Mnnf! You guys just made me realise I have no book to read on the recumbent bike tomorrow. I just couldn't put Fast Women down, although it's supposed to be my not-in-the-house book.

I'd offer you one of mine, but it won't fit through the monitor.

On treadmill? books on tape are handy. Nice to have a long enough cord though so you can put the tape part on the ... the ... flat part of the treadmill where the controls are. whatever that's called.

I could and did read everything in the house. The best thing was that I had a uncle who gave good hardcover books for presents and he had very good, age appropriate taste. No surprise when after retiring as an exec in a big car company that he retired to FLa. and helped out teaching reading in a local elementary school. Great guy. When I think back on what were favorite books, they were almost all books he'd given me.

The local gazillionaire donated enough money to build a real library in my small home town just about at the time that I had read everything in the children's section of the town library that was in a large house in town.

The good thing, now that I look back at it, is that the old library had really old books, so I was reading books that were popular when my parents were kids - like Bobbsey Twins & more - at least I think so. Take me too long to go find card catalog on this computer and find out when it was published. Good in that I think i't's kind of cool.

When I got to advance lit in high school, and we were handed the list of Great Books to go over, I'd already read more of them than anyone else in class (110 of them, or was it 103?) My best friend was only 3 or 4 books behind me.

Mentioned this above - wanted to link to it since I have a sneaking suspicion that you would all LOVE this book:Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (one of the most beautiful and skilled essayists of our time, IMO)

The essays are all about her passion for reading and are hysterically funny. The one on "marrying" your book collection with your SO was my life. So was the one about compulsive proofreading. And so on. You won't regret buying a copy of this book -- every book lover should have it.

Other great recommendations for books about book lovers (again, forgive me if this is a x post from earlier):
Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz,
and How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

t marks Kristin's post for future reference

The only kind of trouble I ever got into for reading was when I got so sucked into a book that I lost track of time and forgot to do something.

Also the image of a wee Deb asleep with a book splayed open on her chest is just adorable.

One of the things that always gets an awwwwww from me is seeing a very small child, fast asleep, with a large book tented over his or her face.

I fall asleep while reading all the time (not because the book is boring, because I can't keep my eyes open). And I fall asleep on the exact same position in which I was reading, glasses on and light not turned off, so many times people still think I'm awake, for quite a while, when I'm already fast asleep.

I never got in trouble with my parents for reading anything. They monitored pretty carefully what we watched on TV and movie, not so much with books. In fact, they were quite surprised to discover how I constantly read about things that I was never allowed to be exposed to on TV.

The one person who wanted to stop me from reading something was a librarian who wouldn't want to let me take "Jane Eyre", at age 7 or 8. As the little geek that I was am, I brought my mom with me to the library to talk the librarian into letting me read what I wanted. She agreed, but I had to return the book in exactly 2 weeks, no extentions, and she quizzed me about its content after I brought it back. After that, she let me take anything I ever wanted, no comments. Good times.

I would have gotten in trouble for some of my reading if anyone had noticed I was stealing books.

From school, from friends -- my moral code rested on the apparently unassailable fact that I needed them more.

Then I found libraries, and I slowly got out of the habit. But not before I worked out how to liberate their books too.

My parents only tried to censor my reading once. I was in high school and found a Jacqueline Susann novel (from the public library) laying around the house in plain sight. When my mother saw me reading it, she was far from pleased. But when I told her she hadn't told me I couldn't read it, she stopped arguing.

Didn't learn anything I didn't already know. But I learned a few things by reading The Godfather when I was 13.

Emphatically seconding Kristin's rec on the Fadiman. Wonderful book that rang all sorts of familiar bells.

My early educational reading was the first half of Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. When I was 11, I babysat for a couple who were involved in a Scottish dance/bagpipe troupe. Every Saturday I spent about 6 hours at their house taking care of their kids who were pretty self sufficient. I found the book one day, read half of it, then, when they arrived unexpectedly (because I was totally engrossed) I stuffed it under the edge of the couch. The next Saturday it had disappeared completely.