom and dad read to me and my siblings every night at bedtime when we were young.
mom took us to the library on a regular basis for programs like storytime and puppet shows, and we always got to pick out new books. i was given my very own library card as soon as i could write my full name, and i remember being SO proud of that. once we were old enough, we could ride our bikes to the library on our own, and we frequently did. i remember struggling to get home once because i checked out too many books and had to beg my little brother to carry some for me.
i don’t remember learning to read. by the time kindergarten started i already knew how. we had all the Dr Seuss books, a shelf full of Little Golden Books, and lots of Shel Silverstein. oh i loved Silverstein’s silly poems! i loved Dr Seuss’ ‘Wacky Wednesday’. i loved a Little Golden Book titled ‘Theres a Monster at the End of the Book’ where Grover tries desperately to keep the reader from turning the pages.
when i read books, its like watching a movie in my head. i have wondered if growing up reading endless tons of picture books as a young child helped wire my brain that way – always seeing a picture in my mind when i read – or if that’s just how my brain was always wired. it blew my mind when i found out not everyone experiences books that way!
The library was my special place as a child too! We had a limit of 8 books and that’s how many I would check out at a time. I loved the library so much and still do! Thank goodness for the world of books.
I sometimes think being able to read a book saved my life and sanity. I too was a young reader and addicted to my local library. The library had a book mobile and once a week it stopped at the little store at the end of the block, now gone and supplanted by 7-11. I could stay there for hours and left with enough books to get me through to the next week. Several decades later, I’m still reading and grateful for it!
5th grade, age 10, Scholastic Book Club came to our school. I bought many books and started reading for fun. The first book was Curious George. That was the beginning of my love affair with books
My great grandmother owned a small apartment building, one story and long, with four one bedroom, one bath connected apartments. She was also a dedicated garbage diver. She always checked her three other family’s barrels for discarded treasures. One day, grandma found a stack of books and rescued them. She gave me a science fiction novel, probably by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I was eleven and it was the first book I had ever read that had no pictures, just a single ink print at the beginning of each chapter. I believe it was called The Body Snatchers. I loved it. It was gruesome but very engaging. I have been an advid reader ever since—65 years of glorious books. No pictures are needed, but I still like those occasional visual depictions.
The book was by Jack Finney. I looked it up. 🙂
Memory is a tricky thing.
We had limited access to a TV. Reading took us to so many more places…
My book-love story is so similar — I too can’t remember not being able to read. But at age 8, I started piano lessons. Each Wednesday after school I had an hour before the lesson, and I spent it at the library. They told me I could check out seven books at a time.
So I did. And each Wednesday I’d exchange them for seven more books. A book a day. And I’ve averaged that ever since. For nearly 60 years now, I’ve read everything I could get my hands on: serious fiction, non-fiction, escapism, trash fiction (like my mother’s romances she kept hidden under her bed….) Sometimes, I’ve re-read books, but I’m never without a book to read.
No surprise, I grew up to be a writer.
exactly, never without a book. Cell phones make it easy to wait anywhere, easy access to e-book delights. You are not alone in your reading choices, i can easily ditto all your comment.
I have read for as long as I can remember. I do know Mom and Dad started teaching me how to read when I was around 2 or so (Dad was a high school math teacher & had a Ph.D. in physics & math). By the time I made it to kindergarten, I was reading several grade levels ahead. I had to get special permission to check out books above my school grade from the bookmobile; I lived in a tiny town in very rural north La. that had no library, but the bookmobile came every week and they allowed me to check out lots of books. To this day, I’m still an avid reader and read all manner of books. When I have time, I can read a book a day, made easier since I’m not a TV watcher.
I originally had a hart start with reading. I was in the lowest reading group in first grade.
Then I got chicken pox. In my home you were not allowed to watch tv when home sick. So I had a week of nothing to do. So my mom went every night to the library and checked out 17 books. I’d read those during the day while trying not to scatch. So I read over 100 books in a week (little kid books of course). When I returned to school I ended up being moved into the highest reading group. And I learned how to use books to escape. Haven’t removed my nose from a book yet.
My Dad would read the Sunday comics to me, which helped me learn to read by four years. Once I was reading on my own, he would take me to the library every weekend. Thank you Daddy.
I was stuck in the hospital for a month (age 13), and my parents brought me comic books. I continued reading comic books, until I was in the Junior High Library during a 7th grade study hall, and I was bored. Found a book on a boy and his bulldozer WITH a picture at the beginning of each chapter. That was interesting, then I found “Red Planet” by Robert A. Heinlein, and I was “Hooked”. I read every Sci-Fi book in the Junior High Library, then the Senior High Library, then the Easton, PA Public Library (my dad would drive me). I continue to read 4-8 books a month.
I had read some Ilona Andrews “Kate” books, but the Innkeeper Series pulled me back into all things Ilona Andrews and this blog. I think I’ve purchased most everything Ilona Andres at this point.
I too don’t remember learning to read, but I could by the time I went to nursery school at four years old. Me and my kid brother shared a room when we were small and someone, mum, one of our older brothers, very occasionally Dad if he was home in time, would read to us or tell us a story every night. There were various picture books when we were very young (he’s just fourteen months younger), but they moved on from those as quickly as possible – too much bobbing up and down between the top and bottom bunks to show us the pictures! That is how I first encountered The Hobbit and I’ve loved fantasy ever since. I ended up reading the Lord of the Rings when I was eight, we were in the USA for a year with none of the usual heaps of books bought for the six of us around, and I was desperate so the older brother with us let me try The Fellowship of the Ring, then got most annoyed when I kept nicking each of the other two in turn before he had finished reading them. We too got books from the library every week, I remember the Marianne books, and Orlando the Marmalade Cat amongst the earliest, but I could never borrow enough which was why I read all of the books my older brothers left around too, which got me into science fiction as well.
my parents, like good parents everywhere, read to us from a very young age. My mom would take my finger and point at the words as she read them. Apparently I learned quickly what the words looked like and would point out when she “accidentally” missed one – by pointing at the word for her. She thought it was a great party trick.
