An Open Book (a meme)

Joanne tagged me with this fun meme:



1. Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?
This is my all-time favorite picture of myself--pretending to read to my baby-doll before I was old enough to really read. I know my mom and older sisters were huge readers, so I’m sure that played into my love for reading. It goes back several generations--both my mom and my grandma used to get in trouble for reading after they were suppose to be asleep, and my sisters and I followed right in their tracks!


2. What are some books you read as a child?
I’m told my favorite book as a young child was Marvin K. Mooney will you please go NOW! by Dr. Suess. To this day I still have parts of it memorized, ha. Oddly, I didn’t like most of the other Suess books.

As I got a little older I loved mystery and historical fiction books, especially if they were combined. I read a lot of the TrailBlazer books by Dave and Neta Jackson (each book told the story of a famous missionary told from the view-point of a fictional child) and enjoyed the Sugar Creek Gang and Robert Elmer’s historical adventures. And yes, I read the Hardy Boys and some of the older Nancy Drew books. Another favorite series is the PepperMint Gang--they are now out of print but are fiction stories based on the life of a missionary kid in South America. They were especially fun because my dad remembers some of the events and characters in the books from his own childhood in South America.


3. What is your favorite genre?
I read pretty much any genre if it’s well-written and clean. I guess historical fiction and adventure are still my favorites, though.


4. Do you have a favorite novel?
Nope, sorry. I can’t even pick one favorite author--too many good ones.


5. Where do you usually read?
Where ever I get the chance. Lately most of my pleasure reading has been in bed right before I sleep.


6. When do you usually read?
Right now primarily in the summer because I'm in college.


7. Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?
Often, yes. Sometimes I’ll have one book downstairs and one or two upstairs.


8. Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?
Honestly I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. Most of what I read is for school so yes, I try to take notes as I read. I also have always had the habit of sharing interesting tidbits with my family as I read non-fiction. This can be rather annoying at times, I’m sure (especially during the home schooling years when everyone else was trying to do their own school!), but I love sharing cool facts and it probably helps me remember them, too.


9. Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?
All of the above. I have a little bookcase in my room that goes half-way up the wall and it’s overflowing… Most of the books I own were either gifts or ones I found at discount or second-hand stores. My mom has six floor-to-ceiling bookcases that are full--many of them double-stacked.


10. Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?
Pretty much the only reason I would get rid of a book is if it wasn’t a good book. Then I either toss it or sell it, depending on how and why it was bad. I do have some old schoolbooks (from college) I’m planning to sell, though honestly I have a hard time parting even with those!


11. If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?
No children, but my nieces come over to borrow from “Grandma’s Library” often and are reading some of my favorites. :-)


12. What are you reading now?
I have been reading a lot this summer--making up for all the reading I didn’t do during the school year, I guess. I think I read eight or nine novels the last two weeks, (but a few of them were E.B. White children’s books). I think my favorite was a book called In Search of Eden by Linda Nichols. It was about a lady who had given up a child for adoption when she was a teen. Another good one was Abraham’s Well by Sharon Ewell Foster. It was a historical fiction about Black Cherokees during the Trail of Tears.


13. Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list?
Not really.


14. What’s next?
I found a couple of books I haven’t read when I was cleaning this week--a novel by Elizabeth Elliot and a non-fiction about a horse ranch for troubled kids. I’d also like to find a non-fiction book someone recommended to me, Pain: the gift no one wants.


15. What books would you like to reread?
I eventually reread pretty much all the books we own. Sometimes the mysteries aren’t as fun to reread because it’s missing something when you already know the secrets, but other times it’s fun to see the clues you missed the first time.


16. Who are your favorite authors?
Stephanie Grace Whitson, Jamie Langston Turner, Dee Henderson, some of Ted Dekker, A.A. Milnes (I love the way he uses capitalization for emphasis), Lewis Carroll, to name a few off the top of my head.


If anyone else would like to do this meme, let me know to look for it by posting here! :-)