In the stance on e-readers verses a real book, I’m in the book camp. As much as I love gad­gets, I really love the feel and the smell of a book. I’ve kept nearly all of the books I’ve bought since I started work­ing. It’s not uncom­mon that I find myself just look­ing at my col­lec­tion and remem­ber­ing all the great adven­tures I’ve gone on through them. You can’t do that with an e-reader even if it is does save space and trees. I think I will always love to curl up on my couch with my blan­ket and pil­low for a nice evening read­ing, lost in a book.

I do get lost in my books. I aver­age about 3 or 4 a month recently. If I’m really into the novel, than I can fin­ish it in a day if I’m not work­ing, two or three days depend­ing on what my hours are. I don’t read as much as I’d like to, or as much vari­ety as I’d like to. As with every­thing else in my life, I have bursts of read­ing a lot, and then I may not read a book for a week. I don’t think I can go more than a week with­out hav­ing a novel started.

I have always loved a good story and trea­sured my bed­time sto­ries as a kid. I found the read­ing bug when I was about 12. At first I only read short mys­tery, Goosebumps style books, that sat around 200 pages. I felt accom­plished for being able to fin­ish them in two or three days. My par­ents indulged my enthu­si­asm and bought me books when­ever I fin­ished one. I think they were just glad that I had finally started reading.

From there, by the end of 8^th grade I had dis­cov­ered Stephen King. I read The Shining first. My friends thought I was crazy for read­ing a thick book when I didn’t have to. After read­ing a few King books and some thrillers, I found Richard Laymon in 10^th grade. By 11^th grade I had found Anne Rice. I read these two authors almost exclu­sively try­ing to read every­thing I could get my hands on. I read The Vampire Chronicles and The lives of Mayfair Witches nov­els by Anne Rice. I still have a Richard Laymon novel on my shelf wait­ing for me. I am not fin­ished with him yet. In 12^th grade I found Harry Potter and that opened up a whole new world of reading.

Since I started to actively read rel­a­tively late, I missed out on a lot of really good oppor­tu­ni­ties of read­ing in children’s books. Between my senior year in 2002 and 2006 when I started col­lege, I devoted my read­ing efforts to the lost chances in children’s lit­er­a­ture. I espe­cially enjoyed read­ing The Chronicles of Narnia, which led me to con­tem­po­rary children’s fiction.

I have fallen in love with this genre. It is much more fas­ci­nat­ing than some of the adult fic­tion I have found, but I do enjoy read­ing that as well. I think I’m about caught up with read­ing Tamora Pierce except for the lat­est series. I read the So you want to be a wiz­ard series by Diane Duane, I read the DragonLance books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and from there found The Songs and Swords books by Elaine Cunningham. I found the Septimus Heap books, and the Inkheart tril­ogy and the Magician’s Apprentice tril­ogy by Trudi Canovan.

Right now I’m work­ing my way through the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey, and a few books which my hus­band has rec­om­mended. For some rea­son, I don’t enjoy talk­ing about books to any­one but him. We have a pretty sim­i­lar taste in books, he’s more into sci-fi and I’m more into fan­tasy but we read enough of both to swap books fairly regularly.

College did put a damper on the speed at which I could read a book for me. However, as an English major I had plenty of assigned read­ings to occupy myself. I have read a num­ber of pretty good nov­els, short sto­ries and poems in my time pur­su­ing my degree, so it’s not a loss of time. I’ve taken about fif­teen English courses and there are just way too many to list every­thing I’ve read. Plus, they were assigned so it doesn’t feel the same. I don’t have the same attach­ment to them.

Someday I will have my own per­sonal library over­flow­ing with books and com­fort­able places to recline while read­ing. When I have chil­dren I will read to them as my Dad read to me, and if they’re any­thing like us, they will be read­ers to.