How your childhood influenced your reading?

I hope not too off-topic. But I got thinking the other day, in philosophical vein, about how my childhood influenced the way I read now. I was an Enid Blyton child, firmly and squarely. I read all her millions of books over and over, and it took me a long time to shake off her comforting world and try something new. I sampled Roald Dahl, and later LM Montgomery, and to my shame, even enjoyed Pollyanna. I remember trying Paul Jennings and shying away, because he was just too different. Later, I graduated to Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer and later still, PG Wodehouse. (stupid touchstones)

So my literary grounding was all about familiar worlds and comfort-reading. Essentially British, despite the fact that I am Australian. (By the way, I'm 23, in case you're trying to place my generation). Everything was predictable, moral and well-mannered in my literary world.

And now? Well, I did a degree in writing, and thus had to become more widely read. I've grown to love books that are different because they are different, (e.g. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time but there's a definite limit. I dislike blood and gore over a certain level, and get disgusted by books that push immorality. Take Catherine Jinks for example. I love her Pagan series, which does contain violence, death and immoral characters. But I can't handle The Rapture or The Road. I think 'safe' reads will always be my preference, which I'm not exactly proud of, but can't be helped.

How about others?

I would say my childhood made me a reader, but not necessarily a reader of any specific style, genre, etc. I was a shy child, and reading was my refuge. I read voraciously and somewhat indiscriminately, although I went through phases with series, etc. Also, I learned to read early, taught by my father.

I was a self-taught reader; our house was almost book-free until a neighbour gave us a Children's Encyclopedia set that her own children had outgrown.

One reading experience that has stayed with me from pre-teen years was borrowing from my primary school library two books about mythology; one dealing with Greek myths, the other with Norse myths.

My reading really took off when I joined the local public library age 10 or so. For a couple of years I read nothing much other than science fiction and factual books about space travel.

I started buying books for myself aged 15 or so, but with no real structured programme; just whatever friends recommended, then work my way through an author's works if I liked what I read. That's more or less how I've continued in my reading habits.

I was a reader from an early age. I think one of the reasons was that my parents set the example by being avid readers. I still have one of my father's books. Every few years my father would reread The Black Rose by Thomas Costain. He also loved science fiction and would trade books with my uncles. My brothers also became interested in science fiction. My mother liked novels and history and I picked up those interests.
Another reason for loving to read was the Public Library's weekly visit to my school with their trailor with wonderful books.

When I was a child, I read everything I could get my hands on by Roald Dahl (well, not My Uncle Oswald and Switch Bitch obviously, but I only found out about those a couple of years ago) and Lois Lowry. I also loved The Babysitter's Club and all the RL Stein books. The only thing I think those did for me was make me love to read, but it didn't define my genre-I hate chick lit and horror. I loved books about orphans and World War II and I was obsessed with French Lit (yup, reading Notre Dame de Paris and Scary Stories to tell in the dark at the same time). By the time I was in the 9th grade, I started shifting over to nonfiction and haven't really looked back much since. I read 3 or 4 nonfics for every fic on my list. But I'm still a voracious and ecclectic reader (and all my reading has done nothing to improve my spelling).

One thing that did define me and, tangentially, my reading was that I use to put borrowing tags in all my books so when my friends (as if I had any) borrowed the books, I'd know who had them. After a brief stint as a microbiologist, I became a librarian-guess the writing was on the wall. LOL

I was a self-taught reader as well. I was physically and mentally abused by my mother, and books were my refuge as well. My parents never bought me a book, and my mother would yell at me for having my head in a library book. I now am an English professor and a Ph.D. candidate in English Studies. I'm not sharing this story for self-pity or for accolades but merely to show how an affinity for books can develop even with very little exposure or encouragement.

>6 RisingTide65: RisingTide65 -- or for survival. Thanks for sharing that with us.

I grew up in a house where reading was neither dissuaded or encouraged. My parents weren't big readers, but there was a library a block away and that's where I spent a large chunk of my childhood. Getting that adult library card at age 12 was my ticket to freedom.

#3 - I read from encyclopedias, too. I think that may have been the genesis for my preference for non-fiction. I wasn't much of a novel reader until my twenties, even well after college.

I've been an avid reader my whole life. Both of my parents were and they always encouraged me to read. Neither of my siblings are big readers though, so it wasn't just my parents. I too lived a block from the library and was constantly picking up new reads. I remember a time when I was young when I as terrified I would run out of books at some point.
I read Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkein and Lois Lowry among other growing up. I fell hard for Little Women, Black Beauty and The Secret Garden when I was young.
Since my childhood I've increased the number and types of books I read every year. I read, classics, nonfiction, fiction, biographies, histories, a little bit of everything except romance and horror.
I think that my childhood definitely got me reading a wide variety at a young age, but I think I would still be a hard core reader regardless.
Fascinating question ChocolateMuse!

We always had books, and looked forward to birthdays and Christmas as an opportunity to get another book, usually a good hardcover (those thin paperbacks from the Scholastic catalog at school were cool, but not the good stuff) ... we also had books on the shelves that were my Mom's as a child, and as she's passed a lot of those along to her grandchildren, they're amazed when they first realize they are reading the same exact book their Dad read and their Grandmother read, a looooong time ago...

I was taught to read by my mother by the age of about 4, haven't really stopped since. If there's no book then a cereal packet, or a sign in a shop window will do at a pinch. I had plenty of parental support, though they did sometimes argue that some topics weren't suitable for a young reader.

In our case it went back a generation or so, my great-grandfather was Librarian of Edinburgh university, my grandfather ran a factory 'reading club' and used to order all of the new 'everyman editions' and give my father pick of them in his youth.

In my teens I was an avid library reader and used to call in several times a week. Lots of fiction - science and adventure mostly, and a bewildering mix of non-fiction as things took my fancy; I recall a whole string of books on heraldry, and another on logic (including the Principia Mathematics I think, though I can't have understood it).

At different times I read 'authors', all of Trollope, Christie, Heinlein, Asimov, Hardy, Porter (Michael), Fleming, Marsh, . . . there must have been hundreds of them by now. I still tend to read in themes, though my memory as to what I've read isn't so good as it was, but to compensate my tastes are probably more catholic these days.

My mother taught me to read, so when anybody asks me about my library I can tell them to blame it all on her (most of my library is still not catalogued since the majority of it is in storage at the moment). My father is not a big reader and always complained about my having my nose in a book. I loved Louisa May Alcott's books as a child and went through them all - from Little Women to Jack and Jill. I also loved the All of a Kind family series by Sydney Taylor. I bought my first book for myself when I was 8 from the Scholastic Bookmobile (anyone remember those?) and I still have that copy of Charlotte's Web, although it is definitely worse for the wear.

Books were definitely a refuge for me and I always considered them my best friends when I was growing up since we moved frequently and I never had real friendships develop. Every time I picked up a book to read or re-read, it was either like meeting a new friend or visiting an old one I had not seen in a while. I still enjoy reading complete series though, of course, the material is not the same.

I can echo quite a bit of what rebeccanyc said in #2; however, I was not a shy child (As the middle of 5 children, one does have to speak up if one is to get any attention at all). I learned to read in a one room schoolhouse, sitting in an oak chair placed in two facing rows around a very large iron heating grate in the oak floor. The warm air would rise from the furnace and we would read Alice and Jerry books (similar to Dick and Jane.

I inherited my love for reading from my mom. I remember first being addicted to Nancy Drew books. I read every one of them. I loved how she was smart and figured things.

Then, my fourth grade teacher introduced me to the wonderful world of Shel Silverstein. My parents gave me a copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends for Christmas in 1981, which I still own. Mom wrote a message that she hoped it would inspire to write stories of my own. I am still working on it...

My brother taught me to read when I was three. He was in first grade, and every day when he came home, he showed me what he had learned. I was reading Dick and Jane at three, Dr. Seuss and a series about a girl named Honeybunch when I was five, and moved on from there. My parents were not big readers, except for the daily newspaper, but they did read to us every night. By the time I was about ten, I was getting bored with children's books and what llittle there was aimed at young adults. My mother had the good sense to discuss this with a local librarian, and they agreed that I could select books from the adult shelves and, with the librarian's OK that they were acceptable for someone my age, check them out. She also helped me make selections and is the person who got me started on historical novels. (I do remember one rather steamy one about Josephine getting by the censor!) These still make up about half of my reading choices, although I am pickier about style today.

I don't think anyone or anything in particular affected my reading tastes, except perhaps those books required in high school classes that I enjoyed. When I like an author, I've always read more by him or her and sought out similar books. But a lot of my favorite authors I discovered entirely on my own.

My mom was a big reader and she read to me a lot when I was young. I started out reading her old Nancy Drew books, Boxcar Children and Baby sitters club. When I hit Junior High I totally got turned off of reading. I didn’t like the books the school was having us read, and for the most part that lasted up through High school. My last year in HS I became the Library TA and I really got back into reading. Interview with the Vampire is one that really got me back in the habit of reading.

I was definitely raised to be a reader, although I don't have specific memories of my parents setting an example by reading much; my memories are more of them reading to me and my sister, then later enabling my bibliophilic nature by providing ready access to libraries and bookstores. My across-the-street "grandmother" taught me to read "I", "me" and "my" when I was three, but I didn't fully learn to read on my own until kindergarten. Like many others, I read lots of series books as a child: Nancy Drew (my mom and aunt's old copies), Babysitters Club, Little House on the Prairie, Goosebumps, American Girls. While I branched out some growing up, I mostly stuck to books/genres I knew I'd enjoy. I've grown bolder in my reading exploration as an adult though, recently discovering that I really enjoy fantasy, magical realism, and food writing. Interestingly, despite being a lit major, I've never been fond of the classics, which is a definite holdover from childhood.

