How I Became A Book Junkie

I’ve always loved libraries!  When I was a kid & growing up in a small southern Ontario town, there wasn’t a lot to do.  On the weekends, we'd all troop down to our local library (it was a Carnegie) and choose movies and books to read.  We had the traditional scary children’s librarian.  When I got older and was in grade 7, I was ready to read more adult books.  My piano teacher suggested that I read Jeanette Oke, which served as my introduction to the romance genre in general and the Christian romance genre in particular.  However, there was no YA or Teen section, so imagine my surprise when I got to the high school library.  All these books, meant for my age group?!  It was a huge revelation, especially when my Grade 9 teacher made us read a Fantasy book.  It was like a whole new world had opened up for me.  I started off with David Eddings and when I finished those two series, I moved onto authors Piers Anthony, then Terry Brooks.  I then burned my way through the first 5 or 6 books from the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.  One of my cousins loaned me a book called Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey, but I really didn’t like the ending, so this turned me off her for what I thought would be forever.  During this time, I was still taking items out from the public library.  I started branching off into more contemporary romances written by Barbara Delinsky & Sandra Brown.

My grandmother also heavily influenced my reading as a child that would continue as an adult.  She gave me one of my first fantasy books, Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.  It was such a delight.  I had to get the rest of the series from the library since I couldn’t wait to read the rest. 

My father read to us every night.  Obviously the books changed over the years as we became older the books changed to something that would take months or even years to finish reading.  We started off with picture books of course, but then as we got older my father read us books by Gerald Durell & James Herriot.  Eventually, he read us The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings.  This continued all the way to end of high school.