My parents told me that I started reading when I was four years old (which wasn’t unique, as my brother and sisters were also reading by the time they were four). My earliest memory from a book was the line “Bill caught a big fish.” A kid named Bill was fishing (with his grandfather, if I remember correctly). I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the book, but I remember reading that line, and I remember seeing Bill, a young, dark-haired boy, holding up a fishing line with a big fish attached. It was illustrated in the style typical to the 60s and 70s…it was a sort of ink drawing with impressions of color here and there instead of the characters colored in fully. I remember reading it while I was being watched by my dad’s parents. Grandpa Tom was watching something on TV, and Grandma Anemone was working on some sewing project, most likely doll clothes for me and my sisters and her great-granddaughter, who was born a little less than a year after I was.
Ever since that early memory, I have been reading voraciously. I remembered trips into the Hannibal Public Library (also known as the Garth Memorial Library) as a special treat. It was always so hard to decide which books to check out, since the library had a limit. Nancy Drew books, fairy tales, mythology, and nonfiction were among my favorite things to check out. My parents were big on reading, and my siblings and I were constantly wearing out our library cards, and we lived in fear of the dreaded fines for overdue books.
Thanks to my parents’ nurturing and teachers and librarians who encouraged my habit, I started reading Shakespeare when I was seven years old. Unfortunately, because I lived in Hannibal and every single little thing was suffused with Mark Twain, I eschewed his work until I was older and HAD to read it, which I hated…up until I attended college and realized that he was a good writer (and a snark pioneer), and he most likely would have something snarky to say about Hannibal’s obsessive adoration of him, especially when so many other phenomenal people came from Hannibal, too.
My passion for books grew and grew, and every time there was a book sale and I had extra money (or there was a consignment shop or bookstore within walking distance), my collection would expand. When I lived in a town where the library was far too far away to visit on a regular basis, I would instead visit local bookstores, thrift stores, and consignment shops and buy TONS of books. By the time I met my daughter’s father, I probably had well over 1000 volumes. Donating a large chunk of them when I moved was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.