How has my childhood influenced my reading today?

I have always been an avid reader. It probably had something to do with my being a shy boy and pretty much a loner. Reading stimulated and allowed me to explore my imagination, and gave me some place to escape to, I suppose.

A couple of things I expect were the prime factors in determining the types of things that I read as a boy; an interest in science, and my family's existence as "boat people". We lived on and around sail boats for all of my childhood years, and I spent most of those years in an exotic locale - the Virgin Islands. So, the sea and exploration were a big part of my life. Combine a love of the sea, exploration, and science, and that would probably explain my life long fascination with science fiction.

The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Tarzan, Ernest Shackleton, Richard Byrd, James Cook, Roald Amundson, Thor Heyerdahl, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Charles William Beebe, Buddhism, mysticism, Rachel Carson, Henry David Thoreau, Alexandre Dumas, Isaac Azimov, Roald Dahl, NASA and the space program, Joshua Slocum, Robin L. Graham, Franklin W. Dixon, Moby Dick, C. S. Forester, Patrick O'Brian. These are just some of - in no particular order - the stories, people, events and authors that interested and influenced me from an early age.

While "hard" and "speculative" science fiction still accounts for the bulk of my reading, I still enjoy reading some fantasy, historical fiction, non-fiction books about exploration and the sea, mysteries, thrillers, suspense, and adventure novels.

props to all the Mothers listed as influences!

re #12 and the "blame" -- as my boys slam their toppling stacks of books on the library counter each week, then push and shove to work the self-check out machine first, knocking books to the floor because they have each well exceeded to Dad-mandated limit, I inevitably roll my eyes towards the heavens and sigh "Who taught these boys to read?!?!?"

And one of them always deadpans "You did, Dad..."

we repeat this routine when looking for the last missing overdue book each week too...

My parents both read to me when I was too little to read to myself, and taught me to read signs and color words and other preliminary words, until I one day decided to start reading myself and already knew how. I give them a lot of credit for this, but some of it has to come from my personality as my brother got the same treatment and never became a reader. They tried, though. My mom is a reader, although never as voracious as me, but unfortunately my dad doesn't read books. As for genres, when I was younger I never really recognized distinctions, but once I moved on to "adult" books I realized that fantasy and historical fiction had always been my favorites, and so it remains. I also do enjoy most "classics" and history has become a recent fascination with me.

So, I think the head start helped, but I've always been about the same in my reading selection, the books just went from children's to YA to adult!

My Aunt the schoolteacher taught me to read when I was 4 & I haven't stopped. My girlfriend & I would ride our bikes to the library which was a mile away & load our baskets. Then a branch library opened in a store-front down the street. I hung around there so much, they put me to work. I started stamping date-due cards (June 1944) & moved on to carding. Every afternoon there was a big stack of books waiting for me. (WW2 was going on & the library was short of help). I worked as a page in Hi school & also in the Univ. library. After child #6 was a year old, I started working a few evenings a week at the county-seat library. I gradually expanded my hours as the kids grew up, I worked there 30 years before retiring. I was always around the newest books & sampled the best sellers & discovered favorite authors. I was able to return to college & got my BFA degree while still working. Now I'm retired & can read all day.

Thanks for a great thread, ChocolateMuse (love the name too!). I've been thinking about this so much since you posted and it's been fun to ponder my own reading history as well as read about others'.

My mom was a big reader; I think she liked to escape into a different place since she wasn't too happy with the one she was in. So I learned by example. She read mostly contemporary lit though; there weren't many classics in the house as I grew up (even children's lit; I didn't read Winnie the Pooh until well into my 40s!) She was into James Michener and crime novels and later Stephen King and other horror stuff. I think my dad read maybe one book a year.

We had a lot of books around and I think I was reading at a pretty young age. We also watched a LOT of TV; I'm sure I would have read a lot more if it hadn't been for a TV dominating our lives.

I did read a lot on my own: Nancy Drew was big; I recall being very affected by The Diary of Anne Frank and Helen Keller's story; and Little Women, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird. I loved it when the bookmobile came to our neighborhood.

In school I don't remember being exposed to many classics - I recall reading Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, and Great Expectations in high school, but no Austen or Shakespeare or Steinbeck or Hemingway. Even as an English major in college, there wasn't as much emphasis on classics as you'd think; I was able to get my degree reading mostly contemporary lit (I went to college in my late 30s-40s, graduated w/ BA in '93).

So now I'm making up for lost time! I've joked that I could get a graduate degree just hanging around LT, but I really have learned so much about lit and have read so many great books I wouldn't have even known about BLT (Before LT). I'm catching up on some of the classics I think I should have read in high school and college. And also exploring lit from many other countries/cultures. That was pretty much unheard of when I was growing up!

October 08 I retire, then watch me go!!!!!!

My mother is an avid reader and our house has always been filled with books. My father only reads magazines and the newspaper, but has always encouraged reading. My grandfather was a protestant minister and had more books in his apartment than I've seen in any place. It was a small apartment and every single wall had shelves with books. If I had to guess I'd say there were about 50,000 books in a four room apartment. And it was only a third of what he'd once owned. He had to give the rest away when they moved there from a big house after his retirement. He always gave me books as presents. I remember giving him wishlists of all the books I wanted for Christmas or birthdays and they were often 2-3 pages long. He picked the books and shipped them to me and I usually got half of what I wanted. Whatever else I did in my life, he was always proud that I loved reading as much as he did. And encouraged me at every turn. He also taught me to read the old German writing (Fraktur) that all his old bibles were written in.

For a while I read all the books by Enid Blyton, Federica de Cesco (doesn't touchstone) and some Scandinavian writers whose names I can't remember that also wrote lots of books for girls.

My mother reads a lot of crime and thrillers and whenever I didn't have a book to read myself, I picked up one of her books. My sister who's younger than me was into horse books and I even read those although I wasn't a big fan of horses. When we were at my dad's house and I ran out of books I picked up his technical manuals and encyclopaedias and even my stepmother's cheesy romance novels, mainly by Heinz Konsalik and Rosamunde Pilcher (no touchstones either). And they're bad...

We had a really small library in our community and I was through reading the books in the childrens section by the time I was 12 or 13 and moved on to read the ones in the adults section, starting with The Count of Monte Christo and The Three Muskateers.

So I got into reading by devouring pretty much whatever was around and I could get my hands on. In school we had to read a lot of classics, in whatever language we were studying. Classics in German, French, English and Italian, always in the respective language.

Today I read mainly in English and German and still whatever I can get my hands on, also outside of my favorite genres which are fantasy and classics.

Sorry, touchstones are not really working today.

Like ChocolateMuse, I mainly read Enid Blyton stories when young. 10-14 saw me turn to Sweet Valley High (so bad, but strangely compulsive!), and Georgette Heyer.

As many here, my Mum had a massive influence on my early reading (my Dad died when I was 8 years old, but he was also an avid reader) leading me to things like Georgette Heyer and the English classics. Bank holiday family trips to castles and stately homes fuelled my interest in history.

My love for science fiction started when I was 10 and read A Rag, a bone and a hank of hair by Nicholas Fisk; the same year I found Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy at home, but at that age I didn't quite understand what I was reading!

I also think that being brought up in a home where Radio 4 was constantly on helped encourage me - book of the week, afternoon plays etc.

However, one negative aspect is that my mum's reading is very narrow - mainly British authors and nothing adventurous or shocking. So I have my English Lit A Level and friends that I have made since my 20s to thank for my discovery of authors like Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland, Jeanette Winterson, Paul Auster.

I was a reader from a very young age - by the time I went to school at age 4, I already had the reading age of a 7-y-o and by the time I was 11, I was reading books that were being studied for Standard and Higher Grade. I went through phases of reading certain books - I loved the Mallory Towers books, but not the St. Clares or Famous Five/Secret Seven books by Enid Blyton. I devoured Judy Blume books for a while, but quickly moved onto classic Gothic horror, sci-fi and modern classics such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Great Gatsby, Animal Farm etc. I've always had quite eclectic tastes, even from a very young age, and continue to try and vary my reading.

I think it helped that my Mam is also a prolific reader, although my Dad and sister are both dyslexic and never really read much for pleasure when I was a child (although my sister has started reading again now in her mid-twenties and now asks for recommendations as well as giving a few of her own!).

I was also brought up to respect books and take good care of them - I have books from my childhood that are in fantastic condition (obviously they look read as some of them were repeatedly read in my youth) and still have pride of place on my bookoshelves today - I have gorgeous hardback illustrated editions of The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland that I read over and over again, and still occasionally reread now - there are no loose pages and minimal wear to the covers. nowadays, whenever I take a book out of the house and stick in my back for transporting, it gets a plastic cover put on it to help keep it from getting damaged (I'm a little bit anal that way, I suppose!). I just love my books to look well-cared-for - just as I always did...

My mother read to me when I was small, and I started reading by myself at about 4. She often jokingly says that I learnt to read from watching Sesame Street, since I used to sit about a foot away from the screen singing "C is for Cookie". I remember reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, lots of A. A. Milne (my mother was very good at saying "worrahworrahworrahworrahworrah"), and Dr. Seuss (The Lorax prompted my "green" streak).