I am grateful for so many things my mother gave me – reading is probably number 1.
We had a player piano my parents got as a wedding present with a bunch of rolls of songs.We would sing and read the words on the roll as someone pumped the petals. To this day I know the words to some German drinking songs. I also was the kid that would go to the library and take out books, in alphabetical order, every Caldecott and Newberry award winner, then move on to the rest of the books.
Beverly Cleary, Pay Dirt. I had a great third grade teacher, Ms. Goldy Horowitz that challenged us to go to the local library to read over the summer. We would get a certificate for the most books read. Pay dirt grabbed my attention and it was off to the races.
I don’t remember a first book that hooked me as I was always reading. My public library had a limit of 20 books, and as a child it was common for me to put some of my books on my sisters’ library cards as they were never near that limit.
My early chapter book series included Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew and the Babysitter’s Club. My dad had a omnibus of Dragonflight, Dragonquest and White Dragon which I read when I was around 12. That was what got me firmly into the sci/fi fantasy realm and introduced me to Anne McCaffrey. I even did my BS thesis on Dragonflight 🙂
Is there an area where we can ask questions like in what book did Curran find out Jim wasn’t really his friend? Been listening to the Curran POVs love them . But also memories from what book things took place not the best.
You can always ask questions about the books in the comments 🙂 , it doesn’t matter which blog post.
As for Jim and Curran…well, that’s kind of up to us to decide when it was clear for Curran where Jim’s loyalties lay. My opinion is that Jim was always Pack-centric and his loyalty to Curran was in large part to him as Beast Lord of the Pack, not as Curran Lennart the man. Curran would have become disenchanted by that around the same time as he got the cold revelation about the other clan Alphas: when he was in a coma after Magic Bleeds and they allowed Kate to be challenged.
I don’t really remember learning to read. I do remember reading my sister’s books. She was 2 grades ahead of me. But my favorite early reading memory is walking to The Bookmobile every 2 weeks during summer vacation. It was about a 15 minute walk to where the Bookmobile would park up at our Elementary School. My Mother, sister, and I enjoyed the walk even when it was hot because the Bookmobile had AIR CONDITIONING!!!! 😁
I think this is the first time I’ve commented here! I guess I’ve been a lurker for years, lol. Anyway, when I was a young child I watched my mom and dad truly DEVOUR books. They tended to read sci-fi and mysteries like Coben & Baldacci ( except from their time in the 70’s so Hillerman, Francis, Cook etc.). I was so excited to learn to read! I wanted whatever feeling they had when they sank into a good book. I guess I was 5 or 6 but I couldn’t read at any speed that made it enjoyable. As time went on, from 6 to around 10, I struggled. What I didn’t know is I had a mild case of dyslexia which I only figured out after University. Now it makes sense but back then it was so painful that I couldn’t read like my mom and LOVE books. I lost interest because of that pain and frustration.
My parents started to try to bribe me with incentives. They’s buy me any book I wanted and take me to the library any time and also even give me money per page! Nothing worked because my mind just couldn’t rearrange those words fast enough to keep my interest in anything I read. Of course, my schooling suffered as my reading speed was so abysmal. Finally, my brain figured it out but by then I’d been labeled by every grade teacher as “lazy” and I’d even been tested and those idiots had missed the dyslexia, agreeing that yes, Jenny is lazy and needs to apply herself. When I finally speeded up my reading because my brain finally found a work around, I began devouring books.
I’ll admit, I truly took advantage of every opportunity my parents continued to offer. So I was the kid with PILES of books every time the Scholastic newsletter went out to students who wanted to buy discounted books. I’d have 10 or more stacked on my desk, books, all the books for MEEEE. And, of course I could also go to the library. In my 13th year, that summer, I bought and devoured over 100 sweet valley high books in two months. I was in heaven. I still am. I am still a book hoarder (on my kindle, lol) and a book devourer.
I must admit though, I have to be interested In what I read. My brain gets tired when trying to read textbooks or anything boring. I actually fall asleep, like my brain switches me off, lol. If I’m not thinking something like “Ohhh, who done it?” or “WHY did that happen?” I find it very, VERY hard to read. So yea, I read about 150 books a year but no history or reality or biographies, it has to be mystery, thillers, fantasy etc. Thanks for asking, so far I’ve read about 30 books in 2024!
Jennifer, you are the first person that I can relate to. I alsi cannot read anything I am not interested in. It puts me to sleep also. I read Urban Fantasy only.
Thank you for your comments so I don’t feel alone.
I was a free range kid and the library was always my destination. Back in the late 50’s, I was about 8, in LA i would get on the bus, get off in front of Fredrick’s of Hollywood, walk to the corner and take a right and their was heaven…The 1st SF books I read were the Mushroom Planet series. On the way home I would stop at Pickwick Bookstore located on Hollywood Blvd. A treasure trove of books. I would spend the $1 I had saved to buy a Nancy Drew. Of course the library was the real prize, Cherry Ames, Sue Barton, Walter Farley’s Black Stallion, Jim Kjelgaard’s Big Red, London’s Call of the Wild. I told my mom I wanted to be a nurse, she said be a doctor instead and this was 1959! I told my dad I wanted to be a veterinarian, he got me a list of Vet schools and I went to Colorado State U. My dad also left books around the house. By 12 I was reading Issac Asimov and whatever else from all of his contemporaries. I was so ready for Star Trek and Star Wars. I still read or listen to (6-7 books a week) a cross many genres, including those “trashy” historical HEAs. All the TV westerns of the 50’s lead to Louis L’Amour. Books, Absolutely…thank goodness for the library, my mom and my dad ~ voracious readers the lot of us. and passed on the my kids and my grands… A huge thanks for those writers out there…you are an arrow pointing to possible futures, a path out of insecurities that haunt our brains, and the presenters of characters that succeed no matter what, examples of what we can be.
