R is for Reading

English was the bane of my school career - I hated writing essays with a passion and although I read everything under the sun, I had no inclination to make up my own stories. My fantastical excuses for handing in essay homework late should have gained me some points for creativity though!

Reading is and probably always will be, my first love when it comes to quiet time occupation. My Aunt was a librarian, with an office next to the children's section of the library. I used to spend 2-3 weeks every summer at my Grandmothers house and the days my Aunt took me to work to babysit me, were some of the happiest days of my young life. If I misbehaved, my Gran only had to threaten to keep me away from the library and I'd immediately behave!

By the time I was 10 years old, I'd finished almost every interesting book there and moved on to the fledgling Teenagers fiction. I say fledgling because there really wasn't much for teens in those days and my Aunt used to give me new books to read and ask me what I thought. I'd even read Lord of the Flies before I was 11 which astonished my teacher in senior school! (not sure what grade that would be, sorry!)

I read about 3-5 books a week in those days - all the way up to falling in love with World of Warcraft. At one point, I had over a 1000 paperbacks in my bookshelves, piled up alongside them and in boxes in the attic. It took over 50 carrier bags full to take most of them to the charity shops - what a sad day that was!

I'm an indiscriminate reader too - everything from women's fiction, horror and fantasy to historical murder mysteries, spy thrillers and macho adventure stories too. Just about the only thing I don't read very much of is non-fiction! Oh, I have some wonderful non-fiction books but they tend not to be stories, more technical know-how types or reference books.

My favorite genre is fiction fantasy/sci-fi though - this blog is named for my love of Anne MacCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series but I've read all her books, including the one or two non-fantasy ones. David Eddings, Raymond E Feist, Janny Wurtz, Terry Brooks and of course Tolkein all feature high on my list. My name comes from Nevyn, a main character in the Deverry series by Katherine Kerr although he is male and I'm not! It means no-one and as I liked to keep my bank alt under wraps in World of Warcraft, it was kind of appropriate and stuck!

I've actually started reading again recently - mainly on long flights and hanging around at airports but I have a few new books to read that I picked up secondhand. Part of my idea for getting better is to get some sunshine so I'll take a book and go sit in the park area behind my apartment building - once the sun actually shows it's face around here of course!

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