In primary school I read Alan Garner, plus the Babysitter's Club books, The Secret Garden and the like. I looked forward with eager anticipation to the new Scholastic and Arrow leaflets to arrive at school, from which I was allowed to choose three books each time. When they arrived I would walk home from school reading my new acquisition (I can't do it now, and I'm not sure how I did it then!).

Although I read a lot in my teens, what I read is lost to history how, and I suspect that's because a lot of it was entirely unmemorable! It wasn't until I got to University and started and English degree that I really found authors that I loved.

My preferences in reading have been pretty much the same since childhood, so I'm sure there are some definite influences there - I don't like gut-wrenching sad stuff (anything with "tragic" on the cover is off the cards), but love books that explain how I or other people think and act.

I see some common themes here. Like most of you, I started reading before starting school. My mother was an avid reader (although like teelgee's mother, I think it may have been an escape route). Nevertheless, when I think of her growing up, it's in "her chair" with a book. I had my reading spots, too -- either the bean bag chair in my room, or the sofa in the living room.

I entered a reading contest the summer I was 12, and took books everywhere I went (including summer camp) in a competitive quest to win the contest (I came in second, but I also think I missed out on a lot of good sunshine and swimming!) Another summer, when I was about 16, I went on a Shakespeare kick, reading tragedies on the beach (yes, looking back, that was a bit odd!). Yet another summer, when I was about 20, I took a couple of summer courses including World Literature. I loved sitting outdoors reading classics like Madame Bovary. For some reason most of my formal education skipped over major works and authors, and I've spent some time as an adult getting caught up.

In my 20s and 30s I began discovering women authors and also started reading about other countries and cultures (both fiction and non-fiction). I think I will always view reading as a way to expand my knowledge and my horizons.

Wow, thanks everyone. Fascinating.

I think positive reading experiences for children are SO important. I know a few people from an older generation who were told as children that they were hopeless at reading and would never learn... and they believed it, so they struggle to this day. Such a tragedy.

I remember the read-a-thons at primary school - did anyone else do those? They were fun... one of the few things I really shone at :)

My sister taught me to read when I was about 3. My mother tells me I was reading Famous Five books in kindergarten, but I do wonder how true that is. It seems impossible.

Well I was born profoundly Deaf and it was not discovered until I was 3. I had no language before then and the Dr told my mother that since I was Deaf I would never be able to read well. My mother is the kind of person that if you tell her something cant be done she will do everything in her power to prove you wrong. I was put in a language class, speech therapy and my mother drilled worked with me. It took 5 years but finally at the age of 8 I caught up with hearing peers and at the age of 9 reading really clicked and that is when I started my compulsive reading habits. I read anything and everything. I was always encouraged. Teachers, house parents, family alike gave and bought me books.

>28 ChocolateMuse: ChocolateMuse - I've heard a lot about people being actively discouraged (even abused) around music and art and writing but never around reading. It is tragic. Think of what the world has missed out on because of those attitudes.

purplemoonstar - bravo for your mother for her encouragement! and for you, you worked really hard. It didn't occur to me that it would be more challenging for someone who's deaf to read; would it have been less challenging if your deafness was discovered earlier? You would have had some earlier language base then?

While neither of my parents were what you would consider 'readers', my mother read to us constantly when my three brothers and I were small. Our weekly trips to the library are some of my very earliest memories. I learned to read in Kindergarten at the age of five, and went from not reading, to being able to read anything, in the blink of an eye. In K and 1st grade my favorite books were the animal books by Thornton W. Burgess. These I loved because they were long, and because the library had a whole shelf full of them.

It was the words that hooked me on reading from the beginning. I remember when I was six, we had just returned from the library, and I was looking over the books my eight year old brother had checked out. He had all of these picture books with no words in them. What in the world is the point of that. I asked him how he could read a book with no words, and he picked up my book and asked me how I could read a book with no pictures. He, by the way, is now a very talented and creative artist! My love of words dosen't seem to have had the same returns, though I am still compulsively addicted.

The common thread that I see between my reading as a child, and my current reading pattern, is lack of direction. There was never anyone there to guide me in my reading. I had no freinds who read for fun, and was too shy to ask the librarians for help. Which is the reason I found myself returning to series of books such as The Babysitters club, and Sweet Valley Twins. I knew what I was getting into. Only by accident did I stumble upon authors such as L.M Montegomery and Louisa May Alcott. Once I did I was drawn into the classics, reading The Bronte's and Dickens at the age of 11, and finding Jane Austen soon after.

As a young teen, wandering the adult fiction isles of the library, I had one dream and desire: a rating system on books! You never knew what you were going to find inside of a cover, and I found things that shocked me. When I was 12 my mother's friend lent me some romance novles, which I was certainly not prepared for. I had barely had the sex talk at school, for goodness sake. This must have been about the time I discovered Christian writers, such as Janet Oke. I stayed hidden in their safe arms for quite a few years, keeping up my readings in the English Classics made up for the poor writing of the christian fiction.

Having been married for ten years, had children, and experienced real life outside the shelter of my childhood home, which was extremely idealistic, I still enjoy safe comfort reads. Yet I also find myself reaching out to discover the life which I never knew, with a much more understanding and open mind. Life experience changes your views. I read Anna Karrenina as a young teen, and was so disturbed that I don't believe I finished it. I read it again just after I was married, for a college class, I still did not really understand the book. Five years into marriage, I reread the book, and I finally got it.

My story is a little different. I was bormn in Taiwan and I went through the educationals system there until I was 9. Chinese societies are exteremely book and rote learning oriented and they were particularly dogmatic about the correct type sof readings, its kind of a strange juxtoposition,: active and almost evangelical promotion of the right kind of books and book bannings for the wrong kind of books.

I was a very prolific reader by the time I was 9, as were all of my classmates. of course we all wanted to read the manga types of books. Then, bang, I moved to Honduras because my dad went to work for the World Bank. So I went from prolific Chinese reader to being totally illiterate in one fell swoop because I didn't read western languages, and I had to cope with both english and spanish. I had to learn the alphabet from both languages concurrently and had to distinguish one language from the other while trying to remember what I wanted to say.

My parents bought and brought Chinese languaged books with us and we subscribed to the Chinese newspapers from Taiwan, so my reading ability in Chinese was actually much more advanced than a grade school kid's would be. My love of books helped me with my english because the idea of reading didn't scare me. I went through the Dick and Jane books as a 10 year old, kind of embarrassing but my classmates were very patient and good with me. I pursued a bilingual education in school: english and spanish concurrently. The english took precedence since it was the American School, a private school for the local gentry and the American diplomat children.

I played some sports but most of my free time was spent in the library, I gobbled up the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew stuff when I was 11-12. And the beauty of the American School was that the library had lots of comic books like Asterix and Obelix as well as Tintin in numerous languages, so that got me by. Many of the books people have mentioned I have vague memories of but don't recall ever reading them.

We moved to Denver when I turned 13, and I spent nearly all of my time in the library because of the usual cliqueishness in middle and high schools. That was where my reading got opened up, my dad always said that we can't afford a lot of things but a book is always a possibility. So I took him up on it, I amassed a bunch of books from the scholastic book sales as well as the school library. My dad always bought the Readers Digest Condensed books for himself, hoping I would get into it, I never did, I always wanted to read the unabridged versions.

As of right now, my english reading far outpaces my Chinese reading. You can see my interests in my profile, lots of mysteries, mathematics, philosophy, etc.

I still read Chinese, mostly kung fu novels and the newspaper with an occasional 'serious' book in there, but not often. My spanish reading is mostly browsing through the paper/magazines and web sites. I still love Asterix and Tintin though, you never forget your first friend.

I had four brothers that loved sports and so I played more with boys than girls when I was growing up; however, I still loved to read. Does anyone remember The Happy Hollisters? They were my favorite when I was younger. Then I changed over to Nancy Drew and Encyclopeida Brown

Now I have a variety of interest when it comes to reading.

The night before I delivered my first child I was sitting in Barnes and Noble and wasn't feeling good and told my husband I think we need to go home. My kids have been to Barnes and Noble even before they were born:)

#33 investory - That's OK about your kids being at B&N before birth - I read the Winnie the Pooh books to both my girls while they were still in utero. Might as well start them out right!

Just yesterday I was talking to my daughter who was about to read the last chapter of Hollow Tree House by Enid Blyton to her seven year old daughter,
she knew that there would be tears because that was the end of the story. I remember feeling just that way myself over that book, and so did my two children. There is something about some stories that just totally grabs children's imagination and it is this pleasure and sense of loss that makes reading so addictive, books become entirely necessary to ones life.

#33 My oldest daughter loved The Happy Hollisters i think she spent a lot of time wondering why her family was not as happy as The Happy Hollisteers. Her sister, 1 year younger, hated the HH & teased her about them.
Once, at a meeting of area Library people, A librarian who worked on a bookmoblie that traveled to Amish families said that the Happy Hollisters was one of the favorite books of the Amish school girls.

Hi..first of all to teacher/dad message 19...that sounds just like it should be. I am delightfully amused and I think you are doing a good job.

We got books under the Christmas tree every year. They were not wrapped up, but just placed there, by Santa Claus, ready to open and fall into. I always felt obligated to read every one of them all the way through. Although when it came to Alice in Wonderland and then Through the Looking Glass in the same volume, I could not get my self to keep going. That was the only one I never finished. All the others of every genre were wonderful.

Great topic! My love of reading comes from my parents. My dad is a rare and used bookseller, so I grew up with around 20,000 books surrounding me. My parents are both avid readers. My dad reads westerns, history and non-fiction, magazines and newspapers and my mom mostly sticks to Reader's Digest and magazines.

