Childhood Reading Meme

This meme was snagged from MissTreeBC over at LiveJournal.

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you? I was reading by age 3 and I don't remember being *taught* to read. Since my grandmother was our caretaker, I'm sure she's the one who taught me.

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library? Hmm... I'm sure that the first books I owned and read were from the Little Golden Library. There's a funny story about my first visits to the public library. I was 5 when Daddy took me to the library and introduced me to the librarian. (I don't remember getting a card, though.) He told the librarian that he didn't want her to censor my reading or steer me to the "children's books". If I took out a book that was too "old" for me, I'd figure it out. So, on a return visit with my grandmother, I picked up a book that I wanted to check out and took it to the librarian. She said I couldn't take it home, and I immediately threw a fit because "my Daddy said I could check out any book I wanted!" She had to call my Daddy on the phone and have *him* explain that no-one was allowed to take home a volume of the encyclopedia.

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money? I honestly don't remember. My parents were big on reading and they bought lots of books. But, I lived in a very small town which didn't have a book store. The Bible store carried a few books, but for the most part I read books from the libraries (public and school). I'm trying to remember the first time I stepped into a proper book store and can't remember -- probably some time around the time I was in junior high.

4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often? I'm sure that I was a re-reader, particularly as a very young child. The Babar books were ones that I never tired of.

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it? Science fiction of some type; probably A. C. Clarke or Robert Heinlein. My mother also read science fiction, so there were lots of books of this genre around from the time I was 12 or so.

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones? Amazingly, I never heard of Winnie the Pooh until I was in high school. But, my friends hadn't been introduced to Babar, so I was one up on them in that case. In college, I took two children's lit courses (Picture Books through early readers; Elementary children's literature) and went crazy reading all the classic children's books that I had not seen as a kid.

Thanks to MissTreeBC for introducing me to this meme; I had a good time thinking back to my earliest memories of reading.

Still not blogging regularly

Daniel Catt recently posted a blog entry titled The worst time in the world to pickup blogging again. I definitely feel like this in my feeble attempts to resume regular blogging. Dan sums it up very well when he says, "the really simple answer is that Real Life took over. When it takes over, it then gets very hard to get back into doing it, the longer you leave it the worse it gets." As you can see, I still haven't made any serious move toward updating the reading log here.

Which of these have I read?

Jenn posted a message in the 50booksin2006 group over at Yahoo! stating that she had reached her goal of 50 books. Here's here list and I've bolded the books that I have read.

• The Time Traveller's Wife -- Audry Niffenegger
• The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories -- Tim Burton
• Boys and Girls Forever -- Alison Lurie
• Lucky Man -- Michael J. Fox
• The Sunflower -- Richard Paul Evans
• Conversations with the Fat Girl -- Liza Palmer
• The Seven Gateways to Happiness -- Mary Lou Retton
• Girl Swirl -- Taryn Hipp
• The Camera My Mother Gave Me -- Suzanna Kaysen
• Freak the Mighty -- Rodman Philbrick
• Yoga Chick
• Letters to a Young Poet -- Ranier Maria Rilke
• The Illuminator -- Brenda Rickman Vantreage
• Dating Big Bird -- Laura Zigman
• There and Back Again -- Sean Astin
• The Pillow Friend -- Lisa Tuttle
• Cradle and All -- James Patterson
• The Fat Girl's Guide to Life -- Wendy Shanker
• Fat?So! -- Marilyn Wann
• Schoolhouse Brides
• The Quilter's Daughter -- Wanda Brunstetter
• Wicked -- Gregory Maguire
• How to Conquer Fear -- Jerold Potter
• Embraced by the Light
• The Covenant -- Beverly Lewis
• Time Was -- Nora Roberts
• Keeping Faith -- Jodi Picoult
• The Bishop's Daughter -- Wanda Brunstetter
• Crossing Over
• Sink Reflections - - Maria Cilley
• Body Clutter -- Maria Cilley
• The Betrayel -- Beverly Lewis
• Tithe -- Holly Black
• The Man Who Heard Voices
• Prep -- Curtis Slatterfield
• Bad Twin -- Gary Thorpe
• Beauty -- Susan Wilson
• The Sound of Us -- Sarah Willis
• Stop Stuffing Yourself
• Velvet Elvis -- Rob Bell
• The Cinderella Pact
• How Nancy Drew Saved My Life
• The Mermaid Chair -- Sue Monk Kidd
• Jonathon Livingston Seagull -- Richard Bach
• The Whitney Chronicles -- Judy Baer
• Must Love Dogs -- Claire Cook
• Running with Angels -- Pamela Hanson
• Little Drummer Boy -- Ted Dekker
• Child and Curriculum -- John Dewey
• The Pact -- Jodi Picoult

Book Crossing's Top 100

1. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
2. Harry Potter Series, J. K. Rowling
3. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
4. The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
5. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
6. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
7. The Curious Incident of the Dog..., Mark Haddon
8. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
9. My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult
10. The Hitchhiker's Guide..., Douglas Adams
11. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
12. The Stand, Stephen King
13. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
14. 1984, George Orwell
15. Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
16. The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis
17. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
18. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
19. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
20. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
21. The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
22. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
23. The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón
24. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
25. The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Alborn
26. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
27. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
28. The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
29. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
30. Watership Down, Richard Adams
31. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
32. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
33. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
34. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
35. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
36. Animal Farm, George Orwell
37. Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christopher Moore
38. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
39. Persuasion, Jane Austen
40. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
41. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
42. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
43. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
44. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
45. Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
46. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
47. Eragon, Christopher Paolini
49. 84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
50. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
51. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry
52. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
53. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
54. Dune, Frank Herbert
55. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
56. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
57. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
58. Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
59. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
60. Discworld Series, Terry Pratchett
61. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
62. Stephanie Plum Series, Janet Evanovich
63. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
64. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
65. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
66. To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
67. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
68. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
69. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
70. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
71. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
72. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
73. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
75. A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snickett
76. Atonement, Ian McEwan
77. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
78. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
79. Emma, Jane Austen
80. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
81. Little House Series, Laura Ingalls Wilder
82. Possession, A. S. Byatt
83. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
84. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
85. Sabriel, Garth Nix
86. Saturday, Ian McEwan
87. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
88. Stones from the River, Ursula Hegi
89. The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
90. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
91. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
92. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
93. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
94. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
95. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
96. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
97. Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
98. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
99. Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
100. I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
101. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
102. Outlander Series, Diana Gabaldon
103. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
104. Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
105. Small Island, Andrea Levy
106. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
107. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
108. Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne
109. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
110. Tomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden

When good bloggers go bad

Well, it's been more than 6 months since I last posted an entry to this blog. I've been reading; I really have. And, I was doing a fair job of keeping up with the books that I had read this year—through most of April at least—but I just stopped logging. So, I've lost track. I'll try to recreate the list, though I'm sure I'll miss a few.

So now it is June and I want to restart this blog again. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be a bit better at keeping things going.