Of course, now replace "reading" and a'book" with "the internet" and this IS me.

Yup, me too. And I spend a lot less time reading these days, now that I spend so much time online.

My parents never censored my reading. My sister tried, once. She's eight years older than me, and had a book that I, as a member in good standing of the annoying younger sisters association, borrowed without permission. It involved a woman being raped by ghosts. My sister was shocked that I was reading it and even more shocked that I seemed to understand what it was about (I was around 8 at the time).

My dad's one attempt to steer my tastes was time-mangement based as much as anything. My folks were too busy one weekend to take me to the library, and I was whining about having nothing to read. Dad took me to one of the cupboards that was officially "Dad territory", and opened it up to reveal Analog Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines going back to 1950. He told me that when I finished them I could then bug him about needing more reading material.

It took me a while.

I actually think I would have been fine moving ahead, but my older brother had been accelerated in some subjects and did not adjust well at all.

that happened to me, often. My parents made me take the AP exam, but wouldn't let me test out of any of the stuff in college, because my brother did that, and didn't adjust well.

How did I miss Lions of Al-Rassan when it came out (almost 10 years ago) -- I picked it up at the library last week and could not put it down. I loved it!

(They had new paperback editions of that and Sailing to Sarantium which I also nabbed.)

How did I miss Lions of Al-Rassan when it came out (almost 10 years ago) -- I picked it up at the library last week and could not put it down. I loved it!

(They had new paperback editions of that and Sailing to Sarantium which I also nabbed.)

Lucky you sumi, what a treat! Sarantium is excellent too (it's a two-parter, the second is Lord of Emperors)

Today and tomorrow's Fresh Air with Teri Gross is a Tribute to Spalding Gray. [link]

This explains so much.

I have so little in terms of a sense of entitlement.

Please allow me that.

All I want is your books and your celebrity crushes.

The only trouble I got into with books growing up was that I read them to the exclusion of doing other things that needed to be done.

(raises hand) OH yes. Books were so much more interesting to me than my own dull life, after all.

I offer you a cute story from my early childhood: at the age of 3 or so (before I had learned how to read, mind you), my favorite toy was a big heavy Sears catalog. I would pore over it for hours... and then I would follow my parents around the house telling them long stories about what I'd been reading. I sure wish they'd transcribed some of that, because details are long forgotten.

I like Calli's dad.

There were books in the house when I was growing up, but they were mostly castoffs from other members of my grandparents's generation. I read them anyway (hey, it was printed matter), but was never able to discuss them with my parents.

When my father visited last August, we built bookcases. He stopped by on his way out of town and was astonished to find them already full, with me shifting one of the smaller cases into Kenny's room so he could get some of his books off the floor. If my father had bothered to read any of the spines, it's likely he would have disowned me on the spot.

At my grandfather's funeral, I spent much of my free time talking with my great-aunt's daughter, a teacher who'd done volunteer conservation work at a library in Virginia. She's the same age as my mother, tried to get pregnant about the same time. I keep thinking "Maybe there is more to the Mistaken Zygote Theory than anyone's letting on."

My parents were very encouraging when it came to reading (they have a library with over 40,000 books). I finished every book in my school by the time I was in 4th grade. Everything from Nancy Drew to Laura Ingalls Wilder. I would have read books from my parents' library, but their books consisted of textbooks and research material and documentation and factual histories. Not interesting to a 9 year-old.

So, I found my mom's hidden stash of romance novels. Not the itty bitty harlequins, but the monstrous +600 pages of true love and adventure. Inevitably, my father would take the books away. I would wait about an hour before I would sneak it back to my room. I think it was mostly a half-hearted protest on my father's part because he never bothered hiding them when he would take them away from me and he would never take the same book twice. By the time I was 12, I was working in a used bookstore and had access to any book I wanted.