Growing up, we didn't have a lot of extra money, but I was always given money for the Weekly Reader books (remember the order forms from school?) and other school book fairs. They also brought me to the library a lot and really encouraged reading and books. My dad read to me as a child, as well.

I also know that reading was something that I enjoyed and that came easy to me as a child. I didn't struggle with it or have a lot of problems. I think that if reading was a struggle for me early on, I probably wouldn't be the avid reader I am.

My father was a career Navy Man so we traved alot. Made the trip for east coast to west coast four times by the age of nine. So I stared reading to pass time in the car. Started with the usual children books (Golden Books), worked my way up through Tom Sawyer,Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island. And in all the schools I went (and there was alot) The teachers would always read to the class, and we were incouraged to get the books and read along. In fact I still love The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
by Farley Mowat from thoses days.
I also think that way back then we were encouraged to read more than they are today. (just judging from my kids anyway). Luckily two of my Three children are avid readers.

My mother read everything, but I was a resistant reader until about age 6.5. I'm not sure why or how, but around then, I "discovered" how much fun it was to read anything by Dr. Seuss aloud- with sound effects. Perhaps it was because I had a younger brother to read it to. After that, it seemed I had caught a virus and read everything I could find. Mom and Dad enabled me with frequent trips to the library (six book minimum), easy access to all the books in the house, and our lifetime subscription to National Geographic. I also read our set of encyclopedias, geeky kid that I was.

I married a reader and so the epidemic continues. Our kids have the same weakness for books. In a discount bookstore recently (a normal family outing) my daughter turned to me with her stack of books and said "This is all your fault." She's right. I had to buy the books for her anyway.

I still have the Dr Seuss books set aside for whenever she has kids of her own.

I used to read encyclopedias. And sometimes I sat down with a good dictionary too...

I use to do that two! My Parents bought a set of encyclopedias when I was a young lad and I would read them. There was also included a set of junior classics. Ten volumes each one a different theme, one was myths another poetry an other adventure tales ect. And I still have them, and my children enjoyed them too. Infact I had to steal them back from my daughter when she went to college.

Wow. I was reading the first post of this thread and I just thought....that's me. Then I went and checked ChocolateMuse's profile and discovered why. We're the same age only live about 200kms apart. No wonder.

Growing up I was an avid reader from as early as I can remember. My parents both read all the time and we had hundreds of books in the house, all on display in the living room so they were central to the whole house and the first thing you saw every morning.

My parents read to me every night when I was a small child, and I had a blackboard with chalk and magnetic letters which I used to teach myself to write and spell. By the time I started primary (elementary) school I was already an independent reader and able to write basic sentences.

I started with the Golden Books which they sell at the supermarket, and could usually con Mum into buying me every week. As I got older and started school, I read through every Enid Blyton book I could get my hands on not to mention all the books in our classroom we had as weekly readers. Fortunately I had very supportive teachers who arranged special privileges for me at the library and even a couple who brought books in from home for me.

Mum got me a lot of the books she read as a child, like Anne of Green Gables and the Billabong books by Mary Grant Bruce, as well as Heidi and Pollyanna and What Katy Did. All of thesecontributed to my love of classics, particularly 19th century fiction.

Dad got me started on some great Australian kids books like things by Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman which my brother and I shared as well as making sure I had the complete collection of Roald Dahl's children's books.

All of my grandparents are readers as well so I always got lots of books for Christmas and birthdays and lots of trips to the local library which had a great kids section.

Being surrounded by books and readers all the time turned both my brother and myself into bookworms. I think we're both very independent so a form of solitary entertainment is wonderful for us and because we travelled a lot (nd it was the days before DVD players in cars) we could always entertain ourselves on trips to visit family etc.

Well, that was rather more detail than necessary. Thanks ChocolateMuse for starting this thread.It's really interesting to see the different paths we've all taken to arrive here today.

Wow, dreamlikecheese, you really did have a childhood like mine - *sigh* those were magical days huh...

All my family on my mother's side are readers, so growing up, books were a treat, a present, a pastime, a survival strategy... a life, really!

When I was naughty, my punishment wasn't being grounded, it was 'no books for the rest of the day'. I clearly remember crying my eyes out when that was decreed once, probably for a longer time than was usual.

Did you ever read the little house books by Laura Ingalls Wilder? Those books were a large part of my childhood magic. I still read them every spring.

And thanks for posting in the thread, deamlikecheese! :)

#37: thank you, thank you thank you... one of my sons was embarrassed at school one day for complaining to his friends how if he got in trouble he wasn't "allowed" to read before bed... most of them see reading as punishment!

Mom bought me the Little House set for my 8th b-day, I still have the books although the boys haven't read them thoroughly as i did...

I never read the Little House books. I have however heard so many recommendations for them that I'm planning to go see if my local second hand bookshop has any I could buy.

I think I was the only child at school who was told to put my books down and go outside and play rather than the other way around.

Thank you for sharing that with us, dancingstarfish - very brave, and touching -- and it sure speaks to the power of reading.

At about 3 years old I was swatted on the hand by Mommy for grabbing at one of her books on the book shelf. Story goes that I was very startled and cried and cried. You might think that would have turned me against books...oh no...just the opposite. I was drawn to them, always giving that bookcase a wide berth, but yearning to learn why these "books" were so revered by my Mommy. At 4 I would get to sit on Mommys lap and ogether we would look at all the pictures in her "Talkie" book. It was a huge coffee table type book on movies. It had thousands of black and white pictures of movie stars in scenes from their movies. Thus I started my fascination with the book as an "object" before I was taught to read.....

My Mother and Father both read every night, usually British mystery writers for Mom such as Agatha Christie, PD James and the like. Dad was the espionage and biography lover. I learned to read on Fun With Dick and Jane, Winnie The Pooh, Dr. Seuss. Some of the dearest memories I have are sitting on the couch cuddled up with my Mother as she read to me the Little House on The Priarie Series. I still have the full set. I thought the stories were about me since my name is Laura. I also have a memory of reading a book in 6th grade that was so fantastic that I believe that was the day that reading was cemented into my soul. It was called The Mystery of the Green Cat (Touchstones says it was written by Phyllis Whitney and I just ran a search on it and sweet sugar its the same book. Almost have tears in my eyes. Haven't seen that cover since 6th greade.. ok back on track) that book opened the door to Nancy Drew, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and A Little Princess (I wanted to be called Sara after reading that book)

We also had an assignment in the 7th grade called "Add a Chapter" where we chose a book from a list and we read it, then upon completion we were supposed to write an additional chapter. The book I chose was Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards (Yes THE Julie Andrews of Stage and screen) I still have the book and I still have the so called chapter I wrote. The chapter was 39 loose leaf pages. I got my library card that Christmas for the "downtown" big girl library, and I got my first Diary with lock and key and well the rest is history. I have never stopped reading and have never stopped journaling, and if I had it to do all over again I wouldn't change a thing...

Interesting that so many of the people posting on this thread say "I grew up in a house full of books" - I did too, and I'm certainly still a voracious reader and book-hoarder, but my sister, with exactly the same background, is merely someone who likes to read (her 11-year-old daughter shows every sign of turning into a fully-fledged bookworm, though).

Some of the things I was exposed to as a child stuck - I like to think my interest in poetry comes from the great-great-aunt who read me chunks of Longfellow and Tennyson when I was 4 or 5; I still get as much pleasure from Wodehouse, Buchan, Dornford Yates, Dorothy L. Sayers and the rest as I did when I first encountered them, and I suppose it wasn't a huge step from Arthur Ransome and Captain Marryatt to Patrick O'Brian. On the other hand, there were a lot of things I read as a child that I don't especially want to revisit - our branch library had a huge supply of Enid Blyton and mass-produced American books (Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, etc.) that definitely went in at one ear and out at the other, and I used to be very keen on Biggles, for some reason.

Reading with my niece and nephew, I realise that I must have missed out on Roald Dahl altogether, which is a shame - possibly I was a bit too old.

I was taught to read when I was about 3 and couldn't stop ever since. Of course, my parents were keen readers too, and lots of books have always been around. I remember I was fascinated by the character of Jo in the Little Women novel, which was my favourite one when I was a little girl, and wanted to be like her when I'd grow up. I also dreamt with the journey of Ulysses in the Odissey.
A few decades later, reading is still my favourite thing.

#50, its always sad to realize you missed out on books that might have been great when you were a child! I told one of my friends to read the narnia books (which as a kid i loved, but then the whole 'god' thing went over my head then because i wasn't raised with religion at all, so it was just a fun fantasy story) and I told my friend to read it last year.. but since he was all grown up it didn't appeal to him the way it does to kids.

But hey, Roald dahl has a unique sense of humor, I think he appeals to adults as well :)

#51 Little women was also a favorite book from my childhood! Who wouldn't want to grow up all strong and independent like Jo? Shes awesome.

My childhood has definitely influenced my reading. I've always been around books; reading seems to be genetic. Both sets of grandparents were big readers (one grandmother was an english teacher) and both of my parents are big readers, so I've always been around books.

In fact, as an infant, handing me a chunky science fiction novel was sometimes the only way to get me to stop crying. There's a rather infamous picture that my mother took of me in diapers gazing intently on a copy of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

My mom taught me to read while I was in pre-school (school was too slow and I wanted to read faster XD), and I was reading "young adult" books by the time I was in second grade.

