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For The Love Of Books

Of all the good things that have happened in my life (and there have been quite a few), the most cherished experiences are always the ones that involve books. Whether that meant reading them, buying them, talking about them or dreaming about one day having an entire library all to myself.

Few people understood my love of books. Thankfully though, my family understood it. Which is not surprising considering that I come from a long line of certified bookworms (is there such a word? If not there should be one). My father, both my grandfathers as well as my mom were all avid readers.

In fact my maternal grandfather had an entire library on the first floor of the house, hardly used by anybody but frequented extensively by me. In our own house, I used to prowl about trying to root out books that I could read. I found an entire treasure trove of old Reader’s Digest books from the 70s and 80s and it wasn’t long before I devoured them.

Not that it is always a good thing though and the most common problem I had was the ‘Epic Daily Fight’...for the newspaper no less. Seeing as how my mom was the first one to wake up along with my grandfather, they got first dibs. And then the rest of us would come along and start fighting for the comics, the sports or the financial news section. But what a good problem to have!

I used to read anything and everything as a child, partly because I had a lot of time on my hands. School took up about seven hours and after that I was free. My pestering for new books grated on my mother enough that she persuaded my dad to take me to the local library. I got my membership at the age of eight and from that day on, wild horses couldn’t keep me from going there at least once a day and that was if it was during the school week. The holidays? I used to go once in the morning, bring back 3 books, finish them through the afternoon and return them for 3 more books in the evening.

Other kids used to get their TV privileges revoked during exams, I had my books taken away just so I would actually spend some time studying. During those times it got so bad that I would end up reading railway timetables and anything else that I could get my hands on!

People ask me how I manage to read so many books. It’s simple really, I read them one at a time. Except I do it more often than most people :D

Picture credit: Linda Jordan

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