My Childhood Love of Books

Favorite books from my childhood.

Today I added one of my favorite childhood books, Johnny Tremain, to my Kindle Fire. I remember that as an awesome story and couldn't pass up the opportunity to reread this wonderful book.

That's what I love about having a Kindle and which I'm sure is the same for a Nook, iPad or any other eReader. I love the immediacy of downloading a book which catches my eye. And yes, I do add way too many books to my Kindles (my old Kindle Keyboard and my new Kindle Fire).

I'm writing this post tonight due to my childhood love of books. If I hadn't fallen in love with books all those many years ago, well, I probably wouldn't be in love with books today. I got to thinking about all those wonderful books I read as a child and promptly started making a list of them. For those of you who follow my blog, you know that I love making lists of books. Well, this particular list is one that's dear to my heart.

I have to admit that reading all those extraordinary, magical, exciting, adventurous, heartwarming books are what brought about my dream to someday be an author. So if you want to know what authors influenced me through the years, well, just take a look at my list. Talk about inspiration ...

My Favorite Childhood Reads (in no particular order):

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
Savage Sam by Fred Gipson
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth
Hitty Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field
The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder*
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne*
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry*
King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott*
Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge
Silver for General Washington by Enid LaMonte Meadowcroft
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
The Borrowers by Mary Norton*
Nancy Drew Series by Carolyn Keene*
All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor*
Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace*
Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski
Five Little Peppers by Margaret Sidney*
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild*
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lundgren*
Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers*
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
Polyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevensen
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
Thomasina by Paul Gallico
That Darn Cat by The Gordons
The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West
The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
Hailstones and Halibut Bones (Poetry) by Mary O'Neill
Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson
Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight
Lad: A Dog by Albert Payson Terhune
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara

*Note - These are books where I read and loved the whole series.

It seems to me that all these books would make wonderful Christmas presents for young and old alike. Many of these are also available in eBook format.

Let it be known that I owe my love of books to my mom who started reading to me when I was just a baby. Through the years we spent countless hours together in the library. Every Christmas and birthday she gave me wonderful books. The three books in the photo above were all given to me by my mom. To this day, my mom and I still share books.

I'll add other books to this list as I remember them. Please feel free to add some of your own childhood favorites in the comments below.

In Love with Books

My guest room bookshelf.

Yes, I can honestly say I am in love with books. This is a love affair that began when I was a small child and has continued all my life. For this reason, I have numerous bookshelves filled with every kind of books imaginable.

Most of these books were collected over the last thirty years. That's the number of years my husband and I have been married. Oh my, has it really been thirty years? Well, that's certainly something to save for a future post. This one is all about my love of books.

The other day I realized that readers, those who are also in love with books, might be interested in what books grace my bookshelves. So I started this guided tour with my previous post, "Crazy About Books."

Let me explain. We, my husband and I and our two dogs, live in a small older house. There's not a lot of extra space, but I still have five overcrowded bookshelves. Two are in the living room, one in the guest room and two in the computer room (aka, "man cave," that's my husband's room, but I have bunches of books there, just sayin').  My post, "Crazy About Books," gives you a guided tour of my living room bookshelves.

In this post, "In Love with Books," it's a guided tour of the bookshelf in the guest room (see the picture above).  There are too many books to list them all here, so I'll just list a selection of them.  I love history books, classics, romances, literary fiction, just about everything. So this is what you'll find on this particular bookshelf. These shelves have double rows, so there are lots of books that can't be seen in the picture.

A guided tour, shelf by shelf, from top to bottom:

Washington's War by Michael Rose
The Pirate Queen (Queen Elizabeth I) by Susan Ronald
The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle
The Penguin History of Medieval Europe by Maurice Keen
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades Ed. by Jonathan Riley-Smith
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings Ed. by Peter Sawyer
Eleanor of Aquitaine, A Biography by Marion Meade
Queen Victoria at Home Michael De-la-Noy
The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk
Savage Kingdom (Jamestown) by Benjamin Woolley
The Pursuit of Glory by Tim Blanning

Queen Victoria's Little Wars by Byron Farwell
Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howell
Russia Under the Old Regime by Richard Pipes
The Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans
Hell Hath No Fury by Rosalind Miles & Robin Cross
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence
The Valleys of the Assassins by Freya Stark
A Winder in Arabia by Freya Stark
The White Nile by Alan Moorehead
The Blue Nile by Alan Moorehead

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
Middlemarch by George Eliot
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Lady Chatterley's Love by D. H. Lawrence

The Defector by Daniel Silva
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
100 Selected Stories O Henry
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
The Fallen Angels by Bernard Cornwell & Susannah Kells
Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell

Given a choice, I would have wall to wall bookshelves in my house. But my husband isn't in love with books like I am. So for now I'll settle for five bookshelves and then too-many-to-count boxes of books.

