I never had many books as a child but I do remember my Dad reading stories to me from My Bookhouse books. When I was 9 we moved to a small town and Dad took me to their tiny free library. It was in a small house and I can still recall the feeling of walking into this space and seeing the shelves of books that I could borrow.

It was love at first sight. My first borrowed book was Blueberry Summer and I haven't stopped reading !

My mom. She was a teacher, then a stay at home mom and later worked at the library. She has always loved books and reading...and I started borrowing her books, when I was about 12. Also her mom loved to read. When I visited my grandmother, I read Watership Down at 11 years old. She was reading it and recommending it to the professors she worked for at University of Illinois. So I read it. Loved it. Read it again later...understood it more. I still read it about once every five years and finally got the CDs. Still my all time favorite book.

My mom has so many books, but many of the ones I read are by Mary Stewart. She is my favorite author, even now. She also read lots of Dick Francis, Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, Charlotte Armstrong, Agatha Christie, etc. Later she started reading more Dean Koontz, Clive Cussler, etc. and I don't read as many of those...they aren't quite my cup of tea. Koontz has a few really good books, but too much violence for me.

Oh, and she had the old Richard and Frances Lockridge books (Mr. and Mrs. North). Loved those when I was much younger and totally explains my fascination with Hart to Hart at the time! LOL

I was a very late reader but remember my grandfather reading to me . . . I was also quite stupid as it never occurred to me to try and read for myself and neither of my parents were much bothered with 'education'. My father was very Victorian in many ways and thought children should be seen and not heard and their value was in their use! If the law had still allowed it we would have been working under factory machinery or cleaning chimneys; I got good at looking busy whenever he was around. ;-)

Once I had mastered the written word I joined the children's section of the local library, in those days full of dark-brown-covered books and fearsome librarians not to mention scarry down-and-outs who hugged the radiators in the 'reading room', There I gradually discovered authors who's work I enjoyed with just a blip at boarding school, where I spent eight years, run mostly by Irish nuns, who did not approve of books and seemed to think they were full of inappropriate material which would lead to occasions of sin.

Have been reading ever since mostly respectable books which have never (well hardly ever) led me to wicked ways!

Vee, not stupid !

there is a warmth and cozy feeling having a loved grandfather read to you :0)

Both of my parents loved to read, so that was encouraged. My mother had saved a number of her own beloved books, so they were read and reread. I recall getting books by mail from the Minneapolis Public Library.

I was born into a family of readers/schoolteachers. My father cherished his books and those of his own father. These were in a pine-panelled "den" in our house. I recall discovering GWTW there, when I was much too young at the time. I was an "only" child, so books were a way of meeting new "friends" through the written word. My favorite place to read was a large dogwood tree in the woods behind our house which formed a sort of triangular seat. We had no television until I was about to enter college, so this helped to create a reader who would end up working in libraries and historical societies. I loved my visits to the tiny Carnegie library in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta as a girl. I was always given books as Xmas and birthday presents.

I love to snuggle up into a hammock swing we have hung in the woods,,,,,talk to the crows .....and happily lose myself in a book :0)

My mother was both a reader and a teacher. When I was four and didn't want to stay with the woman who was to babysit me during the day and it got too cold to go livestock dealing with my dad, Mama took me to school with her. She was teaching in a one-room school in rural Kentucky with 20-25 students in total (think Laura Ingalls Wilder), and everyone else had a book! When I wanted one, too, she started me in pre-primers; and before I was five, I had a new little sister, we were all three at home during the day, and I was reading up to second grade level. It's been onward and upward from there.

I was born into a family of readers too. My father used to read us the Uncle Wiggly stories at bed time among other stories; in fact I remember him reading us The Swiss Family Robinson when I was around 5or 6. I still remember the feeling when I realized I could read the words on the page. I was off and running and have never looked back. I was a shy child, except at home, and reading was my escape from a world I didn't seem to fit in. And now I read for enjoyment as well as learning fun stuff.

I think I began to read when I discovered Enid Blyton books in the library.

My mom read to me when I ws very young and I learned to read before I went to Kindergarten. In the second grade I got to go read to the first graders. I guess it just stuck! :)

Donna

Like many here, I was born into a reading family. Parents are often so important in encouraging a love of reading. I remember my mother saying that if you love reading, you never have to be lonely. A slight exaggeration perhaps, but a strong kernel of truth there.

