/lit/ - Literature

My life in books (in case anyone was wondering)
I was born into a family of readers, with a decent collection that mixed casual fiction (my mother loved Agatha Christie and similar mystery authors), literature from their university days, a set of Great Books, several encyclopedia sets (Funk & Wagnalls), my brother's juvenilia, and a range of fiction and non-fiction (including many books on music and health). They read books every night on their couches--even after we had a TV and a few channels, there was never more than one hour of TV allowed during an evening. I learned to read by being read to long before starting school, and was always ahead of whatever grade I was in. I remember hiding to read one of Lang's Fairy books (Olive, I think) at a daycare. Of course, nobody knew I had horrible eyesight and desperately needed glasses until I spent a summer in hospital at seven (Grade 2), or my preference for sitting still rather than trying to play games requiring vision might have made more sense.
My parents took me to the nearby county library every week or so, and I used to read shorter picture books there, and then take a stack home. Eventually a 20-book per visit limit had to be imposed. My mother started working part-time at a small used book store, and that was great. I'd often be there reading in the store (and wandering the mall, getting in trouble, going down to the track stables to see the horses, etc.). When new stock came in she'd let me take a box home and read them before they hit the shelves, or take home some stock to read quickly that she would then return (being a fast reader was handy). This was Grade 5-6, and I was reading a lot of adult fantasy and SF. I would read anything, though (then as now).
As a teen, I visited the local city public library weekly (having read most of the county library collection) and got out 20 books per visit from Children's, YA, or Adult. My parents didn't police my reading selection. My mother liked visiting antique and used book stores around our county, so we'd go for long drives and I'd have $10 to find books with in nearby villages. She was collecting interesting bargain old first-editions back then. I was into Victorian and Edwardian British boy’s adventure or school-story books, and antique children’s books.
Once my mother became the circuit librarian for our county elementary schools, I was living the life of Riley. She was buying books for a dozen or so far-flung rural school libraries that only had volunteer staff that she coordinated, which meant that the entire book-buying budget for the county ended up in boxes in our house before going on to the schools. I could even suggest purchases, and got to browse and carefully read anything I wanted. This is why I never mark in books, and when I finish them, they're often immaculate: I have a long history of reading books that I have to give back.