What book made you a quotreaderquot?

Question

What book made you a quotreaderquot?
I think that most of us quotreadersquot got hooked on reading by reading a great book. The Talisman by Stephen King amp Peter Straub was the one that got me hooked. What was yours?

Answer

Perhaps not one book but several. Under the eaves in our attic there was a chest containing the books my father read as a young man. I used to curl up beside it when I was very young and read by the daylight coming in under the eaves. This was a long time ago, in the s and s. The ones I clearly remember are all the Tarzan stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, all of Zane Greys Westerns, Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. The first really lengthy and complex book I remember clearly that really converted me was The Last Days of Pompeii, read when I was in the th grade. The next one I clearly recall was Gone With the Wind, read when I was . I started to read voraciously in the first grade, exhausted the elementary school library, then exhausted the high school library. I have continued to haunt libraries, spend an inordinate amount of money on books, read at least one per day, grew up to become a teacher of literature.