Love Inspired Books discussion
What started your love of reading?
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From the time I was born books were read to me, and I saw my parents read on their own also. The first book I remember loving as a young child was Angus and the Ducks. You can count me as a third Nancy Drew fan, and I also loved several other series: the Happy Hollisters, Encyclopedia Brown, and Donna Parker. Does anyone remember those?
Mod
Joy, the library was my favorite place. In fact, I just reconnected with a guy I went to high school with here on Goodreads, and as it turns out he's now the children's librarian at my old library. I love that! Librarians were some of my favorite people growing up.
Dream
I guess reading has always been into reading. I know mum and maybe dad read to me but I really cant remember them doing it. I loved reading although I always struggled with reading fast and things like spelling. I was below the average in reading level. My first book I loved most was a book with 3 fairytales and I fell in love with the Snow Queen. I loved Enid Bylton Shes English and had wonderful books. I read the Magic Faraway Tree series so many times along with the Naughtiest Girl in School and Mr Gilliano's Circus. Then the Secret seven and the Famous Five.
I loved Donna Parker also and Sally Baxter reporter. Oh and Cherry Ames student nurse. Loved Helen Kellers Teacher, Also Betsy and many more.
I think I came out of the womb reading. I can't remember a time I didn't like reading. I know when I turned three I was more interested in the books I got for my birthday than anything else. I don't know what got me started. Probably one of the Dr. Seuss books or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
My mother was a big reader. I remember her walking my three brothers and me to the public library every week all summer long. She probably drove us the other seasons, but that I don't remember. Like Ausjenny, I strugged with reading at first, but it clicked in third grade and I've ready everything I could get my hands on since. Some childhood favorites:Cherry Ames (althought I have never wanted to be a nurse)
Nancy Drew
The Five Little Peppers
The Four Marys (about Mary Queen of Scots. I still read every book about her I hear about.)
And my all-time childhood favorite, The Secret Garden
Like you, Dream, I can't remember B.R. (before reading). My mom says I memorized books and could "read" them back when I was little. She has this great picture of me as a baby lying on my stomach and "reading" the newspaper. I devoured all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books in my little hometown library and remember that my very first adult book was by Mary Stewart. I was so worried when I brought the book to the counter that the librarian would tell me I wasn't old enough. But she didn't bat an eye and checked it out to me. By then I'd pretty much read the entire girls and the boys sections. Jean, I love The Secret Garden too, though I came to appreciate it a little later in life. Once I discovered the Chronicles of Narnia, I was hooked. I must have read them a dozen times at least. To my distress, I don't remember the title of my absolute favorite children's book. It's an old one that used to be in my public library long ago. I remember the color of the binding and the storyline about some kids who accidentally drain the water out of the sea by moving the arms on a windmill. They strike out across the sea bottom to figure out how to get the water back. I recall they discovered they'd pulled out a giant plug or stopper, like the ones people used to have for sinks. But the title and author elude me. And the library no longer owns it. Sigh.
I wish I could have learned to read so young! I do remember loving reading, though. Once I got in trouble because we were supposed to be reading a book aloud, taking turns in a circle, and I had read ahead and wasn't paying attention.
In Grade 6 we had a teacher who use to read to use and we were reading some Colin Theile books. We were reading Feburary Dragon when he came to visit the school and was going to talk to the Grade 7's but because we were reading his books (the Sun on the Stubble was another we read) He came and spoke to us for about half an hour. I dont remember much of the visit but I know it was so exciting as because of our teacher we got to meet him and I know he read some of his book. He was a great childrens author and a christian. You may have heard of Storm Boy the wrote that book.
I have been reading for as long as I can remember. My mother was in a sanitarium when I was very young and my first foster mother was a retired school teacher. She taught me to read before I started kindergarten. I remember reading everything in sight, including all the ads on the streetcar (they were more suitable for children back then). My aunt would give me a book for Christmas every year and I would go off into a corner somewhere and have it finished before the day was done. I still remember the title of one - Rae's First Term. :) When I finished school and started working I would walk down Younge Street in Toronto during my lunch break and buy the latest Harlequin books (also much cleaner than they are today) and of course had a library card as well. Practically the first thing I did when we moved to Calgary nearly 7 years ago was get a library card. :) (had one of course previously in Edmonton) To top it off, my last two jobs before I retired were in a book store and the library.
