As stated before, I don't recall exactly when I learned to read; there is just the period of my life before literacy and the period after. I must've learned it while I was still going to school, but the details escape me. I remember reading stuff while there, but not what was read save for one thing: the Boxcar Children. It was read during class at some point and, while I wasn't necessarily enthralled during that time, I remembered enough to make attack a mountain of Boxcar Children books that were given to us by my Scholastic employed Godmother. I don't know how many of those things I read, but it was quite a lot. How a series goes from being a one-off tale about orphans living in a box car and finding family to various tales of adventure and mystery is beyond me. I suspect these were all pretty shitty books. Even then, I was never able to finish the second one despite numerous attempts to do so. Not sure why...

Another series that I read a fair amount of in my younger years was Goosebumps. I don't think there are very many children of the 90s who didn't read Goosebumps. Again, I don't recall much about these save for two things: they scared the shit out of me and Say Cheese and Die was awesome. Actually, thinking back on the story, it's a little like Death Note, only the Note in this case is a camera and the bearer doesn't actually intend for people to die. I think maybe I should read that book again...

There were other books and series in there: the Hardy Boys, Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad and its sequel, and various classics in the form of Moby Books amoungst others. But there's one fictional universe in particular that has shaped my life in more ways than I could possibly imagine, from the sheer amount of time spent reading to actual changes in my behaviour. I am, of course, talking about Star Wars.

To date, I have read no less than 78 Star Wars books (yes, I've counted), ranging from the first, small novels by Alan Dean Foster up to the New Jedi Order series and its whopping nineteen novels. I don't know exactly what my first Star Wars book was, but I'm inclined to say it was probably the Junior Jedi Knights book The Golden Globe which I read when I was twelve. I didn't spend too long in that series initially and quickly "graduated" to the Young Jedi Knights. Finally eschewing the children's series, I went on to read the Jedi Academy trilogy, the X-wing series, and of course, the phenomenal Thrawn trilogy. To this day, the Thrawn trilogy is probably my favorite series of books and its author, Timothy Zahn, also amoungst my favorites.

At my peak, I was reading at the pace of a Star Wars novel a day, sometimes blowing through three or four a week. Star Wars literature - and the universe that it created in my mind - engrossed me for probably a good six or seven years of my life. I cannot think any other single thing in my life that so consumed me. All good things must come to an end, however, and once I completed the New Jedi Order series, my Star Wars mania was spent. The last time I picked up a Star Wars book was in late '08 as I waited overnight for a bus at the Orlando airport. But, I do not regret for a minute the time that I spent behind the pages of these books. I actually attribute a lot of my English skills - from spoken to written - to these books. I know for a fact that it was in a Star Wars novel that I first encountered the word "ricochet", the phrases "oft used" and "delusions of granduer", and how I began the use of the term "blast" in swearing (something one of my former bosses thought was "cute").

After my Star Wars days, my reading of fiction dropped to almost nothing for the longest time; partially because I began working, partially due to the internet and site like Slashdot and Digg which provided articles relevant to my interests. I wouldn't become heavily invested in reading again until mid 2009 as a new genre caught my attention...