I grew up in a family of readers. My mother read to me and my brother a lot and as soon as I was able I went and read all those books for myself, and then moved on to read more books.

The library was my favourite place on earth. I think it also helped that I didn't have many friends in school and reading became a refuge from the bullies.

I am not from a family of particularly avid readers and I have no idea how things got started but once I learned how to read, there was no stopping me :-) I consumed books!! Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames, anything about horses, all of the Grimms fairy tales. Graduated to more adult literature in my early teens - was actually booted out of the adult section of the library once as it was "too grown up" for me!!

I still read constantly now (in my 60's) - a book a day more or less - and I am not at all specific in my interests. Any non-fiction on subjects that interest me, mostly gardening, architecture, local history and biographies. And any fiction that offers a good story although I do lean pretty heavily to thrillers and mysteries. Just no romance novels :-)

I visit the library several times a week, usually picking up a half a dozen books or so. Our regional library system is excellent and I usually have several orders on file for the newest publications or to complete a series by an author I particularly favor at the moment. Have read every John Sandford, J.A. Jance, Dick Francis, Robert Parker, John Grisham, Lee Child, Louise Penny and Jonathan and Faye Kellerman published so far and currently working my way through Linwood Barclay and Emily Brightwell (the Mrs. Jeffries series). Brightwell in particular is a lot like eating potato chips - you just can't stop and they are light, well written and vastly entertaining if somewhat repetitive.

My mom was a teacher and my dad was a reader and the books were just always there. I have always loved to read, and for a shy child, it was the best way to have the most marvelous adventures!

I can't remember a time when I didn't read.

The first book I owned, around 1943, was a Sunday School prize, "The Tale of Pigling Bland" by Beatrix Potter and I was lent passed-around copies of the Enid Blyton Sunny Stories magazine until my name came up on the waiting list at the newsagent for my own regular copy. British wartime restrictions on the print run meant you had to wait for someone to cancel.

I missed out on a lot of children's books because they weren't available. Eg, I never knew that "Alice Through the Looking Glass" existed. Books were precious and treasured items either borrowed from the library or passed on when the child that owned one no longer wanted it as they grew older. That was how I was given Rupert Bear Annuals when I was sick in bed around 1944.

They were also expensive, my friend and I saved our pocket money to buy a Georgette Heyer between us around 1950!

Now I can buy 10 books for $1 at the local charity shop and they are all in good condition!

Because my dad read and re-read and re-read Andrew Henry's Meadow, ad nauseum. I chose that book almost every night. NEVER did he complain, and he made EVERY reading seem like it was the first time we were on that adventure together. I still have that very same book.

And, as a kid, I got an allowance. But if I was spending it in the bookstore, my dad DOUBLED it. (Can you say "Nancy Drew"?)

Plus, I saw him reading. And I thought he was the smartest man on the planet. I told him that my goal was to someday try to be as smart as he was. I am still working on it... he is still reading, and still smarter than me.

PAM

My parents had little education and read very little. My DF, however, was an oral storyteller and that got me hooked on literature. We had almost no reading material but I read every word I could find, or asked someone to read to me. My sister, being two years older, began school before I did and I happily read the books she brought home. I have been a very avid reader ever since.

I don't remember not being able to read. I have no idea who read to me when I was young - probably my mother, I suppose. It might also have been my grandfather - he, I know, taught me basic arithmetic before I went to school. Strangely, I do remember learning to say the alphabet - I had a habit of missing out the letter N. But I think I could read before then. (I knew all the letters, I just wasn't sure of the order they came in!)

My earliest memory to do with books is the travel library which came to our street every other Tuesday (I think) - it was a big clompy van with dingy lighting, but I didn't care - I thought it was wonderful. And we used to go into the town to visit the big real library occasionally by bus. My parents didn't have many books in the house - we just got them from the library. Even now, my mother just buys books from the charity shop, reads them and gives them back - I don't think there is a book in her house.

On the other hand, by the time I was a teenager, I had a bookcase of my own in my bedroom beside my bed, which my father built. It reached nearly to the ceiling, and I had to stand on the bed to reach the highest shelves. It was full to overflowing with books of all types. Heaven knows where I got them all from.

And now, of course, I have a small library in my own house.

Martin, I don't think it was unusual to have few books in a British household, years ago, judging from my memory.

Most of the people I knew borrowed from the library and perhaps had a few that they had been given. They were very expensive to buy.