I started reading young too. Mum was a frustrated teacher (her family couldn't afford to send her to teacher's college), so as soon as I could hold a book she started teaching me to read. I was always a couple of years ahead of the other kids in my class for reading, and read everything I could, including some quite unsuitable stuff!I borrowed the maximum I could from the school library and the local library, but it wasn't enough for me.
I can still remember the first book I read by myself, Robert the Rose Horse, about a horse with hayfever whose sneezes foil a bank robbery.
I loved the Twins books, anything by LM Montgomery, Pollyanna. Every birthday and Christmas, all I wanted was books, and that hasn't changed. My husband and I spent much of our dating time in bookshops, too!
My love of reading started with not being able to read very well. I was in first grade and the teachers decided to break up the class into three groups. Cows, foxes and tigers. I was a cow. Can you believe the teachers were so insensitive? What 7 year old wants to be a cow? Well, I wasn't satisfied until I worked my way up to being a fox, then, a tiger. A year later my family moved to a new town.....our new house was located right across from a public library. I was on my way to becoming an avid reader: Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Rebecca, East of Eden, Phyllis Whitney and of course as a teen, Harlequins.
I have loved reading ever since I learned how. I loved the Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins and Trixie Belden books growing up. Alice in Wonderland was my favorite classic book.I remember going up in my grandma's attic and she had boxes and boxes of books. I used to borrow them all the time and read over and over again. When I was a teenager every summer I would ride my bike to the library every couple of days to get new books to read. I can't imagine life without having some type of book to read. Now I mostly read romances and mysteries....
Nancy Drew definitly started my love of the mystery as my favorite genre. Our little country school library had a ton of the Nancy Drew books. They had pink covers back then. sharon dunn
That's a hard one... Reaching into the recesses of my memory, I believe it was a combination of the American Girl books (BEST ever!!), anything by Mary Downing Hahn >< and Babysitter's Little Sister (offshoot of Babysitter's Club for younger readers) lol. Harry Potter, I think, juggernaut-ed me into my unending hunger for the next read teehee><I've always loved a good story so, with the added encouragement of DEAR (drop everything and read) time and my mother buying like 50 books every year at the Scholastic book fair, there was no way I wasn't going to love reading haha :)
Ive always loved to read ( and am usually reading 2 or 3 books at a time )..I remember doing that even at a young age.I dont remember the first books that I read,..but I do remember that I read alot of the books in our Grade School library! =)
I looked thru some of the other comments, and it brought back wonderful memories. I do remember The Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew books. =)
You just reminded me! Since I also read multiple books at a time since around 2nd grade, I remembered my love for the Little House series! I can't believe I forgot that cuz it started my obsession with the 'wild west' xD
I have loved to read ever since I was young as well. I remember a book that I called my Betty Jane book. I don't know why I called it that but I did. My mom and my grandfather and my great grandmother loved to read also so I imagine it's hereditary.
Mod
I started reading when I was about 3. Which boggles my mind because I don't know any three year olds now that I would think capable of reading. So maybe the story got changed somehow.
Anyway, I loved books, even back then. I used to sit and look at books all day. When my grandma came to visit, I told her I could read, and she had me prove it by reading a flyer that came in the mail. I read it.
Of course, I don't remember this story through my eyes, just what my grandma told me.
As I got older, I'd read everything I could get my hands on. I remember being in first grade, and my best friend across the street (who was a couple years older) was reading a Nancy Drew book. She got bored and wanted to watch TV, so I stayed in her room with her book and read it. Later, when we moved to another state, I went to my school library and tried to check a Nancy Drew book out, the librarian shooed me back to the baby books, so I pulled an encyclopedia off of the shelf to prove I wasn't a baby.
I got to check out as many Nancy Drew books as I liked.
The one thing I could always count on from my grandma is that if I wanted a new book, she'd get it for me. Some of the books I didn't appreciate because they were classics, but I'm glad to have them now that she's gone.
I was at a used children's toy and clothing sale over the weekend and found an almost complete set of the Nancy Drew books for $20. Of course I bought it. I just wish my kids loved them as much as I did.
Dream