Why do you read

I grew up in a household where I was the middle child. number 4 out of 6. Mom was always too busy with the latest in the brood or going with father to support him in running his business. He was in the shop seven days a week, which meant we never went anywhere most of the time. Family time on a picnic was a rarity. All my school holidays were normally taken up by helping out in the shop. So what's a youngster supposed to do? I found my escape to a world of adventure and exotic places through reading. Comic books,cereal boxes and cartoons in the paper, I read anything and everything. Every morning the news agency delivered bundles of Cape Times and Die Burger to our door for resale that day. So I read the paper every day, both English and Afrikaans ones. We grew up speaking Afrikaans at home but I was enrolled in an English-medium school. Naturally, I didn't do too well in English at primary school. When my friend and neighbour(Wayne Naidoo)started sharing his Hardy Boys and Louis L'Amour books, things changed quickly. Wayne's aunt worked at the Athlone Library which ensured us a steady supply of old books that I consumed at a rate of four or five per week. At high school I picked up a love for Shakespeare's works and poetry, and started excelling in English. Later I studied accounting at university but still spent many hours in the English section of the library reading plays. Many of them originally written in Italian and French. I started reading Robert Ludlum in the 80's and have since read every single book he wrote, even keeping up with the franchise when Eric van Lustbader took over after Ludlum's death. I'm an ardent fan of the spy thriller and have been reading guys like Deighton, McCarry, Forsythe,DeMille etc for the last 30 plus years. I've also become a great fan of Barry Eisler, Lee Child, Daniel Silva and Alex Berenson. Why do you read?