YA Indie Carnival: Book I’m Grateful for and Why

It was about four months ago when I ran away with the YA Indie Carnival. The other day, as I was making lunch for the bearded woman, I started thinking about what set me on this path.

As a kid, I liked stories, but I never liked reading. By that I mean that I loved TV and movies, listening to someone tell a story, and even telling my own stories. However, every time I picked up a book to read I would either get distracted within my own head or fall asleep before I turned the first page.

I just wasn’t a reader.

I continued to believe this into adulthood, always scanning, but never really reading anything more substantial than a magazine article unless I was forced to and then it was out of necessity, definitely nothing that I enjoyed.

Things changed after

I had my first son. I always worked. Always. Even in college, I carried a full-time schedule and two part-time jobs. Justin was born in November 2001 (yeah, very pregnant on 9/11 – absolutely terrifying). At the time, I was a career professional in a business office often working 50+ hours a week because I’m one of those weirdos with an unquenchable work ethic.

And then I was on maternity leave. Suddenly, I found myself alone at home with an infant that slept 22 hours a day. No TV because that would wake the baby and no projects that created noise of any kind, which I quickly discovered discounted anything fun. I was going nuts from boredom when my mother recommended a series of books that she had been reading.

“Harry isn’t a very cool name,” I remember telling her, but she was so excited about it and she had the first book with her, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, so I decided to humor her and crack it open.

After she left, I started reading because I just knew she would call me later and harass me about it anyway. I was through the first three chapters before I realized that I was actually reading. When Justin woke up to be fed, I started reading it to him and even after he fell back asleep, I continued to read to him. It never once broke his peaceful slumber. I devoured the first book and moved onto the others. In fact, I remember lying on the floor reading aloud in his nursery after a late night feeding with tears streaming down my cheeks because I had just read the part where Cedric died and the realization of it hit me like a freight train.

Goblet of Fire had just come out and when I finished it, I couldn’t wait for the others. So to pass the time, I picked up another series, then another and another. And the rest, is history, film at 11:00.

P.S. Also grateful for Dead Until Dark. Because of it, Alexander Skarsgard and his awesomeness now graces my TV all summer! Thanks Charlaine!

Check out the books that these YA authors are most grateful for…