I definitely read a lot more science fiction and fantasy than anything else, because that's what my parents had in the house when I was growing up. And I never had any qualms about reading books way below my level or above my level because I've always had to read below my level (damn you school) and I've always been challenging myself to read more advanced books.

So I feel entirely comfortable reading The Spiderwick Chronicles and a book on quantum physics in the same week. XD

There's a famous story in my family about when I learned to read. We were driving in the car and I was staring out the window and kept reading every single billboard and sign that I could see. I started hitting myself in the head and yelled, "I can't stop reading!" I didn't understand that once you can read, you can't just turn it off again. And I haven't stopped reading to this day.

My parents were definitely an influence on my reading. My dad read books to us every night, and even before we could read we knew them all by heart and would correct him if he got it wrong or tried to skip a part to make the book go faster. My mom always had a book on the nightstand and to this day my sisters and I (and my mom, still) can't go to bed without a book, even if we only end up reading a paragraph, because reading before bed was so ingrained in us growing up.

The library was definitely a refuge for me as well. In 7th grade when I was a new kid in the middle of the year (with glasses, bad hair, and no friends) I took refuge in the library. That summer when I still had no friends, I would walk to the library every day and pick up a new stack of Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High books, and those girls became my friends for the summer. I would read as I walked home, and then read them all day. The next day I would take the stack back and get another one. Despite having no friends, I still remember that summer fondly. Thankfully I made some great friends the following year, but still managed to read just as much.

I learned to read very young, when I was maybe 2 or 3, and have been a big reader ever since. It started with Goodnight Moon and The Poky Little Puppy (I even dressed up as the poky little puppy for Halloween a few times when I was very small). My mom read to me and encouraged me to read, frequently giving me books as birthday and Christmas gifts. I still have many of those, the whole Narnia series (like someone already said, the religious aspect went right over my head) and the whole Young Folks Shelf of Books set.

When I was maybe 5 or 6 I outgrew picture books (I finished them before I even left the library!) and moved on to the classic Nancy Drew books from the small local library. I can still vividly remember the pink library binding and exactly the shelf on which they kept those books.

When I was in kindergarten, I had a very smart teacher who figured out that I could already read and encouraged me to read on as high a level as I could. She even gave me harder homework and extra assignments. Oh, Mrs. Cohen, where would I be without you?

I have a vivid memory, I don't know how old I was, but I must have been maybe 6 or 7, my mom took me to a used book store to trade in my picture books for older-kid books, and I was allowed to pick out a bunch of new books to take home. I got Black Beauty, The Incredible Journey, and a bunch of James Herriot books, including James Herriot's Dog Stories which became be favorite book for years.

When I was in Middle school, I discovered The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and Kurt Vonnegut; in High School I found out about Henry Millerand John Steinbeck.

Surprisingly enough, I currently out-read my mom, who is now a children's librarian. She reads a lot of mystery novels, some true crime stuff, and buzzed-about new novels, and I'm always hassling her to read this great John Steinbeck or Ken Kesey book, or some great classic book I read in a literature class.

I've always loved to read...both of my parents read a lot (my dad was an English major before he became a carpenter) so they read to me a lot. My little sister, however, hates to read and once stood up on a chair and yelled, "I'm NEVER learning how to read!" :) I had dreams as a kid about starting a neighborhood library (even though I lived in the middle of nowhere), used to create catalogs of my books, and was a volunteer cataloger in the elementary school library. Now I'm a museum registrar, so I obviously still love cataloging!

My favorite books as a kid were BSC, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Agatha Christie, Ann Rinaldi, and some of the classics, like Black Beauty and The Secret Garden, and my favorite for a few years was some book called Roanoke! that I thought was the greatest book ever written. Now I mostly read history books and adult classics (Austen, Wilkie Collins, the Brontes, etc.). I also keep my eye out for interesting childrens' books, like The Wright Three by Blue Balliett and another series I saw recently about the sisters Grimm (I think) who solve fairy tale-related mysteries - anyone read this series?

Corinne, you have brought back some memories for me. For a few years, we had no television. This is where books come in handy. I created pockets and library cards for all my books. I also had story time for my younger brothers. They say I forced them to listen, but whatever. Big sisters are allowed.

I used to make my sister play school...tracing the alphabet, reading words I wrote on a small blackboard, 2+2=4...probably part of the reason she doesn't like reading! :P Part of my "library" system was to cover my books with laminating paper - they're still looking pretty good, but I wonder what the adhesive will do to them in another 20-40 years...

@ corinne

LOL I did that too! i'd make tests for my little sister and would correct them and stuff, now that i think back on it.. she probably didn't enjoy it. but i liked being the teacher :)

I was always the teacher in playground games as well! And I used to "teach" my stuffed toys to do maths and read etc.

@58,59,60, my older sister used to play school with me and try to teach me all the stuff she learned 3 grades above me. I actually loved it. For some reason, I have a really vivid memory of her teaching me to diagram sentences. But I was always in to the book learnin'. Also, as any younger sister does, I worshiped my older sister, so I was just happy that she would spend time with me, no matter what we were doing.

My grandfather was a publisher, so my mother always instilled in us the importance or reading and taking care of our books. She'd blast us if we ever wrote in them or bent the pages as a book mark. To this day, I can never write in a book (except when I was studying in college) or bend the pages! From an early age I was always reading, I went from Dr. Seuss to all the Little House books and then discovered Nancy Drew in 5th grade! It turns out we had a huge stash of them leftover from my mother and older sisters right in our library that I'd never even noticed before! I was known as the book worm in our large family (I'm the youngest too) and I've never lost that love for reading. Since we had the entire Modern Library (leftover from my grandfather), I read many classics that were handy and already in our house! They were perfectly sized and easy to carry around. I interspersed them with all the Georgette Heyer's that were available in our town library too during high school. Fun topic!

Both of my parents were avid readers. My father carried a paperback in his back pocket at all times. My mother worked in a local bookstore. We spent three months of the year at our cottage on a small lake in Northern Michigan. We had no phone, no tv.........an old hi-fi and ourselves. Granted we spent most of our days there outdoors, but there were those cool and/or rainy stretches. Never fear, though, because our upstairs hallway walls were shelved with literally hundreds of paperbacks. Light and heavy............something for everyone!

ohhh that sounds ideal!

But then, I had no TV either, and my mother had a small room devoted to books. So I guess, apart from your lovely lakeside setting, I was in a similar situation :)

And our small property on the cold windy hills near Canberra wasn't really a bad place... specially by the wood fire in winter.

MMhm
I started with ladybird simplified books with those beautiful pictures,actually i wasn't able to read English at the time so my mom read them to me and translated them to Sinhala(My mother tongue)

Then Enid Blyton's & Edith Nesbit's books
Anyway at the same time I read books by sinhala authors such as Martin Wikramasinghe and TB Ilangarathne

Then I started reading Roald Dhal's Arthur Connan Doyli's books plus Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys too
Then Arthur C Clarke's Sci-Fi s and of course Capt WE Jone's Biggles

From that to Issac Assimov, JRR Tolkien , Rubert Ludlum and now at the moment I'm reading Matthew Reilly's books

But I've read books by some other authors too the problem is I cannot remember the names.

Well I think I started reding because my sister went to the library
So my parents took me there too
But it is mainly the way my mom read me tose small books that made me interested in reading books
By the time I realized that I could read and understand english I was addicted to reading

Oh Biggles! I loved Biggles books! We used to raid the second hand bookshops when I was a child to find the few titles we didn't have. My Dad remembered reading them as a child and he made sure we loved them too.

glad to here that there are some others who like Biggles
I always burrowed the books from the public library
There in the childrens section only famous authors are catagorized under their names
So I had to hunt through out the library to find books from the series
And by the time I find one I was almost covered with dust
It is because most children don't read English books here in SL
So the English book cubbords are usually dusty

Ah, I'm almost getting envious of all these great stories about parents being avid readers and guiding their offspring into the wonderful world of books... My father never touched books and my mom seldomly. And most of those not very inspiring, mostly Konsalik, so I feel I did miss out on some great bonding opportunities there.

I have been an avid reader all my life and I used to go to the library a lot. After a while, it seemed to me I had read almost everything in the children's section (it being a small town library) and I sort of wandered into the adult section. I remember it felt exciting as I had no clue as to what to read next and the types of books were unfamiliar to me. I think one of the first books I took home was the mist by Stephen King, which I loved. Never got tired of Stephen King after that. Next was Interview with a Vampire, which I don't think I ever finished, but enjoyed nevertheless. Bit of a big tome for a small kid. And come to think of it, bit of a creepy subject for a small kid too! Well, I guess that's what you get when you don't guide your kid into the big world of reading ^^

It always use to feel like meditating, going to the library. It was a perfect way to wind down and relax. I don't ever go to the library anymore. We moved to an ever smaller town and the library there was really bad. It had almost no normal literature, just crappy stuff, so I took to buying books (which, after all is way more fun as you get to keep them!). Now that I live in a small city, I still don't go to the library, I just love to create my own.

I now have these fases of reading. I had a whole period where I'd read only 'real' literature (mostly in high school, since it was mandatory), a period of horror, chick-lit and now I'm discovering the wonderful world of dystopias, post-apocalyptics and science fiction. Also, I tend to vary more now and try more things outside my comfort zone.