In school saw a book that looked really cool white fang. It was beyond my reading level so I read it 3 times over summer break to fully absorb and understand it all. After that was too busy to read until I was disabled then began my fantasy addiction in 2005 with Eragon before I found Magic bites. the rest is history
I had a friend who was a couple of years older and who ‘taught’ me to read on Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic books. We didn’t have a library in our town in Germany, but got lots of books for birthdays. Then when we moved to Canada we had this program in our elementary school where you every month you could order books via a flyer. Loved that program.
I started reading at a very young age. I would get lost in my books and forget to do my chores. My mom put me on a restriction of reading only after my home work and chores are done. I still love to read and my biggest personal expense is books. I like having a book in my hands to read though I do have a kindle for travel etc. I have identified certain authors whose books I will buy whenever they come out. I have Kindle Unlimited and have been able to discover new authors whose books I can reread from KU anytime. I recently moved to Houston and the first thing I did after I got my TX ID was register at the Fort Bend library.
Earliest memory is learning English in first and second grades- see Jane, see Dick. Run Jane, etc. my next favorite memories are being taken to the main library in Buffalo and being allowed to stay in kids section and read while they worked on papers for college. Hours later, I hadn’t moved except to get more books.
Started devouring books before third grade. With the red book of fairy tales and all of the other colors. Sitting on the floor in a corner of the book shelves in our grade school library. I was there so much that the librarian recognized me when I visited from collage. Went on to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. So much adventure!
I don’t remember learning to read. I grew up in not great circumstances and used reading as an escape for as far back as I can remember. The first books I had access to were from an older woman across the street from us. She gave us a series called Honey Bunch, I think. I haunted the library at school. I took so many books home and brought them back so quickly, the librarian didn’t believe I was actually reading them all. I have no memory of how or when I started reading fantasy and science fiction, but it seems I want straight from Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew to fantasy. Once I could get to the public library on my own, I read whatever I felt like reading. Nobody payed any attention to what I was reading or if it was “age appropriate”.
I cannot remember not being able to read. My grandmother had paralyzed vocal chords and couldn’t speak so she carried a pen and paper to write everything down. She kept me while my mother worked so I learned to read at a very early age. She would print for me since her cursive was usually beyond me.
I come by my love of reading very naturally; my grandfather had stacks and stacks of Westerns all over his den. My great-aunt had books in almost every wall of her house. She would go to library sales and give me boxes of children’s books while I was growing up. The Box Car Children and Nancy Drew and anything that the library was discarding were what I read.
I read Little Women at 9-years-old, and in 6th grade, I remember checking out a book every morning from the school library and returning it the next day. The Librarian made a snippy remark that I should “finish” a book instead of checking out a new book, and she was astounded when I said I read them all.
In high school, I had a classmate who was my romance book dealer. She would bring me Harlequin romances that I had to hide from my mother. I was also reading about one of those a day as well.
I am rather new to the fantasy/sci-fi genre. I was more of a romance/mystery reader, but the explosion of alien romances has definitely influenced my reading choices. I’ve also been married to a huge fantasy/sci-fi nerd for over 20 years so I’ve watched my fair share of Star Trek, Star Gate, and Lord of the Rings, etc. that I now happily read it as well.
I don’t remember how I started, but I do remember we weren’t allowed to leave the table to play when we eat out with friends, but we were allowed to bring a book. So that’s how I pass the time, while the adults chitchat after dinner.
The Hobbit, assigned by my teacher in 7th grade, is the book that turned me into a recreational reader. Before that, I had no real interest in reading on my own. Not fiction, at any rate. (I was one of those kids who would get distracted by National Geographic or the encyclopedia or the dictionary or books we’d picked up at the Smithsonian museums in DC, but I had no real interest in fiction.)
After I read the Hobbit, I couldn’t get enough of fantasy books. This was the 80s. I devoured the Riftwar Saga, the Cheysuli books, Tiger and Del, Riders of the Sidhe, Magician: Apprentice, The Shannara series, the Belgariad (and all things David Eddings), the Hound and the Falcon. And then, because I was a young teen, I delved into romance novels and pulpy mainstream fiction like Judith Krantz and Sidney Sheldon. Clan of the Cave Bear was one of my favorites , but I mostly gave up on that series with The Mammoth Hunters. And OF COURSE, since I am GenX, I read Flowers in the Attic at an inappropriate age. (Also Heinlein, who seemed to have an unapologetic incest kink that even now critics just seem to accept without much commentary.) And I joke that I’ve spent more than half my life waiting for the next Outlander book, since I read that one in 1991, the year it was published.
I remember my mom reading me The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and when she finished it she handed me the other books in the series to read on my own. I also remember reading through the children’s section of my local library and the librarian calling my mom to make certain it was ok for me to check out things from the other sections. My mom said yes, they never censored what I read, just told me to come to them with any questions. Soon after that she took me to visit a professor of children’s literature (a friend of hers from the college she taught at) to come up with some more book ideas. That visit resulted in me starting to read Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series and into the sci-fi and fantasy genres.
