Happy New Year!

I love to  read.


My parents introduced me to the wonders of books as an infant.  I remember memorizing the limited text of picture books and early readers and being proud of the fact that I could "read".  As a child - and into my teens - I read voraciously.  I could think of nothing better to do than to explore the world and live vicariously through the characters created by my favorite authors.  Books were my constant companions.  I carried at least one book with me wherever I would go - whether school, shopping, trips by car, camping, vacations - every occasion called for a book.  I was the child who read beneath the covers at night with a flashlight and who had a precariously stacked collection of books on the shelf beneath her nightstand.  I read on long car trips until it was too dark to read - and then I tried to read by the headlights of the cars behind us.  I checked out the maximum number of books allowed by my library and wondered why they even had a limit.  My favorite books were mysteries and adventures but I also devoured non-fiction.  I couldn't imagine life without books and didn't understand children who didn't share my passion.


I was surprised to discover that I had less and less time for pleasure reading as I got older.   Most of my book lists came from course syllabi in college.  Once I graduated, I immersed myself in my new marriage and new career.  My reading reflected those priorities and was primarily non-fiction.  When we made the decision that I was to be a stay-at-home mother and to homeschool our children, my reading turned to subjects that would help me with homemaking, child-raising and home educating.  With each subsequent phase of my life, I discovered that my reading was almost exclusively non-fiction that mirrored current interests or needs. 


And along the way I forgot how to read for pleasure.  I forgot reading as a pastime, as a temporary escape from real life. I mourned this fact and determined to correct this oversight.  In recent years, I've  determined to read for my own personal pleasure as well as for the edification of my home, family or health.  It's been so long since I've read for the sheer enjoyment of reading, that I don't quite know what I like to read anymore. I consider this a shameful fact.  I've taken a few tentative forays into the vast world of fiction based on recommendations from friends or from online sources and have started to rediscover myself as a pleasure-reader.


I've started this blog in order to share with my newly reclaimed love of reading.  I will be sharing my impressions of the books I read, both fiction and non-fiction - how they affected me, what I thought of  them, what I learned from them.  I might occasionally review magazines and possibly online sources as well.  I welcome you to join me on my reading adventure.