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 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.