I read my first book in grade 5, having read comics and children’s magazines before then. It was Harry Potter 1 and that’s it. Mind blown, never stopped reading anything I could get my hands on after that. But I still remember the absolute awe of that first full length read – alone, unsupervised and transported into a world so far away from everything I had ever known till that point. Literal magic. And even now that I’m much older, and more critical of my reads, more broad in my likes, high fantasy is still my weak spot, or just world-building that’s gripping & detailed and well thought-out so that you can step in and imagine yourself taking actions and causing ripples in that world. Writing this down now still gives me the same warm tingles.
i was a latch key kid. sungleother with ongoing medical issues working 2 jobs to take care of us both. I stopped going to daycare and had to stay home and be quiet as a mouse around the age of 5. i got bored started grabbing books that were already in the house reading and rereading them. my first chapter book was heaven by VC Andrews… not the most appropriate books but I turned out ok lol. also when Is be grounded I was allowed to read books and thats it, and I was precocious, and well…. always grounded lol
I, too, can’t remember not being able to read. I spent my K-4 grade years in a one-room school house and can still recall reading all the Little House books by the time we consolidated into town school. I was overwhelmed and overjoyed by the libraries there, including the high school library that also served the public. I would take home five or six books a week, losing myself in world after world, plot after plot. I find that if I don’t have a book to read close by, I just can’t settle myself. My bookshelves have the Dresden Files, Kate Daniels and Innkeeper, Faefever series, a myriad of mythology and Shakespeare, and horse books. Reading is part of my soul.
one of my earliest memories is sitting on the couch, my feet not even reaching the edge, my dad in the middle reading a copy of the hobbit, of course doing the voices, & my little brother on the other side. every time we moved one of the first things we did was get a new library card, military parents (yes, both of them). and i remember the first time my dad let me borrow one of his books, cause I was finally old enough. pretty sure he was more tickled since that was the same year the “rotation” started. dad would get a new book & when he was done hand it off to me. when i got done I’d hand it off to my brother.
I started around 3 or 4. My parents and grandparents loved reading and there were always books around. I read everything around me, my parents didn’t limit my material. One of my favorite books that I still have was Anne of Green Gables. My grandma gave it to me and she wrote a note for me in it. And it’s on of the most precious things I own.
I remember my mum & I sitting on a little bear rug in my bedroom & taking turns to reading The Far Away Tree to each other, when I was very little- not sure how old exactly. She says we read other, easier children’s books before that but this memory is clear as day to me and so precious. I know that sense of safety, love and WONDER is what originally started my love of reading.
My daughter is now 10 months old and I’m reading Enid Blyton to her on the same little bear rug, 35+ years later ❤️
I remember reading in 2nd grade about a woman who had to choose between letting her love go to another woman and a lion. The story ended right there. I was pretty upset. Then, the light in the forest: the ending stuck with me. Being part of neither world and can’t join either one now. I hadn’t realized this was a series until today. The book does not make me want to pick up the rest of that series either. I loved the book Fox Running too. Girl was an awesome runner but she didn’t learn to run just because she wanted something to do. Then, I found Jim Kjeelgard’s book, Snow Dog. I read it seven times at my school library. I later found the sequel, Wild Trek, at another library and was absolutely thrilled.
My grandmother always read to me a lot. But when I finished 1st grade she said that I needed to do my own reading! I couldn’t imagine being cut off from stories, so I read everything in her house. In third grade, I was reading my way through the school library, and then mom started taking me to the public library every 2 weeks. I was also technically allowed 50 books with my library card, but mom would only allow me to get about 20. I always read them too fast and ended up with a few bookless days at the end! What trauma! 😉
I remember reading Dr. Seuss at the doctor’s office sometime around 4 or 5 years old? My favorite reading memory, though, is when I was teaching my oldest son how to sound out words and I got to see when “IT CLICKED”! It was so awesome to see his excitement when the letters became WORDS!
I spent most of my free hours in libraries when I was growing up…
My sister would take me to the library before I started to go to school. My favorite book was “Charlotte’s Web.” She would read it to me. My first sci/if book was a “Wrinkle in Time.” In 4th grade I read “Little Women” over the weekend. It was over 600 pages long. I always have my kindle or a book with me.
My grandmother would pop open her black umbrella, and we slowly walked to a small library in Tulsa. It had heavenly air conditioning, and I still remember, fifty-plus years later, hiding at the end of a row with Key’s The Forgotten Door.
My earliest memories are of my mother reading me a bedtime story. My mother, or my grandmother, read to me every night until I was 7. When I was 5, just before I started kindergarten, I started reading some of the books by myself and my mother was shocked when she realized I was actually reading instead of remembering the book contents. We had a bunch of Disney children’s books that create a castle on the spines when you have the full collection. When I was 7, my grandma started taking me to the library. The limit of books you could check out was 52! I used to bring so many books home and read every single one. Sometimes I brought my red wagon with me and filled it up! My teachers never believed my reading logs even though I had a parent signature. My allowance was almost always spent on books and my parents had to take the scholastic book fair order forms away from me. I was the top reader in my junior high school (we used the Accelerated Reader program to keep track). The ridiculous part is that most of my reading was fanfiction during this time. AR can only test you on published books, so my AR points only reflected a fraction of the amount of reading I accomplished. My AR points were so numerous that when my Language arts teacher used our points as extra credit, my grade jumped from a C to an A+ at 137%(my sister kept stealing my homework). Books were my escape from reality when my whole world was shattered and will be an important comfort for the rest of my life.
I started reading military history books in elementary. Our library had a series called “We Were There at… (name of battle)”. And “Mystery of the Green Ghost”, Hardy Boys (?), scared me silly.
I was introduced to Fantasy by the drama department of my High School when they put on a lunch-time theater production of the Hobbit. You never forget your first time.
I’m late to the show as it’s taken me most of the day to read everyone’s contribution. My parents read to me every night until I was 2. Then my brother was born and he was allergic to everything. They no longer had time for me so I started trying to read the comics in the daily newspapers. I apparently figured it out pretty quickly. We didn’t have any kid books in the house so my first was the collected stories of Mark Twain. It was a struggle but I loved them anyway. Next book was written by a correspondent who covered WWII in Europe. Then we got a set of encyclopedias which kept me busy for a long time. I never read any kid books. Once I started school and found a library I was in heaven. I ‘ve gone thru so many phases. History, biographies, and then I found Asimov, and my world exploded. I’ve loved everything HA has published and I hope you continue to find joy in writing whatever you want to. Thank you!
