A Tag: What I Love About Books

I've been tagged by Dana for a Book Meme. Fifteen facts and personal preferences about books. Oh dear. Where to start? Now I've got to think a minute...

1) I love history books. I own tons and tons of history books, from the eighteenth century through World War II and everything in between. I never know when I'm going to get a particular story idea set in a different time period.

2) Old bookstores are AWESOME. I love to find out-of-print treasures, especially those I've been looking for for awhile.

3) I've worked at three bookstores and a library in my lifetime.

4) I want to own a used bookstore someday after I sell. That way I can have an income from the novels since used bookstores rarely make a lot of money! But I would have such a cool bookstore - like a combined coffeehouse/bookstore.

5) I used to be very obsessive about my books. I kept them in pristine condition. I NEVER bent pages. If the cover got bent, I would about blow a gasket. (This was all pre-marriage and pre-kids, of course).

6) I used to keep a list of all the books I'd read (and I still have it somewhere) and I'd give every book a rating.

7) My husband and I share a common love for books. Our basement walls are literally lined with bookshelves. When we move, it's really going to suck. ;-)

8) You can ALWAYS get me a book for Christmas or my birthday! I can never have enough.

9) I mark the annual library booksale on my calendar and my husband actually took the day off for it!

10) I've recently started collecting the books I read as a young teenager - mostly Patricia Veryan and Rosalind Laker, two of my all-time favorites.

11) If a book doesn't capture my attention within the first few chapters, I'll move on to something else. As my husband told me, it's my time to read and I should read something I like! No need to suffer through it if it's not good.

12) The first time I walked into my undergrad college's library, I nearly fainted at all of the wonderful history books I found. Coming from a small town (1,600 people), I didn't have access to books like that. Now I have access to my university's library and our city library is great, too.

13) I love good cover art. Gorgeous, well-done covers immediately catch my attention, no matter what genre.

14) My daughter loves books, too! Every night we read a book before bedtime.

15) My brothers used to get upset with me in the summertime when they'd ask me to come play baseball with them and I'd be reading a book (I still remember reading every single Nancy Drew book and all the Wizard of Oz books during the summers). To this day, my brothers still give me a hard time about it. But I truly believe that all the reading I did as a child helped contribute to the writer I am today.

I tag Kelley, Michelle, AE, and Amy from WriteMinded.