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| Claude Monet, "Woman Reading" |
I learned how to read and write on the summer I turned 5 years old. I remember it distinctly because I felt I was being cheated on, as my sisters were playing and having fun while I was forced to sit at a table to learn my letters. After the first couple of attempts by my tutor (both of which ended up in rebellion and much moping and whining on my part), my grandmother started gifting me illustrated fairy tale books and comics. They were slim volumes suitable for a 4-5 year old. I got used to the bribery, and I wanted to be able to read them on my own, instead of only looking at the pictures. Next thing I knew I had learned how to read... and write! That was the first milestone of my life as a reader. It was life changing enough that even though I was so young, I remember how it all happened to this day, 51 years later.
When I was in my "tweens" I started reading my mom's books. I preferred fiction to non-fiction. I got into mythology from different countries as well. My parents bought me a collection of beautiful hardbound, illustrated books involving mythologies from the Middle East, North Africa (Egypt), different countries from Western Europe, South America, etc. I also started reading my mother's paperback Agatha Christie novels. She only had a few, but I really liked them. My grandmother started sending me more Agatha Christie titles by mail, until I actually collected every title that Agatha Christie had published. Later on, in my early teens, I also read my first romance stories: "Desiree" by Annemarie Selinko, "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte, and "Rebecca" by Daphne DuMaurier. I also watched on T.V. the movies these books inspired, copies of which I now own on DVD/Blu-ray. I loved those books, but for whatever the reason, I didn't think of seeking more romance books, so I was mostly reading classics. Sir Walter Scott with his super long and wordy descriptions was a favorite. I also read Dumas' "The Three Musketeers". To be honest, I don't even know why I liked those books back then. I sure have had no interest on re-reading them... but I digress.
When real life decided to punch my family in the face, with my father's passing at the young age of 55, I had to find a full time job to help my mother. For several years I really didn't have much time to read or think about reading, but when I switched jobs for the first time one of my co-workers in the new workplace I had started at was a fan of Anne Rice. I decided to give this author a try and I found that I truly liked her work. It wasn't romance, but she has a somewhat "romantic" and lyrical writing style, and let's face it, both Lestat and Louis (and later on, Marius, among others) make for extraordinarily attractive characters and, in their own way, they are romantic characters. Of course, I am talking about the earlier Vampire Chronicles, pre-"Merrick"... and here I am back on the digression boat. I think I discovered Anne Rice around 1990.
I again went on a reading hiatus, except for Rice's books. Fast forward to February of 2003. That year I got a really bad head cold, and I was home, sick, for almost a whole week. Bored to tears, I had been reading some Anais Nin erotica ("Delta of Venus"). I wanted to read some more erotica, but I was not able to drive myself to Borders (the closest bookstore I had available -- incidentally, I still miss Borders). I was not going to work either, as I was really sick, so I couldn't get myself to 5th Avenue's Barnes & Noble, the closest bookstore to my workplace at the time.
I went to Amazon figuring that maybe I could get something to read in ebook format. Ebooks were not yet mainstream at the time and I had just learned about them. As I was researching looking for erotica for women, I stumbled upon a Jaid Black title, "The Empress New Clothes". The cover was ... erm... interesting. Sadly, that cover is not available for viewing any longer, as it has been changed at least 4 times since the ebook was first published. Anyhoo, Amazon didn't have the ebook available for immediate download. They offered it as a CD that would need to be shipped via standard means meaning snail mail. That wasn't acceptable either as what I was looking for was instant delivery availability of the reading material because of my illness.
As I was trying to figure things out, I decided to google the author's name. Looking around, it did tame me quite a bit of time to find it, but I managed to find the publisher's website. It was the (now defunct) Ellora's Cave. I was elated to discover that there was such a thing as an "epublisher".
For about a year and a half all I read was erotic romance. It wasn't until later that I started looking at other subgenres of romance, particularly paranormals (time travel, shifter, vampire, ghost stories, etc.) After that, I started exploring the subgenre that I now favor almost exclusively, historical romance set in England.
I remember that a couple of years after my discovery of romance, a small bookstore opened in Grand Central, which was just one block away from the building I worked at, I used to spend my lunch hour there, and befriended one of their employees, who was a romance fan as well. We would talk books for a bit every time I went in to browse.
Despite my reluctance on learning how to read (and write), I have to say that it was a life changing experience and even when I had extended "dry spells" of not finding anything that appealed to me, it has been a blessing to develop a love of reading. I truly can't imagine a life without books.
