This blog is intended to be about my greatest passion in life: books. I was one of those lucky souls whose mother read to me from the day I was born, so I have been involved in a passionate affair of the heart with books ever since. By the time I was a toddler, I had all my favorites memorized, and Mom laughs to this day about how I would sit in a toddler-sized rocking chair, rocking and "reading" aloud to myself. Sometimes I held the books right side up, sometimes upside down, but I "read" them.

Our household was a fractious one, to put it mildly, and as I grew up books became not only a passion but a refuge. I never asked for dolls or stuffed animals or clothes or any of the normal things young girls want for Christmas or birthdays; as long as I had books I was happy. I remember reading entire series of "tween" books; the Trixie Belden and Donna Parker series were great, as were two series about nurses named Cherry Ames and Kathy Martin. I did my Harlequin years as an early teen (the early ones, where nothing more than chaste kisses followed by chaste proposals of marriage and--presumably--chaste marriages followed) and was just coming of age with the 1970s "bodice rippers" of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers. I devoured those.

In junior high (they call that middle school now) my favorite author was Zane Grey, who wrote westerns. I fell in love with his titles at first: WILDFIRE, THE DRIFT FENCE, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, WANDERER OF THE WASTELAND, and my favorites of them all, BETTY ZANE, THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER, and THE LAST TRAIL, which were based on the exploits of his mother's ancestors, the pioneer Zanes who settled what are now the cities of Wheeling, West Virginia, and Zanesville, Ohio.

I pretended throughout college to be interested only in "highbrow" literature, and would have told you then that only William Faulkner was worth reading--Outgrew that when I discovered the romantic suspense novels of Barbara Mertz (aka Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters), Phyllis A. Whitney, Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart.

Went through a phase devoted to classic detective stories, as well: A. Conan Doyle, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, and most recently John Dickson Carr and Ellis Peters (of the Brother Cadfael books). I also have read nearly all of Patricia Cornwell's works and Ed McBain's wonderful 87th Precinct series.

Have I sufficiently bored you yet? Hopefully, in coming blogs I intend to write about individual books, series and authors who intrigue me. In any case, I'll be in a corner somewhere with a book.