Archives for April 2013

The first book I remember reading is ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. I didn’t actually read it; I had memorized it after having my mom read it to me. Repeatedly. What is a sugar plum anyway?
During my grammar school years, I lived within walking distance of the library. My summers were spent going there and checking out as many book as I could; I think it was six. Remember Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret ? I loved reading biographies like Susan B. Anthony and Clara Barton. Just reading for the fun of it.
In high school, there was required reading. I actually read some of these again as an adult, very different perspective. But we had to read them and write papers about them and talk about them and take tests on them, which took some of the fun out of it for me.
In college, I majored in French so many of the books I read were in French. Madame Bovary, No Exit, and many others I barely remember now…so long ago.
Then, I had kids. And I read to them a lot. Love you Forever, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, On the Night You were Born. And we loved anything by Eric Carle. Adored this stage. In fact, I now try to give a book with a baby shower gift.
And then the magic happened. They learned to read. And it was wonderful. When my daughter was in third grade, we read the Narnia series. Loved it! And then, she decided to read the first Harry Potter book. Ugh! I didn’t read everything she read of course, but I was thinking I should read this. But I really didn’t want to; I mean wizards? Yuck. But I did (in the name of being a good parent). And of course, I was hooked. At that point, the first five movies were out. We would finish a book and then borrow the movie from the library. When the last three movies were released, we were there on opening day.
And so began my love of book series. I read Twilight, Hunger Games, and Outlander among others. Absolutely adored reading one after the other; finishing one and moving on to the next.
And then a friend wrote a young adult book that was to be the first in a series. And she self-published it. And I read it and loved it and have now read the whole series. It is the King series about a girl who can read minds. The fourth and final book in the series recently came out. This made me interested in seeing what other great indie books are out there. And so my adventure begins….