Oh my gosh, this brings back memories. My nan used to read fairy tales to me and tell me stories either from her own life or made up. When I went to school on my first day I was so excited to begin learning how to read for myself and be able to enter these magical lands without having to wait for someone to have time to read to me.
Where I lived in a maisonette (house above a shop) we had a library at the bottom of the steps next door. My mum got me a library card and I used to go down there on my own (we were allowed to do that in those days) and spend hours surrounded by the wonderful smell and feel of the books. I only used to take 3 at a time out since I lived so close and it gave me an excuse to spend more time in my favourite place once I’d read them. I remember loving Milly Molly Mandy and Enid Blyton.
My grandmother is the one who fostered my love of reading. I remember every time we would visit she would have a new book ready for me. The boxcar children, Magic Treehouse, The Borrowers, The Littles and the saddle club. My brother and I would sleep on military cots in the living room and I remember being so excited to get into my cot and read before bed.
She passed she I was around 12, but I have been a voracious reader ever since. I don’t remember too much about her. But I do remember how it made me feel to be handed a new book from my grandmother and I’ll hold onto that.
Once she got me hooked I also used to leave the library with a precariously perched stack of books in complete glee. I’m pretty sure Tamora Pierce raised me.
Thanks for reminding me of a beautiful memory of my grandmother!
I started school early and my mom had already taught me to read. Our school was very small, about 30 kids (grade 1-6) in two buildings. There wasn’t much to read, but I read it all. Grade 7 we moved and the new school had an actual library! I did my best to read all of it before I graduated. Still read a ton now.
My reading was pretty much the same reason. It was a childhood escape party because I was brought up as an only child and mostly because my parents were alcoholics and always seemed to be fighting and so I would go outside or under the bed as a child to hide from the contention. My childhood wasn’t the best so books became my escape from my reality. I can’t ever give it up until I die which makes it weird to me when people tell me they don’t like reading. What?!!??
I remember holding a book (my Mom’s) and flipping the pages, trying to figure out why she held it for so long. She seemed to get such joy from the experience. I couldn’t see it, with the lines of inexplicable symbols. I was three years old. Much later, I did learn the basics of reading, in kindergarten and first grade. However, the reading material considered “appropriate” for new readers did not appeal. Then, my family moved to Thailand. This was in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War. I was 8 by this time. My Dad worked as a contractor for the US Air Force, in Northern Thailand, at a place called Ubon. My Mom brought 6 or 7 books, figuring that TV and schools would not be available. (Heh…Bonanza in Thai – we kids were NOT amused. 🙂 ) My Mom read to us: Black Beauty, Tom Sawyer, Peter Pan, Tarzan. Something for everyone. And also, one for her: A Town called Alice, by Nevil Shute. The stories were wonderful and intriguing. Horses, anyone? But it was the adult book, the Nevil Shute, that really caught my attention. It was a story set in WWII, about people on a death march. It was riveting. But just at the good parts, my Mom complained that her voice was too tired to continue. And, as I said before, I did technically know the mechanics of reading. So, I picked up the book, and began sounding out the words. Pretty soon, I was off and running, as the story pictures filled my head…and I never stopped. Just like Ilona, I used to haul books by the sack and stack to and from libraries, and I own an astounding number of volumes myself.
The nuns were teaching me Run Spot Run while my mom was teaching me the Encyclopedia American and the Dictionary. You can imagine the nun’s frustration. My folks didn’t know about libraries but used books stores were our friends. Mom was a huge sci-fi fan and started me on Edgar Rice Burroughs and Andre Norton. And while reading other responses here got me thinking about my early series’, I just realized that my first series subscription in 1961 at age 6 Tom Swift was actually Tom Swift Jr.
The library was my babysitter when Mom needed “me” time…. she’d be in the arts section of the library, and I’d be in the fantasy and sci/fi section … It was a small library section, 70 years ago, and I finished reading all the books in it before I was in high school. Sci/fi and fantasy stayed a core feature of my entire life, I’ve read my way thru close to 80 years of the best minds writing the best fantasies, romantasies, space operas, science fiction, and stories anticipating future societal, urban and technological changes. My life has been so expanded, delighted, and blessed with such glorious companions as the musings and thoughts of all of these exquisite authors. You and Gordon are nestled snuggly in with my favorites. Thank you for the joy your stories give me.
I started reading full books pretty early in elementary school, and that’s thanks to my parents who both love to read. I remember having some time set aside most nights where my mom and I would get a book each and just take time to read, and she would sometimes help me with words or expressions I didn’t know. or my dad would always try to get me things to read even though we didn’t have a lot of money. Hurray to parents getting their kids to read!
My parents read to me, then i moved into reading for myself. We always had shelves full of books in the house, and when my mother went to the library, we went with and were allowed to check out our own books. I consumed the school reading program books, checked ones out from the school libraries constantly, and when the Scholastic book list came out I would ask my mother howw many books I was allowed. When those books came in, afew other kids would get one, maybe two… i would have a stack of 6 to 10, depending on how many we ccould afford and what my allotment was. My mother, brother and I haunted the shelves at Walden Books. Without books, I would wither away.
My father was pretty busy. He was a middle school science (biology) teacher, but dedicated and always did extra things like coaching and auditorium managing. It helped pay for extras but he was usually gone in the morning when I woke and would get back late at night.
But he would read to me and my brother – and not just anything. He read Tolkein, CS Lewis, Madeline L’Engle and Kipling. And I still read all of those today. I started reading myself very early and CS Lewis was the first. My dad’s favorite was The Hobbit, but mine was Prince Caspian.
