My folks were busy. My dad was a teacher, and it was during the Second World War, and my mother was working. So I got my stories from films and books. I read a lot, and I love to read to this day.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mother brought us to the library every week, and I read a lot. That's what kept me company. I went from school to school, but there was always reading.
My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon - this was before television, and we didn't even have a radio - I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read.
Although I could read before I went to school, and I won the school reading prize at five years old, my early children's stories came from the radio and watching films at a cinema on Saturday mornings in Australia. It wasn't until I was nine years old on a ship returning from Australia that I was introduced to children's books.
I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the school holidays, and the only books in the house were a copy of the Bible and Agatha Christie's 'Murder at the Vicarage.' I developed a taste for murder mysteries and then later discovered libraries, second-hand bookshops, and jumble sales.
At night, I read. I read for two hours. I just finished a marvelous book by Louise Erdrich, 'The Round House.' But mostly I read 20th-century history and biography. I lived then. I was either a child or at school or at work.
My mother was a huge, huge reader. I think I picked up very early how precious it was to write things in books and have people like my mother glued to the page.
I was a teacher most of my life, which I loved. I had a very happy working life, and when I retired, I thought I must do something, and I've always read a lot of fiction - you learn so much from fiction. My sentimental education came mostly from fiction, I should say, so I thought I'd try.
I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.
I was told bedtime stories by my father or my grandmother. Books, I mostly read on my own in bed.
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.
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