Chris, at Stuff As Dreams Are Made On, tagged me for a meme this week. It’s a fun one — write” 7 Random Bookish Things About Me.” Reading is the warp and woof of my life, so I’ve enjoyed these last few days thinking about all the things I could include from my lifetime of reading. Thanks, Chris!

• My favorite book is Jane Eyre. I read it first in seventh grade, after my older brother finished it. That first reading certainly had a profound effect on me, and sparked my life-long interest in reading the classics. I remember with crystal clarity the visual images Charlotte Bronte’s words created in my mind. That red room…

• My mother and I have always shared a love of reading. This book blog was started as another way to share books with her since we live 900 miles apart.

• Memories of summer reading as a child: outdoors with a good book, lying on the grass, watching contrails in the sky, eating carrots, and devouring book after book.

• One of the intense pleasures of my life was reading books to my children as they were growing up.

• I love teaching children (of all ages) how to read. It has been my experience with the most reluctant of readers, that if you can capture them with good stories, they WANT to read so that they can read those stories by themselves, and then they work incredibly hard to become readers. Ignite the passion first…

• I hate to get stuck somewhere without a book, so I always try to carry one with me.

• Just like Chris, I associate certain books with stages of my life. Thinking of a particular book will “take me back” to where I was and what I was doing at the time I read it. It’s a wonderful thread woven throughout my life!

I’m not sure who has already been tagged for this meme, so If you haven’t been yet, please consider yourself tagged!