So, about the past few weeks...

Well, I did it. I dropped off the face of the earth, blog-wise. Please accept this cute picture of my kitty as an apology.

I would like to say I blew it off because I was super busy or creatively productive, but then that would be lying. The real truth? I was captivated by a spunky, petite, blond high school sleuth. That's right, I spent way too much time in the past few weeks rewatching my Veronica Mars DVDs. If you haven't seen this Kristin Bell-starring TV show, then I suggest you do so RIGHT NOW. Season One is a must. Season Two isn't so bad. I'm still debating whether or not to rewatch Season Three, but seeing as how I won't have cable for the next few days...

On the e-publishing front, there hasn't been much news, except for Amanda Hocking's seven figure deal with St. Martin's, but everyone else has already hacked that to death, even big time publications. All I can say is, congrats, Amanda, and I'm looking forward to displaying your first book on my shelves.

In other news, I'VE FINISHED READING A BOOK! Yay! This is big news, people. I used to read like mad up until I started writing seriously. In 2008, I read around 30 books and I felt very proud of myself. In the three years since, I've probably read less than ten total. Very shameful, I know. But reading is slow going for me, not only because I am a slow reader, but because I have two jobs that take up way too much of my time (bookselling and bookwriting). I do love both of these jobs to death, so at least there's a plus side. I know many people absolutely hate their day jobs, so I consider myself lucky in this regard.

Anyhoodles, the book I finished reading was a young readers title, A Walk in Wolf Wood by Mary Stewart. "The Mary Stewart?" a friend asked. "Sure," I said. The book is out of print in the States, so I made an effort to find a used copy with the same cover as the one I'd read fourteen years ago(!). I now see that it's still in print in the UK and I kind of wished I'd gotten one of those, but oh well...

The reason why I picked up this book was because I remembered reading it in sixth grade and just absolutely loving it. I've always considered sixth grade the year I learned to love reading. This was before high school did it's best to kill this love, so this was possible back then. We read Dear Mr. Henshaw, My Side of the Mountain and Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. The first two I loved so much, that went out and read the sequels on my own time. Sadako I also loved and I would have cried if we hadn't been reading it in class.

I'm ashamed to say that I can't quite remember my sixth grade English teacher's name, but I think it was something like Ms. Bell. Now that I think about it, her class probably helped foster my love of writing, since we had to write short stories as a project. I wrote something about the Greek goddess, Artemis, if I remember correctly. Wow. Thank you, Ms Bell. You were a super awesome teacher.

What books would you say gave birth to your love of reading? Did anyone help discover this love, just like my sixth grade English teacher did for me? Let me know!