My grandmother had one old book "Jessica's First Prayer" and a set of medical books someone had sold her and this was kept hidden away in a chest so we children couldn't read it and frighten ourselves! I sneaked a look once and it was full of illustrations that opened out in layers, depicting parts of the body. I had seen enough!

When my elementary school class went on a field trip to our local public library my life changed. No one read in my family except my much older brother. I also was chased from the adult section of the library, so when I discovered my brother's library books one day while sneaking into his room while he was at work I hit the jackpot. He loved mostly travel and adventure books which was fine with me. the only problem was that he borrowed the books for only a week, and I couldn't read that fast at around age 8 or 9. Finally I had to spill my secret and tell him because I was reading a nonfiction about explorers traveling on a clipper ship and I just had to finish it. He was much more accomodating after that.

When I was supposed to be sleeping I would read my own books borrowed from the library, trying to see by the light from the hallway peeking through the crack of the door and onto my bed. Of course my mother was onto my tricks, but didn't discourage me.

That reminds me ---- as a girl, after having been made to go to bed, I used to read by flashlight under the sheets ---sign of a true book addict.

Woodnymph, when my DH was a kid (teens, I think) he would get in trouble for being up way too late - his dad would see the light in his bedroom and go in to fuss at him. Mark would be on his back, one leg crossed over the other, book propped up, sound asleep!

Donna

It was through the summer reading program at my public library many decades ago. We had to do a little write-up in a booklet on each book we read, then some sort of small reward at the end of summer. I was probably 8 years or so.

My reading history is interesting. My dad was a reader, but I don't remember seeing him read when I was a child. I think he probably read on the bus on the way to work. My mother was, and remains at 91, opposed to books. Her words - 'It's just something someone made up. I could do that.' I did point out that some of the TV programmes she watches were made up too, but it didn't go down well.

However, my sister is 7 years older than me, and she contracted polio as a baby, before vaccines were available. This meant that she received many books as presents (as balls, skipping ropes etc weren't useful) but she was too old for them by the time I came along, and so I inherited a large library of mostly Enid Blyton books. In addition, my sister liked to play 'school' with me, so I learnt to read before I went to real school.

I can remember my grandmother reading to me too - she had a series of little books about Winga Wanga, a boy who lived in the forest with only a dog for company.

My father also used to bring home a children's UK magazine called Robin for me.

Our primary school had a good library, but we also had the mobile library, which was a converted bus and thus much more interesting, and I borrowed from both. In my last two years of primary school and my first two at high school I was also a library monitor.

So I suppose it is no surprise that I work in a book shop now :)

yoyo, mentions above the importance of a cosy grandfather figure in one's life. When I was small 'Grampy' did represent a safe haven from the normal ups and downs of family life. He was always there albeit in a fug of pipe tobacco smoke, often asleep, seldom talking, in fact he often nodded off while reading to me. I remember trying to prise his eyes and mouth open to make him continue!

As Annpan and Martin mentioned there were few books available especially in postwar England. Luckily my Grandmother lived in VA USA where she had become bored with her 'new' life as my G'father had retired. She knocked ten years off her age and applied for a job at the local bookstore, that also ran a small library. Every so often a parcel of children's books would arrive; I always remember the Little Golden Books.

As a small child, I did not have a lot of books of my own.

Someone gifted me with a set of My Book House books and I also had 5 golden books. That was it. But those books were enjoyed to tatters !

My favorite Golden Book to study and imitate was " The Rainy Day" in which two children amuse themselves with all kinds of creative play during a rainy day.

I also had "Doctor Dan" and " Bugs Bunny's Birthday" which were my favorites.

Once I got older and discovered a tiny local free library I was introduced to the amazing world of books...and got to pick a new one to read each week. It was my version of heaven !

Yoyo, that still is one of my versions of Heaven. Have I mentioned to you all that I got $80 (!) in Barnes & Noble gift cards for Christmas? I feel like King Midas.

And now as a full adult ..( Did I mention that I claim to be younger any time someone dares to ask !?) I have so many books around me that I'll never ever have need for one to read ! It is my pleasure .

My mother read to us. She always said I listened avidly, my brother one year younger ran around, stood on his head, anything but listened. She also told the story of how when I was about 3 years old I would "read" the Night Before Christmas to visitors, properly turning the pages every time. I had memorized the story, and when to turn the pages, but neglected to always have the book right side up! I was another who always had my head in a book. A Barnes and Noble gift card is heaven to me!

