Over at The Nerdy Book Club, I have a new post up about how (and why) I became a member of the community of readers (plus, at the end, there's a giveaway to enter):

So I was led to the Nerdy Book Club in stages, by my parents who filled our home with books, and by my sister who read them aloud, by teachers who gave me the tools, sometimes against my will, to read and write with ease, and by a lonesome kid on the other side of the world who built a community around the stories he loved and the stories he had to tell. I’m thrilled to be a member of the same club as he is and I love to see it grow. [read the whole essay]