I fully intend to take my children (if and when I have them) by the hand so that we can discover all sorts of wonderful books together. I soooo hope it'll be readers! ^^

Perhaps it is a sign of getting old, but I'll call it maturity. These stories bring to mind my own children rather than my own childhood. My oldest, 16, has started pulling my books off the shelves and asking me what to read next. She favors the psychological and the downright strange. The boys, 11, are deep into Rick Riordan and fantasy of all types. Yesterday I took the youngest, 2 next month, to the library with me. She got away from me and ran to the children's section (it's very colorful there, of course). We read about twenty board books before she went to the picture book section. She pulled out quite a few and wanted to sit in the middle of the aisle to read with me. (I'm not sure she's ready for paper yet, especially if they aren't ours!) At that moment, I thought, this is a girl after my own heart. It makes me very proud that all my kids enjoy books because I know this is a pleasure they can carry for the rest of their lives.

I have been told that I taught our neighbor boy to read - he was 6 and I was 4, so I must have started early. I have always considered myself a reader, but the first book I actually remember reading is a book called called “Max” – it had an orange library binding and was somewhere around 200-250 pages. This was in the 3rd grade. I must have read things before then, and we did have a lot of Golden Books at home, but specifics are elusive.

I used to think my father was the source of my love of reading, but in mulling it over I realize that my mother was always the one with a book in hand. By 5th grade I was reading Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins. I bought a lot of Scholastic books and still have The Enormous Egg, Escape from Warsaw, Ethan Frome, and a few others. By 6th grade, to the horror of my teacher, I was reading Erle Stanley Gardner. This was okay with my mother, but Mrs. Brett did send a note home when I had to read out loud to her and the words ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ came up. This was in 1965. Ah, yes.

Series that I have loved include Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer. Favorite authors are Rita Mae Brown, Bill Bryson, Tom Robbins, Jasper Fforde, and several romance writers.

I read a wide variety of books – short stories, fiction, non-fiction, poetry. I always have at least one book with me, sometimes 2 or 3. You just never know when there will be a minute to read!

It isn’t a day without a book.

My father used to read to me every night which is where my love of reading started I think.

Whenever I was in trouble, or felt guilty or sad about anything I would go to my room and read until I forgot all about it.

I went to an alternative high school that started at grade 7 and all the other kids (it felt like) knew each other from grade one in public school but I had gone to a private school and knew nobody and had no friends. I spent every lunch hour reading in the school library.

Reading has always given me an enormous sense of well being.

What a terrific thread! I learned to read at age 4 by lying in bed with my older sister (she was 9 then); she was reading Trixie Belden books to me and when she stopped I just picked up the book and kept reading--I had to know what happened. Read probably the first ten or twelve of those . . . partly the interest was that they were set in the Hudson Valley of NY state, near where I lived then and now (after wandering around the country for many years, I'm back where I started--and wondering, given the miserable winter weather, why??).

Then when I was 8, my mother went to her mother's funeral in Florida and came home with boxes of books from her youth, which I proceeded to devour--also, we had no TV from when I was 5 until 10, which I'm sure made a huge difference. The collection included Pollyanna, some Bobbsey Twins books, Georgina of the Rainbows, Elsie Dinsmore, a series that started with Prudence of the Parsonage, and another that started with Polly of Pebbly Pit. All wonderfully old-fashioned and wholesome!

But somewhere along the line I got ahold of the James Bond books and had a heck of a time trying to figure out why he was sucking a girl's toes and dropping his swim trunks! What was that all about??!! A couple of years later, when I was maybe 12, my mother took both Rosemary's Baby and The Valley of the Dolls away from me, but my brother got them back so I could finish them!

My mother read the Reader's Digest condensed books, her Bible, and had a copy of Gone With the Wind; when I read that at age 9 or 10 she gave me a special treat and took me to the movie (involved a long bus ride and an overnight at a cheap motel because the bus didn't run back home as late as the movie got out). My father read paperback westerns and traded bags full of them with friends. I don't remember much encouragement from them directly; I think it was more the example of the behavior and the fact that books were around. My older brothers are readers; my older sisters were/are not.

I went through a romance novel phase but gave up on bodice-rippers somewhere along the line. I didn't discover science fiction/fantasy until high school, when somebody recommended Isaac Asimov to me . . . never looked back, and it's still a favorite genre (that and mysteries).

I majored in English literature and history, so read plenty in college, and got a graduate degree in English lit, too. So learned to love Dickens, Austen, Tennyson, T.S. Eliot, etc.

I'm reorganizing my books now, so have mostly only entered my sci fi/fantasy collection thus far--doesn't quite give the whole picture, but it's coming along . . .

I read a lot for work, but outside of that, I read to escape, mainly; I want to immerse myself in another reality. I joined a book club through my library but am about to give up as they tend to pick dreary, depressing chick lit about "dealing with loss" and such--plenty to be miserable about with real life loss (e.g., the sister who taught me to read died of cancer a couple of years ago), I don't need to wallow in that while reading.

I'm beginning to think, though, that I've gotten too much in the habit of reading easy stuff and should challenge myself a bit more. The influence of LT after only a few days . . .

I didn't read early and I found no real joy in reading until I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, when I read Little House in the Big Woods. I found reading to be a way of disappearing into other worlds. It also helped me cope with a grandmother, in whose care I was often placed. She only left me alone when I was reading. I can't tell you the number of times I read The Jungle Book. Reading was a safety net.

So many books mentioned raise good memories, Charlotte's Web, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Black Beauty (which apparently doesn't exist in LT), The Secret Garden, All-of-a-Kind Family. Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, The Wizard of Oz and The Bobbsey Twins were all childhood companions.

My mother, father, and stepmother were all big readers, and with one exception, I was allowed to read any book on the shelves. The one exception was Doctor Zhivago, I think that my mother thought it might be too sad for me, but I'm not sure.

I was in the 5th or 6th grade when my brothers and I read The Hobbit. That started me on a decades-long love affair with reading.

I didn't read early and I found no real joy in reading until I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, when I read Little House in the Big Woods. I found reading to be a way of disappearing into other worlds. It also helped me cope with a grandmother, in whose care I was often placed. She only left me alone when I was reading. I can't tell you the number of times I read The Jungle Book. Reading was a safety net.

So many books mentioned raise good memories, Charlotte's Web, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Black Beauty (which apparently doesn't exist in LT), The Secret Garden, All-of-a-Kind Family. Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, The Wizard of Oz and The Bobbsey Twins were all childhood companions.

My mother, father, and stepmother were all big readers, and with one exception, I was allowed to read any book on the shelves. The one exception was Doctor Zhivago; I think that my mother thought it might be too sad for me, but I'm not sure.

I was in the 5th or 6th grade when my brothers and I read The Hobbit. That started me on a decades-long love affair with fantasy.

I spent a lot of time in the hospital as a kid or at home recovering from being in the hospital. Reading was something I could do while bedfast.

72 - I loved Polly of Pebbly Pit and eventually found Polly and Eleanor. Glad to see it mentioned.

Both of my parents read. I don't recall seeing my mother read much but my father always had a book in hand. It was he who gave me Out of the Silent Planet, The Martian Chronicles, and The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. I'm sure he thought the more mature parts would elude me--which they did. Side note: A common thread here seems to be that a lot of us read books which were over our heads. Doesn't seem to have done any damage, does it?

Our paternal grandmother introduced us to Gene Stratton Porter, setting us on her lap and reading (omitting the chapters with too-adult content).

Our mother, an English major, read us plays like Green Pastures and told us of series like The Little Colonel and The Five Little Peppers. One of the first adult books I remember reading was I Married Adventure--one of my mother's favorites.

When I was young the girl across the street had all the Nancy Drew books which she let me borrow. From those it was a logical step to The Hardy Boys and all the classic children's books (I LIKED Pollyanna). In addition to those I was given a bunch of the "wholesome" books written for young people at the beginning of the 20th century. I read and re-read them voraciously and my favorites, on an annual basis.

Somewhere before high school I read the Brontes, Alcott, and the entire set of Mark Twain (my favorite is still The Mysterious Stranger). And, of course, during high school there were the books which got passed around to be read at night and hidden under the mattress. It wasn't until I was grown that I found out that Lady Chatterley's Lover was a treatise and not deliberately written as a dirty book.

There wasn't a lot of fantasy when I was young but by the time my children came along there were many: The Prydain series, the Joan Aiken books, The Dark is Rising, etc. I read all sorts of stories to the girls, their favorites being Narnia and Little House. When the boys came along twelve years later, they enjoyed all but the Wilder books (and my daughter, liking that series so well, tried to read it to my grandsons--who didn't like it either).

I still read omnivorously, but it was those forays into the children/young adult sections of the library which begat my love of fantasy. Now I routinely hit that area of the library when seeking something purely escapist.

All of my children are enthusiastic readers and all have different favorite fields. The grandchildren also like to read and my daughter has been known to discipline the grandsons by forbidding them to read in bed at night.

My kids also get punished by losing reading time at night... when my 10 year old mentioned this to his classmates, he was met with blank, uncomprehending stares...

Two things:

1. I was taught to read at about age 3 -- I have no clear memory of not reading.

2. I was given free run of the local public library, first with my parents, and then later when I could get there on my bicycle, on my own. I was never limited to the children's section, or anything else for that matter, so I was able to sample whatever I liked and check out as many books as I could carry.

3. I had a terrible stutter -- long since conquered -- that left me much less interested in talking to others and much more interested in the words I could hear in my own head.

Perhaps because I read so many books, there aren't too many that stand out as really formative, except perhaps anthologies of greek and roman myths and legends. These quite clearly fueled my later study of classics, though my advanced degrees are in English Literature.

The other defining feature of my reading childhood was plenty of solitude -- lots of time to read, the inclination to create my own worlds, and little interruption for other things, especially during the summer.

