Why I Read by Roberta Rich
Show me a voracious reader and I will show you someone who I daresay had a lonely, miserable and isolated childhood -- at least, I did.
As a child, I read to escape, to find friends, to travel to distant parts of the world, and to try to make sense of a world that I found pretty baffling. I was the type of girl who read cereal boxes, the tags on mattress covers, and the comics in Hubba Bubba gum.
I never enjoyed history in school - too many battles, boring old politicians and stuffy monarchs. But now, as an historical novelist, I find social history, the day to day gritty details of how people kept warm, cooked, had babies, went to the bathroom and had sex, riveting.
My reading has changed since I started writing full time. I used to be a 'drive by reader', pick up a book, read a chapter, finish it if I enjoyed it, and toss it aside if I didn't. I read everything - thrillers, mysteries, historicals and literary fiction.
I learned to read when I was four years old and books have been a very important part of my life ever since. There were plenty of them around. My parents bought many books - cheap editions of classics available in regular bookstores, pre-war editions of books one could only get at second-hand bookstores and flea markets.
There were libraries, too, but more popular titles were hard to get and there were no holds, unless a librarian took pity on me and helped me secure what I craved.
