My earliest reading memory
I was an early reader because I was excruciatingly shy, and books alleviated some of the discomfort of existing as a tender little person in the world. I remember lying in my bed at naptime, picking up a Little Bear book, and being able to read, “carrots, potatoes, peas, and tomatoes”, the words just clicking out of abstraction and into focus all of a sudden. Whether this is an invented memory or not is another story.
My favourite book growing up
I was publicly wild about children’s books such as My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George and the Nancy Drew stories; in private, I’d picked up Jean M Auel’s epic The Clan of the Cave Bear from my parents’ bookshelf at far too young an age, and was permanently scarred by brutal Neanderthal sex that I didn’t understand (yet I still reread the book obsessively with a flashlight in my closet).
