So, I'm A Big Ole Reading Freak.......

...in case you haven't noticed.

I love reading.

No, you don't understand.  I LOOOOOVE reading.   Always have.   My parents are to blame, actually.  They started me reading before kindergarten, and I grew into that typical adolescent that HAS to have a book in front of his face at all times.  ESPECIALLY on car trips.  If I got stuck on a long car ride and forgot to bring a book, it was like a class A emergency!

Once, this happened.  Somehow, I'd forgotten to bring something to read on a car ride that lasted over an hour.   Desperate, fifteen minutes into the ride, I turned to my sister for help.... who'd brought several of her Anne of Green Gables books.

Yeah.  You guessed it.

I ended up reading almost the entire series.

By sixth grade, I'd read almost every book I wanted to read in our elementary school library ...twice.  Because of this, I was given permission to walk ACROSS the parking lot with a buddy to take books out of the HIGH SCHOOL library. There, I discovered my first favorite "grown-up" author: Issac Assimov.

I spent a good portion of my summers reading.

In high school, I was allowed to stay up as late as I wanted, in my bed....reading.

In college, my love of reading exploded. All that free time.  All that reading.  I would spend DAYS in Barnes & Noble, reading.  In fact, back when I actually had time to kill, (I.E. before children) reading used to my biggest distraction from writing.  I'd have the hardest time making myself put down a book and actually start writing, I'd always tell myself: "Just one more chapter."

Reading, however, opened the floodgates for my love of writing.  It was a book that spurred me to write for the first time.  My senior year, some inconsequential little YA/teen sports novel called Tournament Upstarts.  I loved it, (at the time, I ate, drank, breathed basketball), but the story felt unfinished at the end.  Like there was more to tell.  SO, I began writing a sequel. 

Because I wanted to know how the story ended.   So, from my love of reading sprang my first "novel" (written entirely in a Spiral-bound Mead notebook).

On college basketball road trips, I always hoarded some of my meal money to buy a book in whatever town we were visiting.  This has become a habit, to this day.  Whenever we go on vacation or on a trip, I'm compelled to buy a book while there...even if I already have several of my own with me.

Today, when I get a rare quiet moment - kids napping, I get home from work before everyone else - we just leave that TV off, and read.

And I read crazy fast, too.  Have a book going during breakfast, a different one going before bed, and for lunch I read the novels I'm teaching.  So, yeah, I really do read 4-5 different books at a time.

What can I say?

I'm a big ole reading freak...