This is the Stuff Dreams Are Made of.....

The greatest gift my parents ever gave me was the love of reading. I have been reading books as far back as I can remember. The very first book I ever remember reading was Black Beauty by Anya Seton. I still remember the book itself, with its glossy paperback cover and picture of a beautiful black horse. I barely remember the book now, since I was really small, but I still remember reading it on my bed with daylight shining through the window.

Once, when I was young, I read the dictionary (yes, every word), because I wanted to know what everything meant. I used to come home from school, sit on the floor of the living room, and continue reading right where I had stopped the evening before. It seems silly now, but at the time I thought it was a good idea.

I also remember, when I was only nine, reading Gone With the Wind. My parents never told me I couldn't read a book because I was too young, or wouldn't understand it, or anything else. If I wanted to read it, they let me. I read authors like Frank Yerby, (The Foxes of Harrow, The Golden Hawk, and The Saracen Blade); Edison Marshall (Yankee Pasha); gothic novels by Victoria Holt (Mistress of Mellyn, Kirkland Revels), and tons of mysteries by various authors, most out of print by now. I don't remember ever reading childrens' books, although I am sure I must have; but it was the novels, the glorious, wonderful novels, that stuck with me through the years and I still remember.

Those were the books that sent me to the wonderful world of reading; to different lands and different cultures; other years and centuries; beautiful heroines and handsome heroes; villains who were sometimes evil and othertimes redeemed. Places I've been without physically travelling there.

As Dashiell Hammett said, "This is the stuff dreams are made of."