Dad love the Hobbit so much that when he was required to teach a reading section he taught the Hobbit. 3 sections a year he taught it – for about 15 years. He bought a whole library of copies of the Hobbit for his school. This was decades before the movies.
My mother would read to me when I was little. Muggins Mouse was my favorite at the time. When I was about 5, we moved to OKC and my mom took me to the Del City Library. Yes! The angels sang when my mom picked out “Anatole” by Eve Titus, with pictures by Paul Galdone! And ever since, I have been a book-a-holic!
That speaks to my librarian’s heart. Books can bring such happiness to children even in this technological time. Picking their own book is fun and when a reluctant reader finds a book they want to read, it’s kind of like having a winning lottery ticket.
My mother and I used to walk to our library every Tuesday morning, for reading hour. I can remember going in a stroller, and she would take me out in order for me to go downstairs to the children’s area. It was always such a happy time. I would choose some books to take home, and mom would read to me at home.
As soon as I was able to read my parents would buy me a book of my choosing every month. They spent more on books for me than they spent on clothes.
My mom started choosing chapter books from the library for me to read, and the rule was that I had to read the first chapter. If I didn’t like it after that, I didn’t have to read it. I think I always liked them.
Reading is still my escape. I have a very busy life, and don’t get a lot of time to read, except at night before bed. That time is very important to me.
I come from a family of readers. Books were read to me in utero and story time continued after my birth. I hid the fact that I could read until I got busted at 5 laughing over a scene in a Classic comics version of Les Miserables. I was tucked under the dining room table. My grandmother asked me what was so funny and I read the dialogue to her. I was just starting 1st grade where I was obediently reading “ Run, Jane, Run”. When my mother and grandmother came to the school and shared that I was reading, the teacher said that wasn’t possible because I was right in the middle group. My family demanded that I read for my teacher. She was quite surprised when I read a 2nd grade book. I explained that I hadn’t wanted story hour to end, which I thought would happen if they knew I could read for myself. My favorite trips were to the library and that librarians even let me take out two extra books because I read through everything so fast and it was a long trip to the library. Libraries have been my sanctuary ever since.
I grew up in a dysfunctional family. I was also bullied in school. I still remember getting off the bus crying because my male classmate was punching me during the ride home. We were kindergarteners. “Reading” was my escape from reality. I remember going to our school library, pull out books with lots of pictures and made up stories about it. The little tiny girl, the ogre, the guy climbing vines, etc… Then I learned to read. I tried to read all the books in my school library. I also would borrow the maximum allowed from our local library. Up to this day, I love reading books more than watching films.
This question started such a brain-storm that it’s taken me a couple of days to calm down enough to respond. I really can’t ever remember NOT reading. Not “sinking into a book to live in someone else’s head for a change.” That sentence from Roman’s first chapter has been rolling around in my head since the first post!!
I have many memories of stealing books that were “too old for me” from my sisters and devouring them. I remember asking for help when the spider scene in the Hobbit got too scary (I was 5?). Trips to the library for all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys I could find. And then the day I discovered Dragonflight and dragons….. and then Have Spacesuit will Travel. That was 50 years ago and I’m still as much a BDH as I was at 5. Then there was the day I met Kate!
But probably most important is this poem that is a family favorite. The last verse goes:
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a Mother who read to me.
Strickland Gillian
Thank you, HA, for contributing so much to my life!!
I always loved to read comics, the story line how it continued from comic to comic. I collected them, superman, flash, green lantern, wonder woman, xmen. Then one summer I stayed with my dad in the country, there was no corner store to buy my comics… but, my dad had books. I started with Louis L’Amour’s The Sacketts, and John D. McDonald’s Travis Mcgee series, I never looked back.
Reading was encouraged by both my parents starting when both my brother and I were young . Dad would take us to the library every two weeks and let us pick out as many books as we thought we could read. It’s one of my favorite memories from childhood along with my dad reading 2001 A Space odyssey to us when it came out as our bedtime story, encouraging my love of science fiction and then fantasy I believe!
Not sure if this is the blog to be asking – I recall there was one on book clubs, but perhaps Mod. R would let me know?
I would love to set up a casual private in person meet up at the Boston public library for a potential causal SF&F book club with greater Boston area members of the BDH. We would start with a shared passion for Ilona Andrews books and figure it out from there. Could be one time. Could continue.
Any idea if that would be possible while maintaining people’s private email addresses? I can set a date and room with the Boston public library. There would be a limit to the number, presuming there is anyone in the area who would be interested.
Thank you.
Hey Heidi, I think that’s a great idea! 🙂
I will say that as it’s a fan endeavour, in terms of organising and official liabilities it would be better to happen in a fan space, such as the Facebook fan group https://www.facebook.com/groups/ilonaandrewsfans/?ref=share_group_link or the Discord server https://discord.gg/JHKrdKKS or the Goodreads group (I think there are several, but the IAAs – Ilona Andrews Addicts- often organise these types of book club events).
You can organise and track things more easily that way and ofc don’t forget to take precautions! 🙂
Thank you ModR. I’ll look through your references. Precautions of all kind was why I didn’t check Facebook, and the BDH is already a book club of sorts for me even if I rarely post. I met an HA fan librarian at the BPL while exploring public spaces, too.
I’m sorry I don’t live in Boston … or I’d join you, Heidi 😉
; but thank you also Mod R for the other resources … I’ll check what might be organized in my area 🙂
Another Heidi!
Haven’t quite figured out/found others with a meetup interest yet. I will have to do more navigating of these social media sites, not sure how to find or post something for my area.
I was thinking of a simple first meet discuss interests going forward.
Well, at least I know I can book a private group public space.
I’m so old I can’t remember not reading. I know I started early. I can remember all through school and even now being teased about how much I read and how fast I read. I’m pleased to sat that 2 of my grandkids followed in my reading steps and taught themselves (with a little help from me) to read at 4. One refused to drive until his mom insisted because he couldn’t read if he had to drive!
