Well, what did you expect from a writer? Lord have mercy, if I'd been born in a time and age without books and literacy that made sure girls learned to read, I'd have checked out early. Books have always been beside my bed, on my desk, in my bag, under chairs, piled on tables...you name it, there's not a part of my physical environment that isn't book-touched. When I find a good book (goodness gracious, my heart skips a beat at the thought), there's no putting it down. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I have to tell everyone to read it. I buy it for friends and family. I tout its virtues from the roof top. And when the stack is getting pretty low grade, I return to favorites like Pride and Perjudice, Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer, Falling Woman by Pat Murphy. I never tire of some books, some authors. The early James Lee Burke Robicheaux novels, some of them, fall into the never-boring category, too.
As you can tell, I'm an eclectic reader. I cross genres with ease. It's all about the characters, the plot, and the writing for me. The voice, if it grabs me right off the bat, will help carry a not-so-great story, and I'll stick with it. What a wonderful world we live in, where books are readily and easily available. Thank goodness for libraries, the last bastion of the First Amendment. Mucho gusto for ebooks and cheap paperbacks. Great gratitude for friends who swap books and recommendations.
I'm eternally grateful to be a woman in a society where books abound, and good books are not the exception, but the rule. Where women can read and not break the law by doing so. Where women are the literacy-pushers of the young. (How many male librarians did you know when you were growing up?)
Books rule, and not reading drools, to paraphrase one of my daughter's favorite (very youthful) sayings about the difference between the sexes.
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