h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I do identify with this! I read everything anywhere anyhow. I read in the dinner queue at school, I read in class, I read under the bedclothes with a torch, I read during break, I read in the car even when it made me feel sick.

Once one of my (less than competent) teachers spotted I was reading under the desk, yanked the book out of my hands and had a very good go at tearing it in half. Any further comment I have on that matter is unprintable, but I have been pro-home-educating ever since.

I remember buying a second hand book once just so I could use its cover... I ripped the inside out and put whatever book I wanted to read inside it. The cover's title was History of Arithmetic. I didn't have to pretend NOT to read--I was using it for reference!

Ooh, that's a good touch

Wish I'd thought of that!

Aga and Whit are you a born book lover or did you learn to be one?

My Mum taught me to read when I was three or four, using flashcards. It worked beautifully, and I had a reading age of 12 by the age of 7. But even when I was still a baby who could only just sit up, Mum used to give me picture books to look at while she got on with house-work, propping them up infront of me and nipping back to turn the page every five minutes. Now, did this teach me to love books, or was the love of books so innate that this worked as a good way to keep me quiet? Lord knows. I did go through a phase when I was lonely at school of using books as a kind of security blanket - I couldn't bear to even go to the loo without one, even if I didn't read it. I just had to have a book on me at all times, so I could have an escape-route, especially in crowds or noisy places. To this day I find them distressing and reading helps me not be bothered by it. Other kids had teddies. I had the Hobbit.

History of Arithmatic? Sounds fascinating! Do you perchance have the inside still lying around?

And who dares call algebra boring? Fie, sir!

TRiG.