Books

So the 'B' words is actually supposed to be about books and yet so far I haven't mentioned books. Books are my life line, they are my loves and my dreams. As a child my nose was always in a book, I gained the nickname - Bookworm  from my loving family. I didn't mind - it was the perfect name for me and I read and read. I read until I needed glasses. I read all the books in the house. All the books I brought home from the library were read before the day was out. I read a book a day. I read in the car, on the bus going to school, in the bathroom, in the hammock, at meals times, doing my chores, a book was never far away from my hands. I read above my level. I read below my level. I borrowed books from friends and I lent them. The best time I had a child was going to the library in Georgetown, Guyana with anyone who could take me. Browsing and perusing books on shelves, reading the comics,solving the puzzles, laughing at the jokes in joke books, reading magazines and just being with the books. Coming in at first place for the best time were the times my dad took me to the books store. Oh the joy!! The smell of fresh new books beats the new car smell  any day. Maybe it wasn't such a good thing because I had a hard time just picking books to buy. I knew what section interested me, I just wanted them all.
When I had exhausted the kid collection at my disposal, I went for my dad's book case and tried to read his collection for his college classes. I did and although the print was too small for my eyes (the reason  I needed glasses) I read them anyway. I didn't understand them but I read them anyway. Years later reading back those same books as a adult, I take pity on my child self. I had read words and not the enormity of the literacy or the complexity of the language. Then one day  when I was nine,my teacher brought in boxes and boxes of books his sister had outgrown. I read through her collection of Enid Byltons and it was here that I discovered the Nancy Drews. I would never forget that afternoon when I sat at my mother's feet while she prepared dinner and I moved along with her as she worked her way in the kitchen. It was The Secret Staircase. I was so scared, it was the most frightening book I had ever read (I was nine) and I couldn't put it down. I read that book cover to cover that afternoon. My first book in a day.
 Come the teen years and I moved on to the romance genre and voraciously read my way through collections of Mills and Boons, Harlequins, Silhouette and all the other novels meant for that age, and yet again I devoured all the books my uncle  and cousins read.
I started a book exchange club just so I could get new books to read.
Now I am grown, at least I look so and I find myself reading children's books, I read all my kids' books and  books to my kindergarteners.
Now I write books. Now I review books.