The Books That Made Me a Reader

I don’t remember the exact moment I became a reader.

There wasn’t one particular book I opened and suddenly thought, Yep. This is going to be part of my personality forever.

It was more gradual than that.

I just remember always loving books.

When I was little, there were Little Golden Books. I loved Roald Dahl. As I got older, Goosebumps entered the picture—and those books had me in a chokehold for a while. 😂

But the ones I remember being especially fascinated by were the stories where you got to choose what happened next.

Make one choice, turn to one page.

Make another, and suddenly you're somewhere completely different.

And naturally, I had to go back and figure out what would have happened if I'd chosen the other option.

Apparently, I've always needed to know all possible outcomes. 😂

Let Me See It…But Let Me Imagine It, Too

One of the things I've always loved most about reading is being able to disappear into somewhere that doesn't physically exist around me.

I love vivid descriptions.

Give me the smell of the air. Tell me how the trees move. Let me hear the water and feel the weather changing. Give me enough detail that, for a little while, I can forget I'm sitting somewhere holding a book.

But there's another side to that.

I don't necessarily want an author to tell me everything.

Sometimes I want the context clues. I want enough pieces to build the rest myself. I want to decide exactly what a room looks like in my head or how a character carries herself when she walks into it.

There's something special about the little collaboration that happens between an author and a reader.

The writer builds the world.

The reader finishes it.

And no two people will ever imagine it exactly the same way.

The Stories Changed. That Feeling Didn't.

My taste in books has obviously changed since the days of Little Golden Books and Goosebumps.

Although, let's be clear, I still fully support a mildly creepy story and questionable decision-making. 😂

What I gravitate toward now is harder to put into one neat genre box.

I like stories that feel real enough to believe and magical enough to escape into.

Give me recognizable emotions, complicated people, relationships that feel human, places I can almost touch—and then let something impossible exist there, too.

I don't necessarily want to leave reality completely.

I want reality with the edges softened just enough for a little magic to slip through.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that's also the kind of story I like to write.

Becoming the Writer I Wanted to Read

I don't think I consciously sat down when I began writing The Whispering Seasons and thought about every book I loved as a child.

There was no checklist.

Vivid descriptions? Check.

Room for imagination? Check.

A little magic? Check.

But those influences have a funny way of finding us anyway.

When I write about the Vale, I want you to be able to feel it.

I want you to hear what's happening around the characters. I want the seasons and the land and the water to be more than scenery.

But I also don't want to take everything away from your imagination.

The Maren who exists perfectly in my mind might look a little different from the Maren who lives in yours.

I like that.

Actually, I love that.

Because once I hand a story to you, it isn't entirely mine anymore.

You bring your own memories, experiences, imagination, and perspective to it.

You finish the world.

Maybe That's What Books Have Always Been for Me

Looking back, I don't think I loved books simply because I liked reading.

I loved going somewhere.

Sometimes the author took me there by describing every beautiful detail.

Sometimes I had to build part of the place myself.

Sometimes I got to decide which page we'd turn to next.

But every time, there was another world waiting.

And all these years later, I'm still doing essentially the same thing.

Except now, sometimes I'm the one building the doorway.

And I think little Amber—with a book in her hands and absolutely no intention of choosing only one ending—would think that's pretty cool. ♡

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So now I want to know: What book—or kind of book—made you a reader?

Was there one you read over and over? A series you couldn't put down? A story that made you realize books could take you somewhere else?

Tell me in the comments. I have a feeling we're about to unlock some childhood memories. 😂

— Amber M. McLamb

Writer. Dreamer. Storyteller.

Always creating. ♡