Growing up, I was the only reader in my family. I was one of four children growing up in a 3 bedroom railroad style apartment in Queens, New York. My escape was our local library, I would go there as often as I could. By the time I was around 11, I was able to walk to the library myself and I would spend all day Saturday there. The librarians knew my name and the kind of books that I enjoyed reading, they would put books on the side for me so I never missed a good story.
Once I got home, I would get lost in different worlds. The earliest book I remember reading was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Walking through those gardens with Mary Lennox made me happier than I could express at the time. From there I moved on to Carolyn Keene, Ann M. Martin, and Christopher Pike. The day I started looking at "adult" books opened up a whole new realm of books for me to enjoy.
I took a break from reading to raise my daughter as a single mother. My time was spent working full time and taking care of her. Through the years I have tried to share my love of reading with my daughter by having nightly bedtime stories. All my efforts paid off when she asked for the Twilight book and devoured it. Lucky for her I worked close to Barnes and Noble as she would call me every other day to pick up the next book until she had read them all. She now collects books and I hope she will read more of her TBR shelves.
My love of reading has returned with a vengeance. It started with setting a low reading goal on Goodreads of 30 books for the year 2018 which I crushed by reading 55 books. My 2019 goal was a lofty 50 books which I was unsure I would be able to meet due to working and attending school full time. I ended the year having read 128 books. I have never read that many books before. My goal for this year is 55 books and I am lucky enough to be one book away from that goal. It has really been a good reading year thus far despite the pandemic.