Not surprisingly, as an adult, I prefer solitude, reading, and have a few books here and there about the house. And I most definitely exploit both the local public library and the university library where I work. We have a special bookcase -- about 20 linear feet -- that serves as storage for books from the PL or the university library (2 shelves for the PL, 1 for the UL).

Thus is the child the father of the man, or something like that.

I was an only child of professional parents, living in a neighborhood with few playmates. When we went out I read, when we travelled, I read, when my parents entertained I sat in the living room and read while the dinner parties went on. Books were my great friends and my dependable companions.

I was always allowed to read whatever I chose, be it Nancy Drew or Exodus. My mother took me to the library every week for 6 books (their limit) and then finally the library relented and let me take 10.

Reading and love of books were given high value by my family. Anyone who said they didn't enjoy reading or seemed apathetic about reading was judged rather harshly in sort of a hush hush manner. Really, I was practically grown before I realized there were many lovely, smart, and productive people who didn't care a whit about reading. (Still, I feel sorry for them :-)

My parents were both avid readers, and our house was full of books, both adult's and children's.

My mother was a teacher and I have 3 older sisters, plus my aunt was a children's librarian, so the supply of books was plentiful and varied, both owned and borrowed.

I was a bookworm by the time I was 4, even more so than any of my sisters. My parents refused to have a television until I was 16, which I think had an enormous influence on how our reading habits developed. (I felt very deprived at the time though!)

As for what I read, well, it was anything and everything that came my way, really, which pretty much is how I am today. I'll give anything a try, especially if it's recommended by someone else, but I'll move on to the next book if I'm not enjoying something.

my parents weren't really into reading. my mother is a good reader that doesn't really do it that much, and i've never had a father or father figure that read anything. in fact, i'm told that my biological father is dyslexic; i've heard that dyslexia is genetic, but i seem to have overcome that particular hurdle.

so when in kindergarten i learned to read and was put into the advance reading group, i didn't think it was anything to be proud of. three schools later, in 4th grade, i was the new girl, and for the 4th time i was put into the advance readers group. up until then i hadn't really read anything for fun. but in that class i met a girl that loved to read, and whose parents loved to read. she became my best friend. i still didn't pay much attention to the books she always had in her hand until we went on a field trip. i sat with her on the bus while she was reading, and just to be annoying i insisted on reading the back of the book every five minutes. finally, she borrowed me the first book in the series, Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. i read that one, then finished the series in fifth grade (that summer was awful, because i was on the fourth book and i wanted to know how it ended). when i was done, she gave me The Hobbit, and after that i was hooked on fantasy/sci fi.

to this day, i'll read almost anything that's put in front of me, but fantasy/sci fi is still my favorite. i feel that i've learned more from my books than i have from school. even the infamous "sex talk" that most kids have to go through at one time or another was easily solved for me by my Grandma Addy, who gave me For the Roses by Julie Garwood near the end of fifth grade.

Aw, I like this thread, so I'm glad you resurrected it so we newbies can participate.

Reading has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Both of my parents are avid readers, and our weekly trips to the library were some of my favorite times with my family. My dad read The Hobbit to me one chapter at a time as a bedtime story, and that's the first book I remember really loving. I read constantly--with a book hidden in my lap during class, under the covers with a flashlight after bedtime, and everywhere in between. I read in church (I now can't believe my parents let me do that), in the car, on vacation, and I preferred to stay inside with a book while my sister begged me to come outside and play.

I loved Judy Blume, Nancy Drew and The Babysitters Club. The first book that really affected me was The Giver, which I read when I was 12, and from there on I was hooked. I read whatever I could get my hands on, including Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret at least 15 times...I just couldn't wait to get my period and have breasts the size of tennis balls.

Now I real primarily literary fiction, memoirs, and a random selection of nonfiction. I don't think my childhood made me into a reader of a specific genre or style of book, but it did make me love books that made me think and that didn't shy away from the gritty details. I like to think I'm a bit more discriminate about what I read these days, but I'm a reader through and through, and just about anything will do in a pinch.

I was a bit of a loner as a child and much preferred to spend my time with books than with friends. I loved the Milly Molly Mandy books and as I got a bit older I read Mary Stewart and Beverly Nichols books. My first foray into adult books was Stephen King and I have remained a big fan ever since. I don't think what I read when I was younger has had any bearing on what I read now, which is more or less everything.

I cringe to say it, but the Animorphs series more or less defined my childhood. I moved from science fiction on into the fantasy world of Tamora Pierce, and after finishing the Harry Potter series a few years ago I've pretty much left genre fiction untouched. I haven't read any series books since then, either, possibly out of lingering bitterness over how Applegate closed hers. Yes, seven years later and I'm still mad.

L.M. Montgomery was my next childhood fixation. Forget the red hair Anne and I share -- I wanted to be Emily Starr. I can comfortably blame her for my love of character-driven plots and an appreciation for description-heavy prose. I probably wouldn't enjoy Victorian fiction as much as I do these days if it weren't for her books.

However, the blame for my loyalty to literary canon rests squarely on the shoulders of Alexandre Dumas. When I was ten I read The Three Musketeers and was intrigued by this world of "adult books". Later I tore through the 1000+ page The Count of Monte Cristo and never looked back. I am inherently suspicious of anything published within the last fifty years. Also something of a book snob. Good job, Alex. It's completely your fault.

# 84 I'm so happy to find another Emily fan! She was always my favorite - I can't remember how many times I read that series. Emily's Quest is around my apartment somewhere still.

re: The Three Musketeers - have you by any chance read the Pevear translation? It's fairly recent, I think, and I've heard that it includes scenes that were censored out of the traditional translations. I haven't read it yet, but I'm trying to get my hands on a copy.

No, jfetting, I haven't read the Pevear translation. I keep going back-and-forth about purchasing it. I already have a copy of The Three Musketeers, but I'm enough of a dork to have favorite translators and Pevear is one of them. My birthday is in a few days, though...

My mom isn’t what I would call an avid reader, but she always thought it very important that kids learn to enjoy reading, so she read aloud to us all the time. She says that when I was four, I told her that I would read to her and picked up a book and did so. She still didn’t believe I actually was reading until she tested me out on a book we hadn’t read in awhile.

The first book I can actually remember reading is The Berenstein Bears Learn to ride a Bike, and after that I was off. In kindergarten I was obsessed with dinosaurs and space, and would rattle off the names of extinct species and Jupiter’s moons. If the teacher had to go on an errand, she’d have me read to the class! I went to a very small school, so I didn’t have a lot of other nerds to hang out with. Instead I read. And because it was a small school, none of my teachers had any problems with it. Books were easier to be friends with than people who thought I was “weird”.

I don’t remember the public library ever constricting what I checked out—I don’t know if my mom talked with them or if after the weekly trips for armfuls of books they just figured I was responsible. I know I was checking out Oz books and Trixie Beldens on one trip and Alfred Hitchcock collections and astrology books the next trip. (I was a strange child.) Plus we had an old set The Books of Knowledge that I loved, a dictionary that I would fall asleep reading, and a stack of old Reader’s Digests that helped give me a huge vocabulary. (I’m probably the only person under thirty who’s read “I Am Joe’s Liver”.) I got those from my great-aunt who also gave me a stack of Perry Masons, Nero Wolfes, and Agatha Christies. I can remember trying to hide the covers on the Perry Masons because they usually featured a woman in a low cut blouse, and I didn’t want to get into trouble at school.

Nowadays I still read primarily fiction, and primarily mystery and fantasy/scifi. But I like branching out more now. I’ll read a children’s book or classical literature or a history of junk food. And while I still read a lot, work takes up more time than school so I don’t get to read as much. (In high school a teacher asked how many books we thought we would read that summer. Most said none or one. I said probably a hundred—and I kept track and was right.) But I still read as much as possible, and I still love it just as much.

>82 bnbooklady:: no problem.

>87 ninjapenguin:: as a senior in high school a friend of mine dared me to read more books than there were days in a school year. i'd finished the required one hundred eighty by january. and i bet very few people believed you, too.

My parents always read to my sister and I, which I think helped instill my love of books. (Didn't seem to work on my sister, though.) I was an early reader - I knew the alphabet by 18 months (and backwards by age 2!), and when I was about 2 1/2 or 3, I shocked one of our family friends by reading something containing the words "purple mountain majesties." Ever since I was little, the library has been my second home. I used to LOVE going to the library and checking out a huge stack of books with my mom. Still do, except now, I can get myself down to the library! :P

I remember when I was in 1st grade, my teacher brought me to the librarian and had me read a couple books to her because my teacher didn't know what to do with me - I was the most advanced reader she had ever taught! I was the only 1st grader who was able to check out the Goosebumps books. (There was a rule that you had to be at least a 2nd grader to check them out.) But all through elementary, middle, and high school, I've always been regarded as the girl who ALWAYS has a book with her, because quite frankly, there are many times when I'd rather read a book than deal with real people. Although, I've known a couple people who would get angry that I read so much. They said it wasn't normal, and that I shouldn't enjoy doing something that was associated with school, and it was probably why I didn't have any friends. (I did have friends, just as a side note...HUMAN friends, too.) Thankfully, now that I'm in college, I've found friends who may not read as much as I do, but they appreciate a good book as much as the next person and look at my biblio-obsession (is that a word? It is now!) with endearment and affection.

