My Personal Reading History

I first identified myself as a reader when I was a preteen. It was summertime, so I was on vacation from school. Looking back on my elementary and junior high summers, I must have been an unimaginative kid because I recall proclaiming this pathetic phrase to my mother often, "I'm bored!"

She would always reply with, "Well, you I have some chores for you to do if you are bored."

I never liked her remedies for the doldrums, so I would usually dig up something to do.

I suppose my constant whining finally drove her to desperation because one day she proposed a swap: If I kept track of how many pages I read over the summer, my father would pay me a penny a page when summer ended.

I took her deal and began my summer long reading affair with Janette Oke's Love Comes Softly series. These were Christian romance novels set in the 1800's on the American prairie. I began reading as many of them as I could during those months to make as much money as I possibly could. However, something magical happened as I was reading: I discovered that reading enchanted me. I found myself wanting to read more and more to discover the fates of the main characters of the story, Marty and Clark Davis.

I think I made over $20 that summer. Not bad for a girl who never voluntarily read before that time.

I blame my parents for creating a bookworm of me.