This is such an amazing question, because I also remember being able to read all my life and I really had to think about it. The earliest memories I have about deciding for myself that and what I want to read, is digging through my aunt’s old box full of children’s books in my grandma’s basement and then reading them all. I spend a lot of time im the local library, trying diffrent books and genres but mostly reading everything fantasy-ish they had as soon as I was old enough.
I’m a teacher now. Two weeks ago I moved and now I’m working at a new school. The library there is so amazing. I walk through it quite often and I waver between envy and joy for the children. When I was their age, we had a school library, too, but it definitly wasn’t that well stocked and in such a nice room with a couch and everything. I would love to read a few of the now common youth books but I wasn’t brave enough to ask yet if I am allowed to.
I started reading when I was in my 20s you’re who I started with and Jeaniene. It was how I escaped from my bad marriage I never turned to drugs or alcohol I just read and read and that I think saved me. And when I finally left my husband I started re reading Kate. Again she (y’all) saved me. I sometimes don’t get to my new books because I am like nope need to read Kate!
So glad you found shelter and comfort in the stories! <3
I remember my mother teaching me to read when I was three, and being caught reading a Zane Grey novel in class when I was seven. The teacher pronounced that I couldn’t possibly read that book, I said I could too, and she demanded that I read aloud from it. I did, fluently, and she said ok, I was allowed to read when I’d finished my assignments. Then when I was nine we lived half a block from the library; paradise. I’d get there when they opened at noon, read all day until closing time, check out the three books children were allowed to get at a time, and walk home. I’d read all evening, and be back the next day to return them, and do it all again. This was during vacations and on weekends. Otherwise, I’d stop at the library on the way home from school, and drop my finished books in the slot on my way to school the next morning. Reading is what I do.
Mom read me the Hobbit when I was pretty young. In grade school I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, My favorite part was left out of the movie, when they get back home, they’re a couple inches taller, and they kick out the bad humans. A couple years later I found I could re-read the whole thing and find it totally fresh–and eventually get back to my favorite part at the end. I re-read Tolkien every year or two until I was in my 20’s and could read the Hobbit to my own kids.
My husband read Phantom Tollbooth to our kids as the first ‘longer’ novel (re: not Dr. Seuss) … then was so excited to read them the Hobbit!
The on off switch on my toy oven was the first thing I read when I was 3 or 4 and since then I have read nonstop. Loved all stories and I made my way through all the children’s classics and onto my parents books. those fabulous Scholastic paperbacks. My first fantasy read was Conan the Barbarian and that led to all the rest of that series, and then on to classic SF like Harlan Ellison, Asimov, Hubbard, Heinlein and so on. Then a long run of fantasy Fritz Lieber, others. The Hobbit was a revelation and I don’t think I moved from my chair except to use the bathroom while I read Lord of the Rings. A period of more sophisticated literature and then the guilty pleasure of romances, regencies led to historical mysteries Brother Cadfael! and then back to SF and fantasy. You guys were an early pick in that swing back that helped me solidify my preference for fantasy overall though recently I have indulged in militaristic SF.
LOL re: Lord of the Rings … I picked up the first book and devoured it on a Saturday … then had to wait until Monday when the library opened to take out the rest of the series … lesson learned!
We didn’t live in town…closest library was 15 miles away and not open on the weekend. My parents did the best they could to get me there as a special treat, but the library at my school was a God send. I read anything I could get my hands on. At age 7, I read the cereal boxes, then took inventory of the number of times each letter of the alphabet was on the box. At age 9, I read the owners manual for my parents car….I read anything I could find. Flicka was the first book from childhood to young adult.
my Momma read to me at bedtime. I absolutely loved to hear her read. As I got older, I wanted to read back to her and I just moved on from that to reading by myself. Sadly or happily, however you look at it, I lost her to Alzheimer’s and at the end I read to her again.
I grew up with my parents reading to me. Scholastic book fairs, storytellers, libraries and mom & pop book stores (Jabberwocky in Fredericksburg, Virginia). When I went on trips, or to/from school I had books with me. If I had money to spend, it was books I grabbed.
I was lucky that I had parents who loved books, especially my dad.
The first book I ever read was when I was about 6-7 years old. I was a smart kid who found school super boring so my dad gave me this short illustrated book called “În ţara lecţiilor neînvăţate” by L. Gheraskina. This was a book my dad had gotten during communist Romania, translated from a Russian author. The main character of the book, Viktor, is a kid who hates studying and gets sent to the Land of unlearned lessons together with his cat. There he gets to face the consequences of all his badly done homework and wrong answers such as being chased by the man eating cow who he had declared to be a “carnivorous” animal in biology class.
This book resonated with me so much (probably because I sort of resembled the main character) that for the first time ever I really felt the magic of reading.
ok, that sounds like an interesting read 🙂
I had a hard time reading. I’d transpose words–saw instead of was, ees instead of see, in First Grade.
My mother knew a special education teacher, and she worked with me after school a few months until I was able to ‘keep the words from jumping around’.
Once that was figured out, my reading went from Dick and Jane to Emily Dickinson before Fifth Grade. I’d check out armloads of books from the library and vanish into stories every chance I got. (Sometimes I’d doodle or draw characters from them, too.)
Luckily, both my parents were prolific readers, which is why I got the help I needed early. My sister and brother and I would swap books around, too. It always hits me as odd when I run into people who don’t read, since I had to fight so hard to learn how.
One of Hubby and I’s favorite past times is sitting in our living room at days end to read together, and have tea. (We’re boring and comfy that way.)