I've always enjoyed horror/thriller/mystery novels, even when I was younger. I read most of the Goosebumps series, I LOVED Nancy Drew mysteries, and when I was in middle school, I discovered Michael Crichton's techno-thrillers and I also fell in love with a young adult series called Nightmare Hall (I THINK it was called that at least) by Diane Hoh. They were murder mysteries for teens. And once I hit high school, I fell in love with Stephen King novels. Right now, college takes up a LOT of my spare time that I would normally spend reading, but this summer has proven to be a GREAT opportunity to catch up on my reading. I'm planning on reading about 40 books this summer. I know it's nothing compared to what a lot of other people read, but it's still enough to impress my friends! :)

Hmmm....I guess I read because I saw my mother reading. I honestly can't remember learning how. My grandmother used to babysit me when I was a baby, and she has a story about me impressing one of my uncles because I could say the alphabet and sound out the letters, read my name and basic sight words, and write a little. I was not yet two. When my sister was born, I was four, and I remember reading to her from fairy tales and Dr. Seuss books.

My mother always read, and my dad always bought books, though for the longest time he didn't have time to really read. ( reads like a fiend now though.) My mother was a book-a-day kind of person if it was 'light reading' ( and what she called light reading was usually some pretty sticky stuff...like Dickens) She polished off Stephen King in a few hours.

My parents always bought me books, and our collection, about 5000 at the time, was completely accessible. There was no guided reading, which I think was great for me because I was, and am, a mood reader. I went through Beverly Cleary, Nancy Drew, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa Alcott, Judy Blume, Anna Sewell, and countless other 'girl' books for young readers before the age of nine.

When I was nine we moved, and I foolishly allowed all my books to be packed. Panicked, I asked my grandmother, ( another avid reader) for a book, and all she had handy was an Agatha Christie. I was hooked. I had it finished before we had reached our destination, and I requested " no more children's books" from my parents. Since I was starting homeschool that year, they obliged, and my mother bought me Silas Marner, Hound of the Baskervilles, The Jungle Book,The Pearl, and a bunch of others. That's where my love of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began. Also I was fascinated by the words in Silas Marner. I thought they sounded like
" running water". Now I understand it was beauty of language I was appreciating.

After that I read what my parents read. My mother read lots of books about India, so I asked if I could read the Far Pavillions. My dad read The Idiot, and I asked if I could read that. He was skeptical because I was only ten, and he tested me to see of I could understand it. I really loved the classics best, but I also adored anything with a historical theme.

After I was twelve, I read Stephen King and Clive Barker, Westerns, Poetry volumes, and even experimented with a few romances. My mother reads a lot of non-fictions, mostly histories of Rome, and biographies of historical figures. That inspired me to delve into non-fiction--the history of Britain being one of my favorite subjects. Recently I've been exploring a little, reading modern mysteries, popular novels, and all of those Newberry Winners that I skipped over in my exuberant youth.

Is there a common thread between my childhood reading and adult reading? Yes. I still read random books based on what mood I am in and how interesting the story sounds at the moment. I am still not a big re-reader. It's very seldom that I will re-read a book, even a favorite. I still love the classics. I still share a lot with my mother, even though our tastes are not the quite the same anymore. We still have great fun discussing books.

I also still have the very naughty habit of being attracted to bright cartoony book covers, or covers with classic paintings, regardless of story line.

I be "larned" in a one-room schoolhouse in the Catskill mountains. For most of my childhood, I had a baseball bat in one hand, and a fishing rod in the other (except for when I was riding a bicycle). I simply loved to fish - catch and release - and generations of black bass, rock bass, sunnies, suckers, bullheads, eels, and trout knew me as a Vlad the Impaler, the scourge of the Sawkill creek. But for Field and Stream magazine, and the flip side of Topps baseball cards, there was no cause fer readin'.

My parents were intelligent and clever but had no clue concerning literature. I never saw my mother open a book of any kind, although she read the newspaper on a daily basis. Was she dyslexic? Isn't it moot, if she was always "too busy" to read? My father, the proprietor of an Esso station or two, had a customer who periodically paid him with a box of tattered "Westerns". He could be found, many evenings, at the kitchen table, with a glass of dark beer, rye crackers, some incredibly foul-smelling European cheese, immersed in a coverless Zane Grey.

My much older siblings had left behind a few Bobbsie Twins, Hardy Boys, and ancient yellow Tom Swift with possibly the world's first WWI tank on the cover. And from my Wharton School educated, Fulbright scholarshipped, "bachelor" uncle, there was a copy of Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels

As horrible as it sounds, I credit Adolph Hitler with my love for reading. I reached adolescence when Kennedy became President and cold war politics were the subject de jour. I persuaded my parents to let me join Book-of-the-Month club, and for 99 cents received my first "real" book - William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Fascinated by evil, like many schoolboys, I was impressed that a self taught maniac - but for a Siberian winter - very nearly ruled the world.

Happily, I soon passed through this Darth Vader phase - but I did become an autodidact. Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy gave me a better source of mentors. Soon, age 15, I was reading non-stop with Dostoyevsky my greatest love, and samplings of Hardy, Conrad, Dreiser, Kafka, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Chekov, Dickens, H.G. Wells, stacks of Ace Sci-Fi back-to-back novels, yes (groan) Ayn Rand, Byron, Keats, Shelly, Huxley, Salinger, Orwell, Schlesinger, and Churchill...it was a supernova kind of thing and over by the time I finished high school.

I studied very little in college, but caught up with my peers and learned how to drink, talk to girls, rock 'n' roll, and read for pleasure. Subsequently, the rest of my life unfolded like a flower.

My father was an avid reader and I must have picked up the habit from him. My mother doesn't read much except for the Bible and a few books on prayer. I think I also read as a child because all the stories were so exciting and they introduced me to worlds I had no experience with.

My favorite day was always Saturday - because this was the day my mother would take me to the library in town, and I'd get to pick out as many books as they would allow, then my mother and I would have lunch at a cafe next to the library while we waited for my father to come pick us up after his morning round of golf.

I grew up reading all the Enid Blyton books and it pains me that it's so difficult to find her books on the shelves these days. She wrote stories for much simpler times and regardless of the book tzars out there... I never grew up to be racist just because I read her books.

#84 - I'll never forget the time I first discovered Emily Starr. I was in my early teens by then, and the few weeks I spent reading the books (it was spring time) remain vivid in my memory as some of the most magical of my life. That was also when I first started taking writing seriously for myself.

I've read it many times since, but never quite recaptured that magic.

Edited for typos

Like many of you, my mom has always talked to me about the importance of reading. She used to say "books are your best friends". She'd go crazy when she ran out of books. She'd take my father's IT books, even though she can't even turn a computer on. :)
I remember when I was 2 or 3, I used to sit on the porch and pretend I was reading, so the neighbours would pass by and see me reading. I just stood there with a book on my hands. I remember thinking "I'll never be able to read. I'm going to forget about everything if I don't finish the book on the same day" - good times.
When I was in school I remember I didn't like to read either. I stayed away from the books for a long time and one day I saw this add about Sidney Sheldon's new book "Tell me your dreams". I just felt I had to buy that book, and after this day I never stopped.
Unfortunetly I live in a country where reading isn't so popular. Brazilians read an avarage of 3 books / year, so I feel pretty behind when it comes to bookclubs, bookmoching, etc.
I'm glad my mom gave me that kind of lesson since I was little and I'll sure pass it to my kids. :)

My parents were both Chinese immigrants to Canada. Their English was never that great, so they weren't avid readers (maybe they would have been if there were more Chinese books around? I don't know). But they believed in the importance of a cultured mind and they encouraged me to read and took me to libraries. Even so, I think they were surprised by how *much* I took to reading. I think they were trying to instill a good habit but it turned into a lifelong obsession.

When I was young I read a lot of tween literature like The Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley. I was also really into Greek mythology and fairy tales. And dinosaurs and space exploration-- I remember adoring dinosaurs and outer space. When I was older I started turning to adult literature and sci-fi and fantasy.

As a reader I think I was mostly self-taught. No one really guided my tastes or gave me advice as to what to read. I kind of regret this because it means I came into a lot of the classics late-- I thought Pride and Prejudice was a legal book until I was 15!

I'd have to say that my father was the biggest influence on my reading. We moved a lot, but every house had a library. Furniture, dishes, appliances, etc. were sold or given away every time we moved, but the book collection remained intact. He never censored our reading - the only rule was "Put it back where you found it."

My mom read me poetry every night before bed...the real stuff. Frost, Shelly, Dylan, Ginsberg, Burns, Keats, etc. some nights I hated it. Most nights I loved it. And now when I read certain pieces I can still see her lips mouth the words. Plus, no one reads more than my mom. I remember as a kid she was never without a book; we visited the library at least once a week. And she encouraged me to read above my age; like when I pulled James Joyce off the shelf in 6th grade. My dad too, read every night before bed....I truly believe reading is a learned behavior..... When I reached high school my Uncle Tom was friends with Stan Tordowitz, who had been a friend of Kerouac's. And he opened the door for me on the beats; and took me to meet Stan who let me hang out in his studio, go through his paintings, and showed me where Jack had made ink drawings behind a number of the doors in his house. It was amazing. My mom and my uncle were the biggest influences on the kind of books I read today as well as some of the best supporters of my own writing.

My Mom was and still is a prolific reader, and I doubt my father has ever read a thing - including road signs and instruction booklets, but that's another story. I knew all the words to my favorite book before I could read, which I learned to do at age 3 - before pre-school. Judy Blume taught me the facts of life. Erma Bombeck taught me sarcasm as salvation in a crazy-assed world. Some authors have taught me that some people shouldn't be authors... and many have taught me love of the written word.