by Sharon Archer
My Cat Stats!
READING: Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps by Allan & Barbara Pease
LISTENING TO: Amy Winehouse - what a fabulous voice!
WATCHING: "Spooks" - season one on DVD. Very intense!
MAKING ME SMILE: trying to get cats to pose! Bribery is mandatory and not always successful!
I love reading! And writing, of course, but first and foremost, I really love reading!
Some of the things we read, or hear read aloud, stay with us forever waiting for an opportune moment to surprise us with a powerful memory flash. This happened to me the other day when I was gardening. A bee was buzzing from the oregano to the thyme... and just like that, I remembered a book I’d had as a toddler about a bumble bee called Alexander.
How I loved Alexander Bumblebee! So much, in fact, I decided that a bee might like to play with me. Unfortunately, my chosen “Alexander” wasn’t impressed with chubby, grasping, little fingers – and I got my very first bee-sting.
Remembering Alexander Bumblebee got me thinking about other books which have stood out over the years. I vividly remember having JRR Tolkien’s book, The Hobbit, read to me in class when I was about ten years old. The teacher must have been a very good story teller because those sessions enchanted me.
Not long after that, I “discovered” horses in books! Black Beauty, Son of Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, Show Jumping Secret... If it had a horse in it, I was almost guaranteed to l
ove it. My head was filled with all manner of wondrous new words - curry combs and colic, jumps and jodphurs, saddles and stirrups, manes and martingales, girths and gaits! It was the start of a long love affair with horses.Then in my teens, I discovered romance novels! Magical books where I lived in an agony of suspense because all seemed doomed until the last few pages where a stoic hero declared his love for the heroine. Through those books, I visited all sorts of fabulous places. Outback Australia with Lucy Walker, high country New Zealand with Essie Summers, the opera with Mary Burchell. The list goes on!
Now, I write my own stories with happy endings for Mills and Boon and I have a whole new appreciation of the fascination of books!
Tell me some of your memorable reading moments. Do you remember your very first book? What special places have books taken you?
PS I've put up these pictures of a couple of very special "readers"! Sufi, so enthralled with the phone book, was with us for nearly twenty years. And Kari-Anne's cat, Bernie, is just about to dip into my last release! ;)
I have prizes!!! I'm so thrilled to have these books to give away to one of my commenters on the blog today!
The Earl’s Dilemma, Emily May (in Fate & Fortune, with A Country Miss In Hanover Square by Anne Herries) Quills/Regency * Marriage Reunited: Baby on the Way, Sharon Archer, Medical * Claiming His Bought Bride, Rachel Bailey, Desire * The Blackmailed Bride’s Secret Child, Rachel Bailey, Desire * Tonight, My Love, Tracie Sommers, Spice Briefs * The Rebel King (Suddenly Royal #1), Melissa James, Harlequin Romance/Sweet * His Princess in the Making (Suddenly Royal #2), Melissa James Harlequin Romance/Sweet * Lights, Camera… Kiss the Boss, Nikki Logan, with Australian Boss: Diamond Ring, Jennie Adams Harlequin Romance/Sweet * Just a Taste, Bronwyn Jameson, Desire *Stone Cold Lover, Mel Teshco, Ellora's Cave
