Play Book Tag discussion

When or how did did you fall in love with reading? What is the story of your relationship with books, and if that relationship has changed over time, how? Was there a first book or genre that initially grabbed you? Have you changed since then? What is your story of the love of the story/tale/narrative?

I have no idea when I fell in love with reading--first I loved having my parents read to me and then I loved reading on my own. I loved many genres from the get go, starting at the picture book stage

My reading has changed, naturally, and not just because I passed the picture book stage. I try to greatly limit darker stories which means I rarely read literary fiction any more. I liked reading literary fiction from a young age, but it was just one of many things I liked.

Great questions! My mother definitely read to us but when I was 4, my 6-year-old brother brought home his Dick & Jane book and taught me everything he was learning. Before I started school I had read the full version of Heidi and other books we happened to have. At the time, there was no provision for this, so I had to sit there while other kids learned to read.

As a kid, I loved books where magic happened to ordinary kids - books by Edward Eager, E. Nesbit and C.S. Lewis. I would have loved Harry Potter! I also liked books where ordinary things happened to ordinary kids, for instance The Moffats, The Saturdays, Roller Skates, Understood Betsy, etc. And I read lots of Bobbsey Twins.

Unlike many kids, I didn't want to be older, and I didn't want to read about teenagers when I wasn't one. So I never read Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, and their like.

When I was about 11, our class read excerpts from Great Expectations and I liked it so much I read the whole book on my own and several others by Dickens. Maybe because I grew up with the children's classics we had from the 19th and early 20th century, I've always liked classics.

I've gone through phases. When I was about 40, I discovered that contrary to my prejudices, many modern romances were quite feminist and often funny. And a bit later, I began to read a lot of mysteries.