I don’t just like to read, I love to read. If you were to ask any of the people who know me to describe one thing that I like to do and the answer would be almost guaranteed to be that I like to read.  I also love to talk to anyone about books, and I love to blog about books and reading. In short, reading, and talking about reading, is my passion.

My love of reading started early. I remember being proud of myself when I read my first chunkster from my school library in what must have been grade 2 or 3. That book was The Wind of the Willows and the print must have been huge because the book isn’t that long when I look at it now, but I remember it as being a really thick book.

When I was in early high school my love for historical fiction was cemented. I swear I read every Jean Plaidy book I could get my hands on in my high school library.

The best thing about starting working and getting my own income – book buying! Every week I would buy 2 or more books – Nelson DeMille, Noel Barber and so many more authors.

These days I am a devotee of my local library, I read more than 100 books a year, I blog and tweet a lot, have all sorts of bookish friends around the world, love my e-reader and happily attend literary events. I even have train friends that I met when we started talking about books!

It would therefore be something of a surprise to many people who know me that in my late 20s and early 30s I didn’t read a book for more than 5 years? How is it that something that is so integral to your sense of self gets lost?

In my case, it was moving overseas, getting involved in a not so great relationship, having a child. At the time, I wasn’t reading much because I was struggling in so many ways – emotionally, financially being just two of those ways. I thought I wasn’t reading much because I was unhappy, but now as I look back I am not sure that it was a contributing part to my unhappiness. I had lost one of the major things that made me, well, me.

And the sad thing was that I didn’t recognize that I was missing that passion. Back in Australia, relationship over, now a single mum, it was really only when one day my sister said to me that she hadn’t seen me read a book in years that I realised how much I missed reading!

I probably started reading again about 9 years ago, and don’t have any plans to stop being a bookworm any time soon. If you were to ask me for a book recommendation today, I could name a list of authors but right at the top there would be The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley (also published under the title Sophia’s Secret in some places) or The Rose Garden by the same author as recent favourites, any of Elizabeth Chadwick’s books if you like your books with a medieval flavour, Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon (also published under the title Outlander) as an old favourite and A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness as a recent favourite chunkster!

Have you ever lost your passion? Did you rediscover it later? Want to chat books with me?

Marg blogs about books at her award winning Blog  The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader  and about historical fiction at Historical Tapestry, and tweets as @MargReads and is always happy to chat with people about books!