I first read 'Madame Bovary' in my teens or early twenties.
My first favourite book was 'Are You My Mother?' A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure.
I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.
If your reading habits are anything like mine, then you can remember the exact moment that certain books came into your life. You remember where you were standing and whom you were with. You remember the feel of the book in your hands and the cover, that exact cover, even if the art has changed over the years.
I never feel lonely if I've got a book - they're like old friends. Even if you're not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they're part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life.
A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
I think ever since I started to read, there have been favorite novels for different stages of my life. And one is never bumped out of place to yield to another. Instead, I just add to my favorite shelves.
The first fantasy books I can remember reading were 'The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek' and the series of 'Mushroom Planet' books.
I don't think you ever love anything as passionately as you do when you're a teen. You remember the books you read as a young person your whole life. I feel so lucky to write for young adults.
I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.
I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.
I know that attaching memories to books may be going out of the world, but while it lasts, it's a strong record of your life.
I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again - if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine.