If you're in love with books like I am, I hope you'll add a comment below. What books are on your bookshelves? I'm sure all of us readers would love to know.

Me and My Kindle: A Romance

Now let me start by explaining that I live in the South. Some people might say we "don' talk right." For instance, instead of saying "my family and I" we say "me and mine." So I'm telling you straight out that "me and my" is grammatically correct. That said, I have tale to tell, a romance of sorts, a romance of the very best kind.

Before digressing further I need to get to the heart of the story. I'm having a right fine, beautiful romance with my Kindle. It started out a little rocky at first. I'm a die-hard reader, addicted to books and all that entails. In fact, I'm a book hoarder. I have shelves full of books, boxes of books, books in closets, books under my bed, books in stacks here and there throughout my house. Yep, a book lover and hoarder.

So right off the bat I resisted the idea of an eReader. In fact, I swore up and down that I'd never read an ebook. Never. Ever. A writer friend of mine, Michele Bardsley, yeah, that Michele Bardsley of paranormal comedy fame, first started talking about ebooks years ago. I said, "Yeah, yeah, okay." But behind her back I said, "No way. I'll never read an ebook. I need to hold that hardback or paperback in my hands. I need to run my fingers across the printed page. I need to smell the paper and the printer's ink in a new book. I need to smell the mustiness of an old well-read book." Nope, no ebooks, ever.

At the time I lived in Las Vegas of all places and belonged to both the Cactus Rose Chapter of RWA and my very own co-founded writers' group, Desert Rogues. Talking to our little group of Desert Rogues, of which Michele was a member, she insisted that ebooks were the books of the future. No, no, no, I screamed in my head.

Now fast forward a number of years and I'm back living in the South, in the part of Florida called the Panhandle, which all of us here know is really Lower Alabama. At this point I've already discovered Amazon, due to another Desert Rogues BFF, Ruth Kerce, yeah, that Ruth D. Kerce who writes for Ellora's Cave, Changling Press and her very own indie ePubbed sensual short stories.

Okay, like I said, Ruth introduced me to Amazon, so I was already hooked on buying books from there. It's a great place for a book addict to shop, because I could look at books and place orders all night long if I wanted and often did. Yes, I could literally shop 'til I dropped.

Now one day, or was it one night? I don't rightly remember. Anyway, I saw the ad for the Kindle. An eReader? No way! But then I got to thinking. Could I really have one small device that held hundreds, if not thousands, of my very favorite books? I could tuck the Kindle into my purse and take it with me everywhere. Everywhere? You're darn tootin'.

I got to thinking. This could be a good thing. A really good thing. Then the clincher was all those free classic ebooks that Amazon was offering. As an English major, someone who cut their teeth on the classics as a small child, well, heck, this was a marriage made in heaven.

Still hesitant, I didn't give in to the first generation Kindle. No, I waited and dreamed and waited some more. When the second generation Kindle came around I couldn't take it any more. "What do you want for your birthday?" That was my husband asking. "A Kindle," I replied. "Huh?" My husband's not a reader (except for science magazines and the Internet). So he said, "Huh? Why would you want a Kindle?"

Well, I got that Kindle for my birthday and instantly fell in love. I started filling it up with all my favorite classics, like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Last of the Mohicans, Riders of the Purple Sage, Little Women, Madam Bovary, The Three Musketeers, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Swiss Family Robinson, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Vanity Fair, I could go on and on.

Suffice to say that I did load up my Kindle with every classic favorite and all those classics I always wanted to read, but never got a chance to do so. So began a lengthy romance which lasted well into the wee hours most nights. I'd wake up in the morning blurry eyed, but happy as a lark.

When the third generation Kindle 3G (Keyboard) came out, I had to upgrade. My second generation Kindle was having problems, maybe from overuse? So it was an easy matter to send the second gen. back and get the third gen. With my new Kindle the romance blossomed and grew to enormous proportions.

