1. Do you remember how you developed a love for reading? I have always loved reading. I can even remember learning to read in Kindergarten.  Dick and Jane.  I remember the dog Spot.  Reading translated me into another world that I very much needed as a child.  I would get in trouble for reading so much.  Instead of doing chores, I’d hide under my bed and read and get in huge trouble.

My father is a voracious reader and there were piles and piles of books everywhere in our house where we grew up.  Mom tells me he still has his piles.  And horror of horrors, I have grown up to have my own piles!

But before I could read well on my own, my mother read to me.  And she didn’t read drivel.  She read meaty stuff to us:  Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dickins and others.  One of my favorites (and now very politically incorrect) was Little Black Sambo.  It has been re-issued as The Story of Little Babaji. Thosetigers melting into butter was too delectable not to enjoy.  My mother read that book over and over again and not once did we think of Sambo as anyone but a very clever little boy.  This little white-headed white girl wanted to be just like him.I don’t recall ever wondering about his color.  It just wasn’t an issue.  The pictures in our book, though, were in bad shape.  It was a well loved, old, very well-read little book.  I think it must have been my mother’swhen she was small.

We kids had our own piles of Little Golden Books, too.  I remember one of my favorites being WE LIKE KINDERGARTEN.  The little girl’s name was Carol, and my name was Karla, so I thought that little girl on the cover was me.  She looked like me as a kid, too, which made it even more fascinating to me.  I still have the same emotional reaction when I see that book.  It’s almost as if I can smell the paint the little girl is using in the story!

To this day, I love to read and can’t seem to tame my habit of buying books.  Amazon.com is a dangerous place for me, and when I discovered it in its beginning — it was a happy day for commerce and a sad day for my bank account!

2. What are some books you read as a child? All of them.  I remember going into the library at elementary school and informing the librarians I had read the entire fiction section and what else did they recommend?  That got me started on biographies and nonfiction.  To this day I LOVE nonfiction and biographies.  I like writing them, too!

Here are a few of my childhood faves:

• Little House on the Prairie — all the books
• Every single one of the Nancy Drew mysteries.  I even read a lot of the Hardy Boys.
• All of E.B.White (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little…)
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Yearling
• Where the Red Fern Grows
• David Copperfield by Dickins  (My mother read it to us when we were little then I read it.  Love that book.)
• Emily Dickinson — I read all her poems and still love her work.
• Remember the Reader’s Digest abridged book collection?  You’d get a book each month that would have 4 or 5 condensed classics in them.  I think I must have read all of those.
• Heidi
• Christy by Catherine Marshall.  I read a lot of Marshall’s books.  That book had the biggest influence on my life.  I fell in love with Christy and the work she did.  In fact, my life is so much like hers even now.
• The Boxcar Children — read them all.
• Little Women by Alcott
• The Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter

There are so many more but those are the ones that I seem to remember most.  Oh, and then there were all the Christian nonfiction books I read as a kid.  I loved reading books about people who overcame something big.  Books were and are my best friends.

3. What is your favorite genre? Suspense, biographies, humor, political.  Romance is okay as long as it has a really good story.  Okay, i love all genres.  If there are words — I’m reading them!

4. Do you have a favorite novel? The Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter

5. Where do you usually read? Anywhere and everywhere.  I always have a book with me if I’m going to have to do any waiting at all.  If I’m exercising, you might find me listening to an audio book.  I make good use of the library’s audio section.  I love listening to books while I clean, too.  But my favorite spot in the entire world to read is the jacuzzi.  There’s nothing like melting into a bubble bath and reading until I’m a prune!  It happens!

6. When do you usually read? All day long.

7. Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time? Of course!  There are too many and too little time!  I love reading more than one book at a time.  I can have as many as five or more going at once.  As an educator, that’s a given.

8. Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction? No, I really don’t.  I love them both so equally.

9. Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library? I buy almost all the books I read, but if there’s a good book on the shelf at the library, I will check it out.  I do check out good audio books if the library has them, too.  But now that I can download books online to iTunes, I have used that feature one too many times!  Someday, when i can afford a Kindle, I’ll be getting new books that way, too.

10. Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them? Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to part with books, I do hang on to more than I give away.  I just can’t seem to let them go.  I have decided, though, that if I ever move again (we’ve been in this house almost 10 years) I will not take the books with me.  They are just too hard to transport and I’m getting too old.

11. If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them? Actually, I have gotten to read MANY MORE books that I didn’t read as a little girl because I have boys!  I read Jo’s Boys, Little Men (by Alcott), and others to them.  I have thoroughly enjoyed being a mother and getting to discover new classics with them!  Here is a short list of my favorite books I have read aloud to my boys:

• All the E.B. White books.
• A Door in the Wall
• Winnie the Pooh — the original classic not the cartoon
• Little Men & Jo’s Boys by Alcott
• Robinson Crusoe
• Mr. Popper’s Penguins
• Adam of the Road
• Tale of Desperaux by Di Camillo (love this writer!)
• Nick of Time by Bell
• Good-bye, Mr. Chips
• Canterbury Tales
• And many, many more fiction and nonfiction books about castles, knights, pyramids, ancient history, middle ages, American history, explorers, politics  and more!

12. What are you reading now? I am reading Bill O’Reilly’s book, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity. I’m also reading Enoch by Alton Gansky and An Irishwoman’s Tale by Patti Lacy.

13. Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list? Yes.  Sort of.  It’s not a list.  It’s a piles of books on the corner of my desk, behind my couch, in my brief case and in my purse.  Yeah.  Lots of books!  MUST HAVE BOOKS!  Here are a few titles I hope to get read very soon:

• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• Anathema by Colleen Coble (she writes faster than I can keep up!)
• For Better or Worse by Diann Hunt
• Saving Grace by Denise Hunter
• The Root of All Evil by Brandt Dodson
• Deadly Exposure by Cara Putman
• Dean Koontz.  I have never read his books but he’s another writing machine I want to study.
• Any of the classics.  I have yet to have read them all.
• Any books that will help me improve my writing.
• I am sure there are many, many more that I am not thinking of right now!

14. What’s next? See question 13!

15. What books would you like to reread? Little Women, Christy, David Copperfield, Little House on the Prairie.  Any and all of the classics!

16. Who are your favorite authors? Kate DiCamillo, Colleen Coble, Denise Hunter, Michael Palmer, Joel Rosenberg, Gene Stratton Porter, Bronte, and many, many more.

Your turn! Do this meme on your blog and leave a link in the comments!