Born of Books

That I would love to read was never even a question. I was the next in a respectable line of literary women: my grandmother and my mom had both been avid readers. I don't think it was ever even considered a possibility that I wouldn't be a reader.

A love of literature was ingrained in me long before I was old enough to remember anything, and as a result my first memories of books are not of learning how to read, but of reading. In fact, I can't remember a time when books were not a part of my daily life.

One of my earliest book-related memories is, oddly enough, of the stairs leading up to the third floor in my grandmother's house. Despite (or perhaps because of) my grandmother's love of books, there were never enough bookshelves in that house. There were several in the third-floor playroom. So, when books needed to be taken upstairs, they were often left in little stacks against the wall on the far right side of each step. My memories of those stacks of books have become intertwined with my memories of my grandmother, and represent some of the earliest examples of what made me a reader.

The Library at Home

Not that books weren't present in my own home... Quite to the contrary: an entire room in our house, which we called "the library," was dedicated to housing my mom's collection of books. The walls of this room--meant to be a guest room or a mother-in-law's bedroom--were lined with four dark, towering bookcases. My mom had had the bookcases custom-made, so they were deeper than most bookshelves. There was enough depth on the shelves to stack books in front of the rest when the shelves got too full.

And stack them we did. I don't remember having an excess of toys as a child, but books were one thing that my mom never skimped on. I can remember my excitement whenever the teachers would hand out a Scholastic catalog at school. I'd spend most of the day flipping through it over and over, circling the books I wanted. When I took the catalog home, my mom would usually add a book or two, veto a few of my selections, and send me to school the next day with an order form and a check. I would wait impatiently until the books arrived and the teachers passed them out.

Diamonds in the Rough: Reading Great Books

Although my mom never censored anything I read, I also know she wanted to surround me with the best literature available for children. It wasn't uncommon for a teacher to assign a book for the class to read, and find that I had already read it. As an adult, I once realized I could go down the list of award-winning books and check off almost every one as a book I had read. To this day, I don't know how my mom stayed on top of the children's book market. Some of it was based on the catalogs Scholastic sent home with us, but I can also remember many trips to the bookstore--the one kind of shopping of which I never grew tired. She must have had a sixth sense for finding the true jewels.

I quickly developed intuitions of my own. I can remember a time when I borrowed The Enchanted Castle, by E. Nesbit from a resort library when we were on vacation. As much as I loved the book, I was unable to finish it before we left. The very next day after we returned home, my mom took me to the bookstore to find a copy of the book. I proceeded to devour each of the other books by this classic children's author--in turn.

Whether my appreciation for literature is due to nurture or nature, I don't know. What I do know is that any interest I showed towards books was observed and encouraged--the way you might coax a small flame to burn brighter, when you are trying to light a fire. I grew up in an environment where I had ample material with which to fuel my passion for books. The fact that I became a bookworm was nothing short of inevitable!