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Starting early
My mother swears that I taught myself to read as a child. This sounds far fetched to me, but she stands by it. She says that she would read to me a lot (bedtime stories, etc.) and one day I just started reading on my own without her help. -
Reading Rainbow
I entered a contest help by Reading Rainbow in which children wrote and illustrated their own books. I got pretty far along but was eventually disqualified because the judges thought I was cheating and getting help from an adult. -
Mr. Mefford's Class
I was always a reader growing up, but in my fifth grade class there was a contest and the person who read the most pages at the end of the year won a pizza party. There was a graph to track our progress on the wall and everything. The book that really put me ahead of the curve and on the road to victory was a 700 page Winnie the Pooh book. -
1984
I read '1984' by George Orwell for the first time when I was in the 7th grade. We had recently read 'Animal Farm' and I was intrigued by his style, but hated 'Animal Farm.' One of my teacher recommended that I try something else by him. '1984' was one of the first novels that I fell in love with. -
Ms. Bishop is a B****
My ninth grade English teacher was terrible for many reasons, but one of the worst things she did was attempt to teach us 'Catcher in the Rye.' I had already read Catcher a couple of times at this point, and the way she massacred that book made me want to stop reading for a long, long time. -
LJ
As a Freshman in high school I was introduced to LiveJournal, an online journalling site where you could post and follow your friend's posts. This was back before facebook was public to everyone (you had to have a college email address to sign up), so I guess it was our way of keeping up with each other's lives. -
Thank god for Dr. Lathan
Thankfully, my teacher sophomore year was a complete 180 from Ms. Bishop. Dr. Lathan was engaged and engaging. He would read passages in class (fully voice acting) and show us the exciting parts of the book that way. That's where I first fell in love with the Russian lit (he taught 'Crime and Punishment'), with Voltaire (he taught 'Candide'), and many more. -
Performance anxiety
One week before opening night, the lead actress of the play that I was stage managing dropped out sick. She had bronchitis and had to have her tonsils removed to boot. The script was 90 pages long and the leading lady walked on stage on page two and stayed on stage until curtain call. I was picked to take over and had to learn the whole bit in a week on top of normal school work. -
Faulkner
After high school I moved into an apartment with one of my best friends. She has introduced me to many wonderful things over the years, but handing me her copy of "Light in August" may still be one of the best things anyone has ever done for me. -
McCullers
The same friend who gave me Faulkner. Six years later. We were sitting on the steps of the Mississippi talking about life and love and death and she asked me if I had ever read Carson McCullers. I was knee deep in McCullers for the next six months.