I think that this book love must be in our genetics.

It can't be forced, even if gently.

I never knew either grandfather, as each had died by the time I was born. However, I did have a grandmother who appreciated the childrens' classics. She gave me a copy of the A.E. Milne works, with their charming illustrations when I was a toddler. I later memorized some of the pieces therein. Her daughter, my aunt, was a librarian in the Atlanta Carnegie system. She had a large collection of childrens' classics, as well. I remember the Little Golden books also.

I guess it is no surprise that I worked for most of my life in libraries, bookshops and historical research facilities.

That's a sweet story, Katmarie. I read The Night Before Christmas to a neighbor when I was five. He thought I couldn't read it from a magazine without pictures and offered me a dollar if I could. That was big money then, and he had to pay up, laughing like mad.

I had never heard the opening quote before this, but I love it.

It began with coming from book-loving parents. Our father read to us or told us bed time stories every night for many years when we were children, and my mother read every day. We didn't have much spare money but there were always books in the house. If all else failed, we read the encyclopedias. To this day I am consumed with a thirst to know more about the world and to immerse myself in stories.

There is a part of me that knows that if we are very, very lucky, at best we get to live around a hundred years. I'm past the halfway mark now. You can pack only so much experience into a single century. By reading lots and lots of books, you can multiply and enrich that time manyfold. It's almost having more lives, lives you can choose to experience or not. And you get to remember them when they are done.

Rosefolly

Well, I only just saw this thread. I've been busy reading. :)

I don't know how I became a reader, but I became one very early. Every summer weekend when my father would drive up from the city to join the rest of the family at our summer place, he brought me first two Bobbsey Twins books and later Nancy Drews. I could hardly wait for those Fridays. And I had finished them by Sunday morning.

Back in the city, the local library was an imposing building with a lot of marble, and by the time I was twelve I had run through the children's section. My mother came in and told the librarians that she gave me permission to read any adult book I wanted (I was deeply into historical fiction), but periodically a librarian would refuse to let me check out some book and in my mother came again.

My 10 year old granddaughter is the same kind of reader I am-- voracious and very fast. She's not eclectic yet, but I expect she will be. I recently gave her a little fridge magnet that reads: "A child who reads will become an adult who thinks." Yes, indeed.

As a former teacher I always felt that any child who was a good reader ( meaning that they enjoyed reading in their free time) was inevitably a very good writer and speller. I also felt that their choice of words became richer when they read a variety of books.

Sadly, I think that reading for pleasure ( except for texts and tweets ,,,,,ugh) is becoming extinct in the younger generations. This is painfully evident in their writing ( which now is actually printing) and their speech.

Laceyvail, I remember going into the adult section around the same age and feeling very out of place. Occasionally one of the librarians would raise an eyebrow, but since my mother usually drove me because we lived outside of town nothing was said.

Yoyobon, I totally agree. I have a niece just starting university. Her high school grades were excellent, but she did not score anywhere near as well on the standard tests as you would expect. Her parents think it is because she doesn't read.

I fear we have gone back to the pre-Harry Potter days when kids thought it was a waste of time to pick up a book to read for enjoyment.

I recently went to a local university ( yes at my age !! ) to take a course last fall. ( Italian....yes at my age !!) and I would notice that the hallway before class was so very quiet though full of students. At first I thought it was a tacit rule of courtesy for the classes still in session. Then it dawned on me that it was in fact simply that they all were constantly involved in their cell phones, unaware of who or what was around them ! No one chatted ....they stood or sat on the floor, heads down, pouring over their electronic bestie.

yoyo just heard a comment on BBC radio that someone 'visiting' from another planet might think that all young people . . . and many not so young . . . were undergoing some sort of humble piety training as they are walking along all hunched up apparently looking at their feet and making no eye contact with anyone else. We notice locally that young mothers are pushing their babies/toddlers in strollers, eyes glued to their 'devices'. Apparently these kids are suffering from a total lack of interaction with their parents and often can hardly talk by school age and most of what speech they do have has been picked up from the TV. :-(

I agree with Yoyobon, in that reading for sheer pleasure seems to be a lost art among the young, these days. And another lost art is cursive writing. I see students texting even as they ride their bicycles through the city. They text everywhere. I don't text at all.

