My history of reading

read a lot.  Like a lot a lot.  I have always read a lot.  My mom read to us for as long as I can remember and then I took over from her, reading everything I can.  I can remember checking out all the Nancy Drews from the library and I read Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley and some series about dancing.  I read the Narnia books over and over and The Neverending Story and countless others.

 When I got older, I read much the same, loving series and reading everything by whatever author I was focused on that I could.  I went through an Agatha Christie phase around 15 and read as many as I could.  I read Harlequins and Judith Krantz and many books that were probably too old for me, but I was reading and my mom did little to censor me.  She just liked that I read.  And then I went to college and did very little reading for four years.  When I was done with my bachelors, I picked up the habit again and read for two more years.  Then I went to graduate school and reading became defined to textbooks and sneaking in pleasure reading at odd times and holidays yet again.  And then I was done and free to read and read.

At some point during this I switched from "adult" fiction to Young Adult or Teen fiction.  That genre of fiction that wasn't really available or at least termed that way when I was actually a young adult.  This actually served me well since my first librarian job was at a public library.  I was the Reference Librarian, true, but I made that job what I wanted and incorporated some teen programming, something that was sorely lacking at that library.  (Sadly, after I left, it fizzled out with nobody willing to pick up that slack.)

Now I now longer with teens, but college-aged students and their goals and questions put to me when I work at the Reference Desk are not about fiction, but assignments.  But to fill the void, I guess, I started a book blog that was, at first, meant only for me, but I've gained some followers and made myself a nice niche in a section of the book blogging world and I've enjoyed it for the most part.  It's given me lots to read and joining challenges has helped to pull me out of my normal reading and gotten me to explore some other genres.

I still read a lot.  And I read to my little boy every night, trying to instill in him the same love of reading that my mother did for me.