This was back in the days before the internet. We had movies on VHS, and we had the books. I remember doing a lot of reading. I remember asking my older sister to read to me and our younger sister. She would read from a book of bedtime stories. I remember my parents reading.
As part of our home school program, my parents had put together an exhaustive list of American literature, and one equally exhaustive of world literature. Poems, short stories, novels and author biographies, all based on our expansive home library, which perhaps grew in part due to the decision to home school. One year I looked at these lists and I took them as a challenge. I knew I could read them all, and I knew I could write summaries as required. It wasn't a requirement that I read them all in order to pass the classes, but I wanted to read them all. I looked at the sheer number of works and decided I was going to do it.
Somewhere in there I found books that I loved that I would never have picked up if it weren't for those lists. I discovered authors whose works I can't stand and now know to avoid. I learned to love all sorts of stories.
Looking back and seeing myself surrounded by literature, I feel it was inevitable that I would become a book addict and eventually, a writer. Maybe I breathed it in through library dust, or maybe the ink worked it's way into my fingers. Whatever the cause, stories have gotten into my blood. I read and I write, and it keeps going on in a beautiful cycle of imagination.