My mom always read, she always read to us, but my first memory of really digging into a book was when mom had to stay at Grandma’s house for a few weeks because of an illness and brought me back the 1st 3 books of a series when she returned … the Meg Mysteries. Also, we had the most lovely library in our town. It was in an old house with the ‘children’s’ books in the basement down a wooden staircase. I remember checking out books and having them let me double the usual checkout number and then ordering books/series on my recommendation. Wow, Wonderful memories!
I don’t remember ever not reading! We always had books and they were the one constant sure thing in my messed up crazy life. The library would let me check out books I’d read them in a short amount of time and go back for more. Books are an escape, a relaxation for me. where I don’t have to deal with whatever I’m going through.
I lived in an area to where I library wasn’t available small town in southern Arizona. About the age of two, my mother started reading to me comic books the local store sold comic books so from then on, I was an avid reader that’s how I learned it drove my first grade teacher crazy cause I could read far better than most first graders in school
I’ve been reading as long as I can remember too. my mom tells me I was reading at four. I used to sit in a crotch in our backyard tree and read for hours. I put my books in a bleach bottle with the top half cut off and tying a rope to the handle, and pulled it up. I called it my “book elevator.” I would rather read than watch TV any day. I call books my “crack” because I can’t lay off them!
Our school had a bookmobile library that came once a week. I even remember the first book I read from it, The Black Stallion. I had my Grandfather’s encyclopedia books. There was a big section on fairy tails. I used to read them. I was introduced to the 9 tailed, Japanese fox and fantasy stories at an early age. At age 8, I found out where the nearest library was and spent the summer reading a lot of books, of all sort. Nowadays, kids that age would not be allowed to walk all that way, by themselves. It was an hour and a half walk there, along very busy roads, then the return walk home with all my books. I could take out 7 books, so I read a book a day. When I was tested for reading level at around Grade 5 (11 years old) I was reading and comprehending at a University level.
I just remembered. At age 9-10, I decided to read every fiction book in the school library. I would take a new book home every night, and read it after doing my homework. We were poor, so we did not have a TV. We got 1 station, via rabbit ears, on this old TV set. I learned to change TV tubes to keep it running. I completed my goal. In fact, I started on the non-fiction books as I neared the end of the school year.
Always loved reading fairytales. And they are short and sweet for the most part. But when I was 7 or so I got the Russian version of The Wizard of Oz. And that was it. I was hooked. My mom didn’t believe I got through the first few chapters as fast as I did. She even asked me to retell her what they were about. Anyhow, have been reading ever since non-stop.
I grew up in a small village on the countryside in Sweden. Small as in less 10,000 people in the community. I remember learning to read in first class and it was something I did well. And I always had a very good imagination so all the worlds that opened up… we didn’t have much money when I was a kid so we couldn’t afford to travel far or let me learn to ride a horse or things like that but it didn’t matter because I could do all that through my reading. So reading really meant a lot to me.
Reading or just escaping into my own imagination is still my way to cope when reality gets too much. I can’t count all the times I have become a new employee at Baylor Investigative Agency or a mercenary at the Guild… or traveled into space with Dina and Sean…
Thank you House Andrews for all the hours of entertainment you have given me and all the escape routes from reality
I come from a long line of readers. Back in the 50s my grandfather went to the library in town and told them my mother could have whatever she wanted. I have a picture of me on my dad’s stomach as an infant “reading” the paper with him. Our house was always full of books. We moved a lot but my box of books was always a priority. I was very lucky.
started very young..like 6 or 7…6th grade I read gone with the wind to win a contest lol. I’ve never stopped and it’s one of the only things that turn off my ADHD. love it .
I have no memory of not being able to read, my mother read to me all the time but firsts are lost in the mists of time…I know I was reading by the time I went to kindergarten because me and my friend Aliette would go read on our own when it was story time, unfortunately mostly Dick Jane and Spot….not too thrilling stuff. I loved serials, little house on the prairie, Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, The lion, the witch and the wardrobe opened the door to fantasy and thus began many years of dragons and wizards and other planets…..I wish I could read Elizabeth A. Lynn again for the first time, did I adore all her books…..books are ❤️
I had difficulty learning to read as a child due to having dyslexia. After I started though, I became a voracious reader!! I began reading well above my grade and my first series was ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. After that it was all sci-fi and fantasy all the time. Andre Norton, Anne McCaffery, Alan Dean Foster, Piers Anthony, Ursula K Le Guin, Douglas Adams, Ray Bradbury and Terry Brooks. I read all the books in my school libraries. When being presented a reading award at a High School assembly, I missed the first request for my name because…I was reading *laughs*. My classmates and teachers had a good laugh over that. Although my taste in books now skews more towards romance as an adult, I love how the genre has changed and grown over the years, so it now includes Sci-fi, Paranormal and Fantasy themes.
My maternal grandma was a schoolteacher (in a 1 room schoolhouse) in SD. I was born shortly after she had retired and my Mom went back to college so I spent lots of time with her over the next 4-5 years and she taught me to read, simple math, ect. I can remember going to kindergarten being able to read.
I had a teacher reading Charlotte’s Web to the class for 10 minutes each day. I wanted to hear what happened so I went to the library and checked it out. First time I’ve ever read a book haven’t stopped since.
I’ve always loved stories, but I prefer audio books. I started listening to audio books when I was preschool age. I had a lot of stories on cassette tapes. I’ve kept a few of my favorites. I still have Harry Potter on cassette tape, but I don’t have a cassette player anymore. My audio book collection has always been larger than my book collection. I’d check out books from the school library, and beg for the audio book version of my favorite stories for Christmas and my birthday.
Lloyd Alexander’s Taran series in the fourth grade followed by Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. I have been a fantasy junky since age 8. Before that it was Beverly Cleary or Caldecott winners. I’ll never forget the magic of learning to read at age 4. Max the Cat unlocked infinite possibilities. My greatest joy as a mom is watching my kids disappear into books.