I don't go anywhere without my Kindle love.  I've added hundreds of contemporary romances, historical romances, romantic suspense, time travel, westerns and a smattering of everything else. I love history (I was going for a double major of English and History, but didn't quite finish the History part). Anyway, I've added history books about the American Revolution and Civil War, the fall of Rome, histories of Britain, Europe, the Middle East, you name it. Oh, the romance is building.

Yes, I'm not embarrassed to say "I love my Kindle." Yep, I really do. It doesn't matter what mood I'm in, melancholy or elated or something in between, there's always a book or books in my Kindle that will fit the bill. I can switch from one book to another with just a few clicks. What can be better than that?

Now don't get me wrong. I still love hardbacks and paperbacks. I'm not about to give away a single book (although my husband would probably like for me to do just that). I still have bookshelves full of books, boxes of books, books in my closets, books under my bed, books in stacks here and there around the house. I even have duplicates of some of my favorites--classics in both paperback and on my Kindle.

My Kindle Keyboard, currently the love of my life (don't tell my husband that), is a bit battered. We all age, don't we? It doesn't help that my dog, Dude, during his puppy days (was it only a year ago?) chomped down on my  Kindle and left his puppy teethmarks in the case. He also left his marks in the cover which, thankfully, protected the Kindle from further harm. So my Kindle and its case are a bit battered, but I love it just the same. Inside is a wonderful world of books--a virtual world of love, romance, dreams, adventures, travels and more.

At Christmas time I guiltily looked at the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Fire with longing in my heart. I came so close to buying one of them, a gift from Santa, of course. But I didn't do it. How could I? My Kindle Keyboard is well-loved and battered, but it's still breathing (hey, I swear it's alive). So I'll stick to my Kindle love, 'til death do we part. Maybe, just maybe, I'll sneak a Kindle Fire into the household and use it to read just some of my favorite books, every now and then mind you, not all the time. But whatever you do, don't tell my Kindle Keyboard what I'm thinking. This is a romance that needs to go on and on.

Addicted to Books?



My Living Room Bookshelves

Books, books and more books. Like most readers, I have zillions of books and they can be found all over my house. On bookshelves, in boxes under the bed, in stacks in the closet, in smaller stacks gracing tabletops. Books are everywhere.

I figured out the other day that I have enough books to keep me reading for at least the next thirty years, assuming I keep reading at my current pace. So why do I keep buying more books? Because I have to. There is always another book I have to own, I have to read, I have to love. Addicted to books? Definitely.

My favorite authors keep writing more books, so I have to buy those. Then I keep finding new-to-me authors that I fall in love with and have to buy their books too. So the cycle goes on and on and on.

I've always worked in high stress jobs. So every time I had an extra stressful day at work I'd go buy a book or two during my lunch break. All my lunch money went into books. I stayed skinny and my bookshelves bulged. The books kept me grounded and calm. I could always escape into the wonderful world of books.

Now look at it from my husband's perspective. He doesn't love books. But through the years he's learned to deal with and tolerate my "addiction to books." Every time we moved, which was numerous times through our working years, he graciously (usually) loaded my boxes of books onto the moving van. I have to admit he did grumble a bit that my books weighed a ton (probably more than a ton). I'd always promise to reduce my number of books by taking a few bags' worth to the local library. It was always a minuscule amount compared to all the books I owned.

Now that my husband is retired, we'll probably stay in place, which means I can keep adding more books to my already over-crowded bookshelves. No, I'm not an extravagant spender. Retirement means a reduced book budget, which means I'm a bit more selective than before.

Of course, the answer to a reduced book budget is buying eBooks to read on my Kindle. I've had a Kindle for a year and a half now. I have the Kindle Keyboard 3G. Just like my bookshelves, my Kindle is bulging. It's filled with free classics. Every classic I read through the years and every one that I've always wanted to read. There are also free books from Amazon's Best Sellers Top 100 Free lists. Many of these are from authors I've never read before. Then there's bunches of backlist books from old favorite authors and new books I must have at the touch of a few clicks. I honestly believe the Kindle was designed with the "book addict" in mind, because I can buy a book any time of day or night. I've been known to make purchases at 3:00 am.

Now that we've come to the conclusion that I'm addicted to books, what about you? Now's your opportunity to admit that you too are addicted to books. I hope you'll attest to your book addiction and comment below. What kind of books do you have to read? What books/genres fuel your addiction?