Why a Book Blog?

 To say that I have always been a reader is an understatement. I'm pretty sure I read my first book at three years old. It was a book about a goat and a boat. I read it out loud on a Saturday morning in my parent's bedroom. I am certain that I had memorized it from listening to my mom read it so many times. That's neither here nor there, the point is that I read that book and I never stopped. 

My love of reading can be attributed 100% to my parents. I've learned with my own children that just because a parent loves to read does not mean that a child loves to read, much to my chagrin. However, I grew up in a house full of books with no limits or restrictions on what I was allowed to read. We had an office in the basement that had built-in bookshelves. There were always piles of books next to my parent's bed. The to-be-read pile was a thing. We spent Saturdays at Powell's Books or the library. My mom read aloud to both me and my brother every night, even after we were old enough to read to ourselves.  

I started volunteering at the library in elementary school. Ms. Diener was the school librarian and she was everything that an elementary school needed to help kids learn to love to read. She quickly taught me the Dewey Decimal system and I started by shelving books and then as I got older I would read to the younger grades at storytime. I spend most of my lunches there and my teachers would send me to help in the library when I finished my classwork. 

If you're thinking "man this girl was a nerd" you would be right. In the best way possible. Hopefully, since you're reading this, you're also the type of person that thinks being a nerd is cool. 

In middle school, I didn't have a great librarian. Even though my middle school had a pretty great library. So I stopped volunteering at school and started volunteering at the public library instead. Talk about a dream job. Shelving books, helping people find books, checking out books. Not to mention getting the first pick of new releases. My best friend's mom was the children's librarian at our public library which gave us both all sorts of access that would never happen to a pair of 13-year-olds now. 

High school came and went. Me always reading but no longer taking the time to volunteer at any libraries. At one point I thought that maybe I would go to school and become a librarian. Sometimes I still wish I had. I was in high school in the late 90's, which means that technology was just starting to take over. I remember when the public library didn't have a computer to check out books and it had a card catalog! I didn't understand at that time what being a librarian would look like in the future. I also thought I wanted to be an interior designer. Little did I know that I was going to hate interior design. 

Fast forward twenty years later and I have spent my entire adulthood trying to figure out how to turn books, writing, and travel into a career. At one point I had a job at a college bookstore as a buyer, that was SO boring! So that wasn't the solution. I can't find the patience to write a novel when I spend all day on my computer. So I just read my Kindle and enjoy my books. 

Then suddenly I discovered booktok, bookstagram, book boxes, and the bookish lifestyle on social media. I am obsessed. Since I can't figure out how to make reading a career (and if it was my career would I still love it?) I'll start an IG account that is specifically about reading. Then I realized that I could blog about reading, fulfilling two of my goals, to read and write. 

So, this is how we got here.  A blog about reading and books. We'll see where it all goes but even if I am the only one that ever reads this blog I will still be happy documenting my reading journies and just being my happy bookish self.