They say the love of reading is one of the greatest gifts you can give a child. For me, that gift came wrapped up in the literary enthusiasm of my grandparents. Little did they know, they were planting the seeds of a lifelong reading obsession!
It all started with a simple stack of paperbacks. Always eager to turn me into a fellow book nerd, my grandparents would carefully curate piles of novels they thought I’d enjoy. With New York City apartment as the setting, the Stuart Woods mystery New York Dead immediately caught my eye that first summer. Cracking open the first Stone Barrington novel, I was hooked from page one!
My grandparents would save me the latest Stone Barrington releases until our reunion. I tore through those books with wild abandon, already mourning their inevitable end before the final chapters.
As my reading appetite grew, so did my bookshelf’s variety. The classics beckoned next – I’d get deliciously creeped out by Dracula, journey to the eerie Red Weed-infested planet of The War of the Worlds, and sail the high seas with the scoundrels of Treasure Island. My grandparents had awoken the English Lit Monster!
From there, no genre was off limits. Stephen King provided full-bodied scares. Dan Brown took me on global code-cracking capers. Michael Crichton’s science spiels blew my nerdy mind. Yet no matter how many new authors I sampled, my steadiest palate was for whodunits and mysteries.
To this day, I still get excited whenever a new crime novel catches my eye. My love of mind-bending plots was ignited by the very first book my grandparents handed me – a spark that keeps getting stoked by each fresh story I consume.
So while I may not have been born a reading enthusiast, I have my grandparents to thank for fanning those innate bookish flames. Their own fervent love of literature inspired me to catch the bug.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a new mystery calling my name…
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