I am a complete bibliophile and love love love to read. I fondly remember being a kid sitting in my closet (it had a window) and reading for hours. Pouring through books by Beatrice Potter, Maurice Sendak and Dr. Suess, some of which are still considered favorites. Was very fortunate to have parents who nurtured my love of reading. Hoping to get a lot of them for my daughter Vivian as well so I started with a wish list on Amazon as well as collecting/rating them on Good Reads. After few different times in my life I cataloged the books I had in my house, the first in 1999 as part of rearranging my shelves and the other 2002 when I donated my entire collection to the Wilsonville Library. 9 years later and I'm back to 3 full shelves downstairs and 2 upstairs not to mention the various piles around the house and next to my bed. My curious nature will always have me exploring something new and hope that a little bit of that passion will ignite a spark in other. Well, I'm off for now....to read of course! Before I leave I'll share a passage from one favorites: Katherine Dunn - Geek Love, 1983 It is the common grief of children to have to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood. Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, "Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we'll make it right." The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child's need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia. Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites. We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting a lollipop or a toy bear's worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skulls for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.