Yoyobon, it's not unusual at all for people "of our age" to pursue classes at colleges and universities. I've been doing this for years, both in Virginia, where I used to live and now in SC. Many universities are affiliated with Lifelong Learning Centers which are all over the United States. Every semester I audit a class at the College of Charleston. Many states have a law stating tuition for those over 60 is free or minimal.

Vee.....the parents are modeling behaviors for their children . They are not demonstrating how to socially interact or even how to enjoy walking through a park and noticing nature around you. Most are glued to their little screen for that version of "reality"

I frequently pick up my 7 year old grandson from school and while waiting in the cafeteria for the children to be released I observe that 9 out of 10 people are texting or reading e-mail. No one chats with each other !

BAH.

Mary/woodnymph, I have noticed you have often used the word audit when mentioning various courses you have taken at your local college/university and I had only been familiar with the word in the context of a firm's accounts being inspected. A search revealed that is N America it also means "attending a college/university course informally" I learn something new every day. ;-)

Over here classes/courses are held in colleges or schools, usually in the evenings; what folk of my parent's age would have called 'night school' where a wide range of subjects can be studied, some up to examination level, but as far as I know not to degree level. In the rural area where we live the few courses available are mostly 're-sits' for exams failed by students the first time round or 'holiday French/Italian', flower arranging, keep-fit etc nothing too demanding of the grey cells. Many years ago before marriage/children I used to go to a few of these classes (not in this area) often for life-drawing and once for lithography . . . very difficult!

Oh! and I never text nor do I have a device that would make it possible!

I saw a cartoon recently that had the familiar drawing of a stooped-over hairy ape man with pictures that gradually showed an erect present-day man--followed by men bending over their devices until the last figure was as stooped as the first ape man. It was beyond funny.

Vee, Kentucky has that affiliation that Mary mentioned. Anyone over 65 can audit classes in any state college or university. Auditing a course means that one neither gets credit hours for the course nor pays for it. It would be strictly for self- edification. I thought when I graduated, courtesy of my company's tuition refund program, from "night school" at the University of Louisville which called it, strangely, University College, that I would go back after retirement and take all the literature and humanities courses that I hadn't had as course work just for fun. As you may guess, I haven't taken a single one. Retirement itself has been too much fun!

Vee.....In New York State anyone over 60 can attend any State University class for free. They are called "adult audits". However, you do not simply sit in the back row and fade in. You are expected to participate in class , do the homework, take the quizzes and exams exactly like a regular student. At least, that was my experience in the course I took last fall.....which was Italian !! It was an amazing , challenging experience and although it was a bit intimidating at first, after a few weeks I felt like "one of the gang" and simply loved the entire thing. I went four mornings per week , five hours per week for the entire semester.

The exams were scary at first, but I found that at my age I make a great student ! Bravissima !!

Thank you Carolyn. I did a quick online search to see if English universities (roughly in my area) offered anything similar and mostly their courses, even part-time ones, are aimed at working towards a degree. In Cardiff (Wales) they offer some very basic classes for people who have very little education, maybe recent immigrants and similar.

At the top end of the scale Oxford University does offer extra mural classes in a range of subjects over a number of weeks which sound interesting but at about £200 might be beyond the reach of many 'students'. Of course we have far fewer universities per head than you in the US and although the physical distance might not appear far, the practical difficulties of getting there are not always easy.

Below an interesting article from the Huffington Post about the history of 'extra mural' classes and modern day problem of running them written by someone who teaches at Bristol Uni.

I learn something every day here!

Adult Education in England

Another one here with no cell phone (they mostly don't work where I live--very mountainous).

And, yes, a reader will easily become a good writer. Someone who never reads will never become a good writer--reading gives not only vocabulary, but a sense of the rhythm of sentences, the balance of sentences that readers learn by osmosis. When I taught college writing, I always made that clear to students. I could teach them only so much, the rest was up to them.

I recently asked my granddaughter about a series of books a young boy her age mentioned to me as being good --the Captain Underpants books. She responded that they were OK if you had nothing else to read but that they weren't really very good. And shortly after that, she recommended (insisted, actually) that I read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Yes, indeed, that child knows the difference between just something to read and something to write home about.

IMO....the Captain Underpants series is an example of dumbing down .

When a typical 6 year old can recite all the known dinosaurs and info about them....or be able to memorize and put to use all the Pokemon card info....or learn anthing complicated , I believe that a series called Caption Underpants is an insult to them. How about : The Magic Treehouse series or any books which not only entertain but also educate on their level ? We need to expect more for our children.