This question came up on a job application: Please describe yourself as a reader and how you came to be one.
I have always loved reading. My parents, both teachers, read to me all the time until I learned to read on the kitchen floor, making words with the hundreds of letter squares my grandma made out of cut-up cereal boxes. During the blazing Utah summers my sisters and I would hurry to our local library, a historic building that had air-conditioning and the biggest, comfiest chairs ever where we would lose ourselves in stacks of books. I have never been able to pick a favorite book, and have trouble even narrowing it down to a favorite genre. I read everything from non-fiction to science fiction, from cookbooks to Russian literature. Books have the power to pull us into exotic or even mundane scenarios where we participate as silent witnesses to a panorama of humanity unfolding. Reading is magic and chaos neatly pressed between two covers. I love it.
