A love of reading

As I reading our Vision Quest book tonight I ran across the question of “how many books do you own?” I happened to like this question only because it proposed a possible blog topic. Oh yes, and of course it made me brain storm a bit, so I suppose that’s always a good thing.
I personally loved to read as a child. I wouldn’t say I had a specific genre, but anything I could get my hands on, I would read. Actually, to be honest, I owned, and read multiple times, every Lurlene McDaniel book. My parents were really worried about me because her books were about teenagers who had different kinds of diseases (mostly cancer) and someone would always end up dying. They were supposed to be a tear jerker, but being the “cold hearted person I am” (this is what my family calls me because I don’t show emotion..ha) I absolutely LOVED to read them and I could never put them down. As I grew older, I turned to different kinds of books.
All through elementary school, my dad would take me to the library and I would check out three or four more books. By the end of the week, I was ready for three or four more books. This brings me to my first point. You cannot determine if one likes to read based on the amount of books they own because of places like the library. Just recently, I applied for a Queen’s library card and a New York City library card. When they came in the mail, I couldn’t stop smiling because I figured now that I had a NYC library card, I was a real New Yorker!
I’m not exactly sure where my love for books came from, but I had a friend in 5th grade who read the coolest books. They were all about young teens and I remember liking them only because I was young and that sort of stuff was “juicy.” Once I reached High School my taste for books changed (thank goodness). I took AP English classes so I was reading more literature books (like Ernest Hemingway and such). I discovered I loved reading this stuff, but I couldn’t explain why. I think at first I just liked to tell people I was reading these books because it made me sound smart, but then I started truly liking them.
Once I started school (here at SJU) I stopped reading so much, which was completely silly on my part. I figured that I would have enough reading in all my other classes and juggling another book on the side might not be a good idea. My roommates were reading books called “Gossip Girls” but these didn’t interest me because I felt like they were too childish. Then I discovered something grand! At Barnes and Noble I was browsing through the Literature section and I ran across a section called Fiction Literature (who ever knew such a thing existed?!) On this shelf I found “girly” books but with a little more of an adult touch to them. I absolutely fell in love. I bought every book I could get my hands on (I have tiny hands so that didn’t work out too well). The week before Christmas break I read 6 books. Ever since then, I have been reading none stop. My goal, however, is to complete The Iliad and the Odyssey by the beginning of next semester!